I See You. Your Official Title is Walker of the Wound.
A tribute to every person in the helping professions who shows up, even on the days they’re running on empty.
I’ve had a lot of irons in the fire lately.
Courses being built, resources being developed, projects on the go, the usual chaos of trying to run a business while also doing the actual mahi that the business is about. It’s the kind of busy that sneaks up on you, the kind where you look up one day and realise you haven’t stopped to breathe in a while. And I say that as someone who teaches other people to stop and breathe. The irony is not lost on me.
In the middle of all of it, something kept coming up. Not in a dramatic, sit-down-and-have-a-crisis kind of way. More like a low hum underneath everything. A reminder that what I was working on (resources for supervision, tools for practice, frameworks for the hard stuff) exists because the sector it’s for is doing it tough.
And I mean genuinely tough. Not “work is stressful” tough. I mean the kind of tough where you’re holding the worst of what human beings do to each other, day after day, on behalf of people who have nowhere else to turn. The kind of tough where the system you work inside is underfunded, overstretched and sometimes actively working against the very people it’s supposed to serve. The kind of tough where you go home and you still can’t quite leave it there.
I needed to do something with that. And for me, that meant making something.
My own cup needed filling. So I wrote a song.
Now, before you picture me alone at a piano in a flowing linen shirt, let me be clear — I used AI tools to bring it to life, and I am completely okay with that. What I contributed was the words and heart of it. The feel of it. The complex emotions — our own and the client’s that leaks through whether we invite it or not. The sweeping nature and importance of what we all do, and the very real pain and cost to ourselves that doesn’t always make it into the debrief or the supervision session or anywhere, really, except the drive home. And the reframing. The hope that we don’t always see clearly when we’re in the thick of it — or sometimes don’t quite believe we’ve earned.
The thing I’ve been sitting with as I’ve been building resources and reflecting on two decades of this work. The thing I wanted to say to every social worker, counsellor, nurse, youth worker, advocate and practitioner I’ve ever supervised, trained alongside or heard in the hallways of organisations that are stretched to their absolute limit.
I wanted to say: I see you.
Not the job title. Not the caseload. Not the role. You — the person who turns up to a party and when someone asks what you do, there’s that moment. You know the one. The conversation either goes a bit quiet, or shifts awkwardly, or someone looks at you with that particular expression and says “how do you do that job?” as if you might be slightly unhinged for choosing it. And you smile and give the short answer because the long one would take the rest of the evening and probably clear the room. That person. The one underneath the role who made a choice to do work that most people couldn’t and wouldn’t do. Who decided, somewhere along the way, that standing in the difficult places for the people who need it most was worth doing. And who keeps making that choice, even on the days when the system makes it nearly impossible and the cost to yourself is real.
The surface talk isn’t enough
Burnout gets talked about. Vicarious trauma gets talked about — more now than it used to. Self-care gets talked about, sometimes in ways that are so removed from the reality of the sector that they border on insulting. (“Bubble baths and boundaries!” Sure. I’ll pencil that in between my third crisis call and the court report that’s due Friday.)
But what doesn’t get talked about enough is the quiet disheartening of it. The slow erosion of the thing that got you into this work in the first place. The days where you’re still showing up, still doing the job, still fighting for the people in front of you — but the fire feels a bit lower than it used to. You haven’t burned out exactly. But you’re running closer to empty than you’d like to admit.
I’ve been there. I’ve supervise people who are there right now. And the thing I’ve noticed is that on those days, what people often need isn’t a framework or a strategy. They need to feel like what they’re doing matters. They need someone to say — without qualifications or caveats — that what you do is extraordinary. That the people you show up for, the ones who can’t fight for themselves any longer, need you to be there. And that the fact that you keep turning up despite everything is not nothing. It’s everything.
Their hope and trust are the gifts that sustain us — and the very weapons we wield to fight for better days for them.
That’s not a small thing to hold. And it’s not a small thing to do.
Hold the mirror up. Don’t look away.
Sitting with all of this — my own version of it and what I know about how others are sitting with it too — I realised that what I wanted to create wasn’t another resource or another framework. It was something that could hold a mirror up to those that hate taking credit or see it as vain. Something that could make you stop and look at yourselves the way that the people who love this sector, who’ve witnessed it up close, who understand what it actually costs — look at you.
Because the view from the outside is remarkable. And most of you never let yourselves see it.
So I created a song. Not to explain the work or analyse it or put a framework around it. To make you feel it. To take all of that complexity — the grief, the anger at broken systems, the love for the people you work with, the bone-deep tiredness, and yes, the hope, even when it’s hard to find — and put it somewhere you could hear it back.
And here is what I need you to do when you listen to it.
Don’t look away. Don’t deflect. Don’t do that thing where someone says something true about you and you immediately find a reason it doesn’t quite apply, or someone else deserves it more, or you’re not really that good. Don’t be humble about just how much your passion, your showing up, your refusal to stop caring — means to others. To the people you serve. To the sector. To those of us who watch you do it.
Just this once, let it land.
Walkers of the Wound — listen here
This is for you
Whether you’re brand new to this sector — still figuring out where the line is between caring deeply and burning through yourself — or you’ve been here long enough to have your own stories that would make most people’s hair stand on end, this song is for you.
For the one who sat at midnight in an office no one sees, finishing the paperwork that keeps someone safe. For the one who made the call that no one ever wants to make. For the one who held the silence when words would have broken something. For the one who came back on Tuesday.
Especially for the one who came back on Tuesday.
You are not alone in this. The weight you carry is real, and it is also shared — by everyone else in this sector who shows up the same way you do, for the same reasons, with the same fire that sometimes feels like it’s struggling to stay lit.
I admire you. I thank you. And I see you.
We don’t carry torches — we become the light we need.
Go have a listen. And if it hits — if it gives you a moment of feeling like the thing you do matters, or a bit of fuel for a hard week — share it with your team, your colleagues, the person in your office who’s clearly running on fumes and hasn’t said so yet.
Because you are walkers of the wound. Every one of you.
And that’s not a small title to hold.
Kerri
