Happy Social Work Month

Hey Faithers!

Happy March! I hope February was as good, if not better, than how it was to us! We enjoyed February! But it is now March and guess what that means...

Social Work Month and Women's History Month!

This is such an amazing time for women and social workers worldwide!

Now, let me reintroduce myself, the Founder of HealingSheGotFaith.

My name is Lisa. I am your local self-love advocate. You can call me LeLe or SheGotFaith. I am a community social worker by trade, meaning I have my Bachelors of Science in Social Work and my Masters of Social Work with an emphasis in community and organization and a specialization in Nonprofit management.

I've been in the nonprofit industry since I was 18, and I've been in social work for about ten years as of now. When I first started social work, I honestly did not know what social work was. My first time hearing the term "Social Work" was when my mentor let me know that all my dreams and aspirations sounded very "social worky." I enrolled in the basic social work classes and learned more than I ever could imagine. These were the only classes I've ever enjoyed. When I learned about Social Work, I was intrigued that there were three sectors of Social Work. These sectors are micro, mezzo, and macro. I fell in love with macro social work. Macro Social Work intrigued me because it a community or society as a client versus a family or person (micro social work). I never saw myself as a therapist or someone working for the state. Instead, I envisioned owning multiple community centers around the nation and building up communities. I visioned these centers with programs for all kids and adults. I saw them making a difference, and I was visioning people being healed. I struggled with the route I took in Social work because it wasn't the typical route. There aren't many people you meet who have always known from the jump they wanted in on macro social work. Do you all know how often I get asked if I ever thought about going clinical? The answer is no. To be completely transparent, I didn't even want this MSW (Master of Social Work.) But hey, I got it, and I love Social Work.

One of the hardest things for me is that people do not consider me a social worker. One, because they do not know what a community social worker is. People ask me how I work for myself and all that. I've tried for the LMSW (Licensed Master of Social Work), a basic license for any social worker at the Master's level. This does not equate to clinical; that's a whole separate test and lesson. (We will talk about that too.) But the point is, I've always wanted to be in community social work from day 1.

When I started to really dive deep into social work, I realized that everything I ever dreamed of and experienced is macro. Along with that, I just thoroughly did not enjoy micro social work. I had experience working in mezzo because sometimes, macro and mezzo go hand in hand. This is what I loved. I loved the group work, and I loved learning about changing policy, advocacy, protesting, standing up to government officials, and developing programming to better a system or community. My heart would be on fire with that! This is how I knew I had found my calling in life, and this is what I wanted to do. I plan to come and tell you about my social work experience throughout this month. I will be discussing it on the Radio Talk Show, Podcast, Youtube, and right here in the blog! Wheeew. We are in for a good time! I got some ugly truths for you as well! Faither, as always, please remember to love you the way you love the world! Come back next week to get this part 2 of me being a social worker! Love you all!

-LeLe

Your Local Self-Love Advocate