Darla Has No Idea What Her Job Is
Darla has absolutely no idea what her job is. She doesn’t know that I spend my days sitting across from people who are sometimes telling me things they have never said out loud before. She doesn’t know what trauma is, or grief, or anxiety, or depression. She has no concept of clinical supervision, treatment plans, documentation, ethical decisions, crisis calls, or what it means to walk out of one emotionally heavy session and have only a few minutes before walking into another room and being completely present for the next person. She definitely doesn’t understand what a Clinical Director does, although to be fair, there are days I’m not entirely convinced I do either. As far as Darla is concerned, my professional responsibilities are pretty simple: I disappear behind a door sometimes, people come in and out, and eventually I reappear, which is obviously the most important part of the entire operation.
She has no idea what I do all day. She just knows I’m her person.
When I decided to bring Darla into my life, I knew she would be coming to work with me. That meant I thought about all the practical things. Potty training. Barking. Biting. Whether she could learn to settle while I was in session. Whether she would destroy my office one tiny puppy tooth at a time. Whether I could actually have a puppy at work without creating considerably more stress than comfort. I bought the carrier, the toys, the treats, the potty pads and all the other things we convince ourselves will somehow make us prepared for bringing home a puppy. What I didn’t really think about was what she might bring into that space simply by being there, or how quickly this little creature would work her way into parts of my life that had nothing to do with the logistics of owning a dog.
There is something different about a room when a little black puppy is sprawled across the floor without a single concern about whatever very serious adult conversation is happening above her. There is something grounding about watching a creature who has absolutely no concept of productivity, credentials, deadlines, performance reviews, treatment goals or whether she has accomplished enough today. Darla’s priorities are considerably simpler. Is Mom here? Is there chicken? Can I chew this? Why can’t I chew this? What about this other thing that I’m also apparently not allowed to chew? Can I sleep here? Can I sleep directly on Mom? Can I somehow position my entire body across her neck while she is trying to breathe? Perfect. Life is good.
Clearly overwhelmed by the responsibilities of adulthood.
The funny thing is, I think that’s part of why I needed her more than I realized. My life has always had a lot of doing in it. I work, lead, supervise, treat clients, write, build things, make plans and think about whatever comes next. There is almost always something I could be doing, fixing, creating, learning or worrying about, and I’m exceptionally good at convincing myself that whatever is next deserves my attention right now. Darla couldn’t care less about any of it. She doesn’t need the Clinical Director or the therapist or the LCSW. She doesn’t know how many clients I saw that day, whether I handled a difficult situation perfectly, whether I checked everything off my list or whether I am questioning a decision I made three hours ago. She doesn’t require me to prove that I deserve the roles I occupy. She just knows I’m her person, and apparently her person should rarely be more than six inches away from her.
There is something strangely powerful about being loved by an animal who has absolutely no interest in the version of you that the rest of the world sees. Darla doesn’t care what I accomplish. She crawls onto my chest, wedges herself against my neck, puts her face next to mine and goes to sleep because, for whatever reason, that is where she feels safest. And in those moments, I don’t have to accomplish anything either. I don’t have to figure anything out. I don’t have to make the next decision. I can just lie there with a warm little body pressed against mine and exist for a while.
No credentials required here.
But what I didn’t expect was how much I would start noticing what she does for other people too. She doesn’t know she’s doing anything, of course. She’s not walking around the office thinking, I should probably regulate someone’s nervous system today. She’s usually thinking about food or wondering whether the object she just found on the floor is edible. But people see her and something changes. Faces soften. Someone reaches down to pet her. Someone laughs because she’s sleeping in some ridiculous position or dragging something around that clearly doesn’t belong to her. For a few seconds, whatever heaviness came into the room gets interrupted—not erased, not magically fixed, just interrupted—and I’ve started to appreciate how meaningful those little interruptions can be.
Sometimes her entire contribution is simply being in the room.
A puppy isn’t going to fix someone’s trauma, and I would never pretend she could. Darla isn’t a treatment modality. She isn’t going to repair a marriage, cure someone’s anxiety, take away grief or make a painful story less painful. Therapy still requires the work therapy requires. But healing isn’t made entirely out of enormous breakthroughs either. Sometimes a person is talking about something difficult and there is a small black puppy asleep nearby. Sometimes someone who has been holding their body tight for most of a session reaches down and runs their fingers through soft fur. Sometimes a person laughs in the middle of a hard hour. Sometimes the nervous system gets thirty seconds where nothing is being demanded of it, and then we continue. Those moments aren’t the treatment, but that doesn’t mean they don’t matter.
I’ve spent a lot of my career learning how people survive difficult things. I’ve studied trauma, attachment, grief, relationships, nervous systems and all the complicated ways human beings learn to protect themselves. I’ve learned interventions and modalities and theories about what helps people heal. Darla’s approach is considerably less sophisticated. She lies down. She stays close. She doesn’t ask anyone to explain themselves. She doesn’t need the perfect words, and she isn’t uncomfortable with silence. Watching her has reminded me of something I already knew but sometimes forget in a profession built around knowing what to say: not every moment needs to be fixed. Some moments simply need to be witnessed, and sometimes what another living being needs most is to know they aren’t alone while they’re in it.
Apparently this is a perfectly reasonable sleeping arrangement.
Of course, I don’t want to give her too much credit here because this is still Darla. This is the same creature who investigates things that absolutely do not belong to her, believes almost anything on the floor is potentially a toy, and occasionally looks genuinely offended when I remove something from her mouth that she was apparently planning to treasure forever. She can go from looking like a tiny wise therapy dog to absolute puppy mayhem in approximately three seconds. She is still learning how to exist in my world, and I’m still learning how to exist in hers. There are accidents and chewed things and moments when I wonder why the puppy who can apparently hear a treat bag being opened from three rooms away suddenly has no idea what the word “come” means.
Exhibit A: absolutely none of her business.
And maybe that’s part of what I love about having her with me during this particular chapter of my life. I’ve spent years thinking about purpose. I’ve written about it, spoken about it and tried to understand my own. I’ve looked backward at things I’ve survived and forward at things I still want to do, trying to understand how all those pieces fit together and what I’m supposed to do with the life I’ve been given. Purpose has always felt important to me, probably because there were times in my life when I desperately needed to believe there was a reason to keep going. Then along comes this tiny dog who doesn’t need to understand her purpose in order to live it.
Darla simply shows up. She brings joy into rooms that sometimes hold pain. She makes people smile. She gets me out of my own head. She makes me laugh when I’ve been too serious for too long. She gives me something warm and alive to hold after I’ve spent the day holding space for everyone else’s emotional world. She reminds me that rest is an actual activity and that occasionally lying on the floor doing absolutely nothing is a perfectly reasonable way to spend ten minutes. At the end of the day, she curls herself against me as though there is nowhere else on earth she would rather be, completely unaware that her presence has changed the rhythm of my days.
I don’t know exactly what Darla will become as she grows up. Maybe she’ll become an incredible office dog who somehow learns when someone needs her and quietly wanders over. Maybe she’ll become the unofficial mascot of Adventures in Change. Maybe she’ll spend the next fifteen years stealing things she’s not supposed to have and sleeping upside down with absolutely no dignity whatsoever. My guess is that all three are equally possible. But I do know that she is already teaching me something about the thing I’ve spent so much of my life trying to understand.
Purpose doesn’t always announce itself with some enormous calling. Sometimes it looks like the work you’ve spent years preparing to do. Sometimes it looks like standing on a stage. Sometimes it looks like sitting across from another human being while they tell you the truth about their life. Sometimes it looks like being the person someone calls when everything has fallen apart. And sometimes, apparently, purpose weighs a few pounds, has four paws and black fur, has absolutely no respect for personal space, and falls asleep with her head hanging halfway out of a carrier.
Maybe purpose doesn’t always know that it’s purpose.
Darla has no idea what her job is. She doesn’t know that she makes difficult days softer for me or that sometimes simply being in the room changes something for someone else. She doesn’t know that she is teaching me about slowing down, being present and allowing myself to be loved without accomplishing something first. She doesn’t know anything about purpose.
And maybe that’s exactly the point.
Maybe we don’t always recognize our purpose while we’re living it. Maybe purpose isn’t only found in the enormous things we accomplish or the lives we deliberately set out to change. Maybe sometimes it’s found in the way the room feels different because we’re in it, in the person who feels a little less alone because we stayed, or in the small bit of joy we brought into an otherwise difficult day without ever realizing we did it.
Darla just shows up.
And somehow, that is enough.
Reflection
Maybe instead of always asking ourselves, “What is my purpose?”, we could occasionally ask a different question: Where does my presence make something a little lighter, safer, softer or less lonely?
Because sometimes we spend so much time looking for the enormous thing we’re supposed to do with our lives that we miss all the small ways we’re already doing it.
Darla certainly has.
She’s too busy looking for chicken.