My husband and I recently suffered a
family loss. It was difficult, of course, as these things always are,
but as a chaplain I am lucky enough to be surrounded by people who
are loving, understanding, and patient with grief. I was able to take
some time to heal and when I came back I found myself nervous. Grief
has a funny way of popping up when we least expect it, and I had
found myself getting teary at the strangest things because of it. As
a spiritual and emotional caregiver, one of the things we are always
conscious of is transference, or conflating your patient's pain with
your own. This is problematic both for the patients and the
caregivers for obvious reasons, so it figures that within three weeks
of returning to work I found myself sitting across the room from a
patient who had just gone through almost the same thing I had.
Ordinarily, I would never disclose
such a fresh loss to a patient, but this patient's pain was so raw,
and she looked at me and asked if her grief was normal. She said her
friends and family didn't understand, but I did. I did because I had
found myself somewhere further along in my healing process, but with
a fresh enough memory that I knew that, if not normal, she seemed to
be experiencing something similar to what I had experienced. So I did
it. I told her of my loss. It's a frightening thing to wonder if
you're doing the right thing or not, and to have that moment of
pause. She looked at me and burst into tears, and my heart pounded
because I was thinking, “Oh boy, now she's crying for both of us
and that's not what I wanted!” I told her I'm doing fine and don't
want this to be about me, and she interrupted me and sobbed: “It
feels so good knowing somebody else understands!” She said she was
sorry for my loss, and she thanked me. She thanked me for sharing my
pain, my wound, and I felt a gentle warmth, like perhaps my hurt was
not completely without purpose after all.
We can hardly live without collecting
bumps and bruises along the way. To open the heart is to risk it: to
fall in love is to risk rejection, to have a child is to risk all the
pain of rebellion and the fears of loss or estrangement, and even
learning a new skill risks failure and raising all of those hard
questions about ourselves we don't want to face. Probably none of us
make it to adulthood without some kind of loss, trauma, insecurity,
or hurt, and we bring that story, that self with us when we walk into
a patient room and listen to their story, their hurt. Whether it's
physical illness, or emotional/spiritual turmoil, these things touch
us. They remind of us those things in us, and they sometimes cut a
little too close to the bone for comfort. At the same time, those old
scars and even some of the fresher wounds create an opportunity for
connection. It's not professional or advised to walk around with our
hearts on our sleeves all the time, but neither can we close our
hearts to the hurts we encounter as we journey with our patients.
Henri Nouwen writes: “The great
illusion of leadership is to think that man can be led out of the
desert by someone who has never been there.” How can we be healers
if we can't get in touch with the experiences of our illnesses,
struggles, grief, and rough edges? How can you understand how to hope
against all hope, to hope even when the prognosis is grim, to find
something to hold to as you take your dying breath, if never you have
walked that valley of the shadow of death in some small way? We
can't, and it's silly to try because we bring those things with us
every step of the way. We all have hearts able to be, as theologian
Parker Palmer says, not just broken, but broken open in order to hold
the broken hearted before us and walk with them toward healing.
This visit with the woman whose loss
was so close to my own reminded me of this simple caregiving
strategy, which bears so much healing fruit, and that is to care from
your broken heart. Take care of your heart, of course, but don't be
afraid to be truly touched by the wounds of another. My own personal
life philosophy is that it is in our weakness that we are made
strong, and so I invite and encourage you to be weak. Be open to
really listening to the many hurts you encounter in these walls
today. Let your hurts and scars and the victory of having carried on
be a beacon of hope to those who have not yet learned they can
survive their hurts. And know that in baring your heart in this
beautiful, holy vulnerability you invite healing for them, and for
you.
