Most people go to work everyday and deal with some level of stress, right?  Well, imagine if you went to work everyday and dealt with death!  If you're reading this you most likely have dealt with death, to some degree or another, how else did you find this page?  I guess it could just be your interest in the industry, but I am going to assume you are already involved in our world, the world where the dead teach the living!  

I would love to know what made you all want to be in this industry! Whether you are a coroner, medical examiner, medicolegal death investigator or forensic pathologist, what made you want to be a part of the forensic science world? Whatever your reasons were, I bet you never thought about how dealing with death day in and day out would affect you. How informing families their loved ones have died or how picking up pieces of brain matter or body parts would take its toll on you.  If you are anything like me, you can handle it!  Of course you can! Even when you can't, you can...to everyone around you at least.  

We all want to think we can handle anything, that what we see and do is not going to change us, but it will.  Even the best of us.  

In the coming weeks we will explore what options we have available to us and learn how to decompress, how to leave work at work.  It is a skill that must be learned if you want to succeed in this industry!  We need to forget about the taboos that surround seeking help!

 What we see, what we do, well, it's our Monday...but to the people we deal with, the families, the living portion of our job...it may be the worst day of their life.  We need to take care of ourselves so that we can help take care of them!