About a year ago I began working for a local non-profit, offering clinical support to caregivers. Most of those caregivers I support are caring for seniors who are chronically ill and/or frail, and in need of 24 hour supervision and care. And in that context I have come to further know, the challenges of illness and the cost of caring at the highest level. The caregivers that seek to bandage wounds, and bind to heal, often do so at a great cost to their own physical and mental health.
During this time, I began to further consider the weight of these things in the broader sense of our care. How medicine in its wonder also has its limitations. How vulnerable our lives are in the context of bodies and minds. How the arrows of illness, both physically and mentally, pierce us all, whether doctor or nurse, therapist or client, carer and cared for, wounded or healer. Behind the bandages and underneath the rib cage, we all have a heart that will eventually stop, and equally breaks.
But even while feeling that weight, we can remain hopeful in the knowledge that there is always room in this life for an alchemical space. One where there is compassionate courage and a love that endures through the pain. One where faith and hope draw us into help and helping, in support of a hopeful wellness. - So here’s to the journey of being mortal, to the power and limitations of medicine, to the courageous compassion of caring and being cared for in the midst of our own frailty and wounded-ness. And here’s to our highest visions of Self, as participants in the greater Work. To fold into a constellation, not unlike Chiron.