Another important factor in my daily support is trust. When family members trust each other, their feelings and potential requests for help are taken seriously. If I could go back in time, I would change the way I listened to my daughter’s feelings and words, giving them credence and validate them. As trust is the building block of any relationship, trust is also an essential element in supporting someone. Concretely, in my relationship with my husband, trust helps us live freely, carry out our passions such as for my husband being very involved in the community and for me being involved in school, children, and travels. Perhaps, not second guessing the other brings truthfulness to the relationship and promotes support.
Without support from my family and colleagues, I would have to find the resource within myself to sort out life challenges. That process could take a very long time and the lack of perspective may bring other difficulties. For instance, if I am not in a good space to ask my family for help and if they do not recognize the rut I am in, I could probably undertake something I shouldn’t such as moving something too heavy and hurt myself. Taking care of each other requires being aware of the others’ needs.
Clearly, not being able to communicate is terrifying as exemplified in the movie “The Diving Bell and the Butterfly”. Caught in a total physical paralysis, the protagonist of this true story goes through the agony of seeing and hearing a world with whom no communication is possible. Discovering that their patient’s left eye moves, the hospital speech therapist creates a system that enables communicating with Jean Bauby. The end product of the communication with Jean is a book published in 1997 The Diving-Bell and the Butterfly where Jean Bauby documents the drama of a brain, a soul, of self, captive in a body that has become the most impenetrable fortress ever built. However, Bauby’s agony was somehow relieved by his support team made up of family members, loving friends, and caring hospital staff. Without such support and people trying to understand how to alleviate Bauby’s physical and mental/spiritual pain, one can imagine that his body may have continued to be sustained without any consideration of whether his brain was active.
Children and aging people are the most susceptible to suffer from communication challenges and to benefit from a good support system. For instance, hospices are filled with people who haven’t yet told their stories. Since speaking has become difficult, the care team assumes that the elderly have little to share or don’t have time to listen, forgetting the person in front of them may be prisoner of their own body’s disability. When our hospice care and medical teams and families fail to empathize with their elders, these elders are left quasi abandoned as if not worthy of their humanity.
Equally, an infant born with deficient hearing is bound to feel stuck in a body with no possible communication with the outside world. I was struck to learn in the previous class that sign language allowed communicating with babies who are keen at recognizing facial expressions and hand gestures. For a while, our foster son would throw tantrums when he misinterpreted what was said, and still now his main challenge is his inability to communicate his feelings and thoughts which at times translates in erratic behaviors. Supporting him, there is a large team of professionals who try to decipher and meet his needs which at this point are mainly emotional since getting food is no longer an issue. Also very important is the community based support he gets such as the school and the sports program he has been able to participate in despite of the competitive aspect of high school sports (Seneca).
Of course, there are many other ways to provide support and in my close community, emotional support comes first. From emotional support derives how we can take care of each other takng many different forms. Without support, life becomes lonely and incomprehensible.
Resources
The Diving-Bell and the Butterfly.May 2007.Dir.Julian Schnabel.Production:Pathé Renn Productions,France 3 Cinéma (co-production),Kennedy/Marshall Company, The(in association with)C.R.R.A.V. Nord Pas de Calais(support),Région Nord-Pas-de-Calais (support), Canal+ (participation),CinéCinéma (participation), Banque Populaire Images 7(in association with)64. Retrieved from: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0401383/
Seneca.Family of Agencies.Retrieved from: http://www.senecacenter.org/community/fostercare.December 8,2012
