It did get old for a while & honestly very overwhelming. I slipped in to a funk with all of it when it seemed all my business came from Candlelighters. I love the ladies over there, but when every child I took a cast of was guaranteed to either be gone within hours or had already passed away, it weighed on me too much.
Dealing with the babies who are soon to leave this world takes a huge emotional toll on me. I'm very much empathic & I haven't learned to protect myself from other people's emotions. A year ago I would have scoffed at someone who said they were empathic. I didn't know what it meant to have this "gift", & didn't believe it really existed until it came to my attention that people actually deal with this on a daily basis.
I've always been a sucker for a happy emotional climate. On the flip side of that, when I'm around negativity I tend to get sucked in to that as well & I begin to feel negative very quickly. The grief exuded from the loved ones of children with cancer, who have just left this world or are about to leave it, is something anyone can see & feel, if you're near enough. I just can't seem to help taking part in feeling it right alongside them, when I'm near enough. Almost every one's empathic to a degree, I think. It's when you can't shake the negative feelings that it becomes a problem.
There have only ever been two times when I have done castings on kids with cancer where the families weren't in extreme emotional turmoil. It happens to be that both of these families were LDS. I really believe losing a child would be one of the most emotionally difficult, heart wrenching experiences a parent could ever go through. From my experience, I've come to the conclusion knowing about & believing in the Plan of Salvation makes all the difference in the world for these families.
Seeing the families that don't have this knowledge makes me want to share it with them SO badly. I just haven't figured out yet how to make that happen. Maybe I need to stock up on the movie Together Forever, collect addresses of the families I've served & send the video to them.
Lately I've had business of the happier kind. I've been casting the hands & feet of very ALIVE babies lately. Babies make me happy. Especially the healthy ones. There's a small sea of tiny hands & feet on my counter right now as well as a gorgeous belly casting that's hanging out in my garage, all waiting to be finished. It's times like this, when I'm able to make a little spending money for my family & get to spend time with new mom's & their sweet little babes, that make my "job" not a job at all. I love what I do! :)
