Caregiving & Lyme: "Get Better"- Alt J
Caregiving, compassion, & intentionality
Being a sister means the world to me. My life is always accompanied by the biggest champion of all of my pursuits and dreams, the most stubborn altruist who constantly reminds me of the depths of selflessness (although I might be overtaking her on patience these days), and my best friend. It's also tied to the unbelievable abstruse, weighty, and profound role of a caregiver. My mom has been the most extraordinary and inspiring example of what it means to be that-- to guide someone through a life, or pieces of life, full of fluctuations, questions, few answers, and incredibly complex situations (sometimes in a beautiful way, sometimes in a harsh one). Battling disease, side-effects, symptoms, medication, and the lack of interdisciplinarity in medicine has been a ferociously meaningful piece of my undergraduate degree. There were emergencies where school, life, automatically come second-- which people only seem to understand, or have compassion for the first few times. But as you watch someone, every quarter, every month, week, and day figure out if their body lets them live, truly live, you learn that compassion is not conditional. Empathy, can be more call and response-- something happens, and we feel understanding or want of it for others as a result of that something. Compassion is a depth.
So with those depths in tow, and graduation around the corner-- jobs and worlds to pursue where my always, my sister, isn't accompanying me and I can't accompany her-- I had to decide how I could chase these opportunities and somehow step away as my role of caregiver in the immediate.
I struggled with that decision to try for those chances at first. I felt nervous to leave my role as caregiver, but I also felt this massive sense of emotional courage and dedication to the importance of continued learning, exploration, and some combination between self-care and independence. I asked my sister, how would this impact her, how would this make her feel, how would it be, what would it look like. And she looked up at me all confused and said, “What do you mean me? This is you. This is your turn to learn.” To her, it was as simple as that. My mom and my sister have supported me in this completely and enthusiastically, but that decision process to truly step away at this time for these experiences has been incredible in providing me perspective both on how I value responsibility, but also how much I value intentionality. I am incredibly proud of being a caregiver, and the beautiful and raw moments in life it's shown me unreservedly; and I know that it's helped me foster my own deep compassion and interpersonal insight and definitely some emotional resilience. All of which feel key to exploring the unfamiliar.
Here's to the caregivers out there, thank you for being there.
