text: from Berig in Rochester, NY
  
  God Bless the social-aid workers.  This must be so deeply affecting, seeing people repeatedly slipping away, repeatedly saving them and then, do it again.  How to distance oneself from another's misery while empathizing enough to insert oneself therapeutically and not incorporate the grief of their subject, how to shake it all away to keep oneself emotionally and psychologically buoyant.   I've been watching this story on the National, so sad for the victims, families, communities.   If ever you need Ottawa to increase mental health  transfers, like wow, it's yesterday.   I"m a Christian who knows Christ can heal all and a firm believer in mental health care and counselling.  Nothing can eliminate layers of grief like unloading to a caring and attentive ear.  Drug and alcohol addiction cumulatively cause piles of humiliating misery for the user and their family - and their community.  undoing an  addiction is tough enough, grieving its damage ...