Taking time off. It doesn’t seem like something you should do if you’re truly committed to helping the homeless, right? Wrong!!! The absolutely worst thing you can do for yourself and your clients is to not allow yourself time off. You are not a machine. You are a normal, flesh and blood human being and just like that machine, you can break down if you don’t take care of yourself.
The cost to yourself isn’t just physical, although that can be pretty tiring in itself. In the course of loving and serving your homeless friends you will see, hear and experience heartbreaking, unspeakably hard things. Over time this has a cumulative effect. If you don’t carve out some separate time for yourself to get away both physically and most importantly, mentally, you will implode. No one was ever meant to keep just “going and going”. You are not the Energizer Bunny. Your batteries will definitely wear out.
