Blog Prompt

Hi HEALers:

My thanks to you all (including Jacqueline, Randy and Lehoa) for such a rich Friday evening and Saturday of presentations, discussions, and activities.

I'll write separately about our readings and preparations for the next meeting dates of November 18 and 19. This email is about the blog prompt that Randy mentioned on Saturday afternoon.

"Reflect on a time when you received care – the other cared for you. How did you know you were cared for?"

Read on for further explanation of what is intended in having you do this particular blog entry.

Let me start by sharing what Lehoa wrote to me afterwards about her presentation and mini-workshop on Friday evening. I have received her permission to share this reflection with you. I do so because Lehoa speaks directly to pedagogical relationality through her own self-care practices and in a way that exemplifies what I was trying to say on Saturday about how we can recast "pedagogies of health education, promotion and care" as more than just the impersonal curriculum designs and instructional frameworks through which we teach, coach, instruct, mentor, supervise and manage others.

Lehoa also provides a wonderful example of "a time when SHE received care." It could be her blog entry if only she were still doing the HEAL MEd!

Lehoa writes:

"I've heard from few students after the session that it was helpful, but I wanted to let you know how valuable it was for me. I walked out of the class and couldn't stop reflecting and thinking about the positive impact that it had on me.

Some of the comments shared by the class yesterday made me want to inquire further around the notion of connectedness and laughter. Someone brought up an example of their P.E. class and how some students laughed at times when he could be using that space to get back to the lesson plan, and he shared that he may do things a little differently in that class to encourage laughter or use that in a way that positively impacts the student and lesson. What I heard from that wasn't necessarily to have more laughter in the classroom, but perhaps to be more aware of these opportunities to create connections in the professional roles we hold. Instead of following a lesson plan which absolutely has its values, pausing to notice what's happening and using it to inform our practices could bring different and possibly more impactful experiences. There's a human-ness aspect where we are more aware of ourselves and others.

Laughter is fantastic. But it's not truly about the laughter; it's what it represents and brings out in people. I use laughter yoga as a vehicle to send an embodied message, that if we are compassionate, kind, and forgiving individuals, we are better human beings. We can be better at creating impactful human connections. While I believe that, yesterday's class made me think more about all this."

I've cc'd Lehoa on this email in case any of you want her email address to make further comment to her.

The blog prompt asks you to simply recall a time when the tables were turned and, instead of being expected just to care for your kids, the students you teach, the athletes you coach, the clients you serve, the staff you administer, and so on, you were the one receiving positive attention which felt comforting and supportive. Write about some time that you feel okay about sharing and, if you wish, use images, illustrative photos, graphics or whatever may give the reflection greater poignancy. It's your blog and so the medium needs to be your message. Keep in mind, too, the literary ways of making a personal reflection public by focusing on the details of the interaction, the actions, gestures, and expressions, and not on the identifiable context or the recognizable persons involved, or by rendering the reflection through the eyes of a real or imagined observer or commentator. And keep in mind that "the other" from whom you received care may not necessarily be another person. (By the way, some of you may have this and other blog entries serve 'double duty' by using them, if appropriate, in your HEAL inquiry paper.)

The purpose of this blog entry is to continue our exploration of self-care and the practices that serves us and others best. While this reflection on "a time when you received care – the other cared for you" may seem quite removed from the practices of self-care that you are pursuing and have mentioned already in your blog entries, hopefully it will stir a thought or two about how these very practices might serve you relationally, emotionally, even ecologically and spiritually, as well as in terms of what we often take glibly to be their physical benefits. The question "How did you know you were cared for?" can be asked of these practices of self-care insofar as we are interested in knowing what likely physical, mental, emotional, social, ecological, spiritual and (since Renee has impressed the point) sexual health benefits accrue from practices of self-care, for ourselves and for others.

Let me give you two further, literary examples of receiving care. The first example is of "receiving care from a stranger" that Alphonso Lingis provides in his book *The community of those who have nothing in common.* Lingis is a philosopher who has turned to "travel writings" as his medium of musing.

"One night, sick for weeks in a hut in Mahabalipuram in the south of India, I woke out of the fevered stupor of days to find that the paralysis that had incapacitated my arms was working its way into my chest. I stumbled out into the starless darkness of the heavy monsoon night. On the shore, gasping for air, I felt someone grasp my arm. He was naked, save for a threadbare loincloth, and all I could understand was that he was from Nepal. How he had come here, to the far south of the Indian subcontinent – farther by far than I who, equipped with credit card, could come here from my home in a day by jet plane – I had no way of learning from him. He seemed to have nothing, sleeping on the sands, alone. He engaged in a long conversation, unintelligible to me, with a fisherman awakened from a hut at the edge of the jungle and finally loaded me in an outrigger canoe to take me, I knew without understanding any of his words, through the monsoon seas to the hospital in Madras sixty-five miles away. My fevered eyes contemplated his silent and expressionless face, from time to time illuminated by the distant flashes of lightning as he labored in the canoe, and it was completely clear to me that should the storm become violent, he would not hesitate to same me, at the risk of his own life.

We disembarked at a fishing port where he put me first on a rickshaw and then on a bus for Madras, and then he disappeared without a word or a glance at me. He surely had no address but the sands; I would never see him again. I shall not cease seeing what it means to come to be bound with a bond that can never be broken or forgotten, what it means to become a brother. How indecent to speak of such things in the anonymous irresponsibility of a writing he cannot read and a tongue he cannot understand!"

Lingis, A. (1994). The community of those who have nothing in common. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, pp. 158, 159.

The second example comes from the Canadian poet Bronwen Wallace and is drawn from a poem titled "Burn-Out" in which Bronwen describes an experience of being on call in a shelter for battered women and children. She writes in this poem of her response to Linda, one of the women in the shelter, who comes to speak with her and in the course of the conversation tells her of yet another very unfortunate incident in her much abused life. We pick up the poem just after Linda has spoken of the fetus she miscarried (one suspects because of the spousal abuse she suffered) and disposed of without telling a soul.

Bronwen narrates: "And again, I wish I could tell you/ how I handled this in a/ professional manner, except that/ I, personally, don't think there/ is one." (Wallace, 1989, p. 78). Instead of casting her response to Linda within the realm of professional responsibility, Bronwen catches herself in a remembering of the personal past. As she listens to Linda she finds herself momentarily back at school, in the gymnasium, hearing her gym teacher yelling at her to try a particular kind of leap. She feels the admonishment; she feels the motion; she feels the knee injury that results from not being up to the task. Sitting with Linda as she cries out her story, Bronwen still remembers getting hurt. Through the painful, arthritic, stiffness of the adult joint, she remembers the injurious moment. But what is significant about this remembering is not that it seems to arise at Linda's expense, but that it actively, physically constitutes a gesture of comfort for Linda. Bronwen says: "and I reach/ for my knee (cradling it/ as I might a child's head/ sleeping, in my lap) as I will/ in the next movement, reach/ for Linda's shoulder" (p. 79). 

What is most interesting about this example is that Bronwen Wallace shows the manner in which remembering a personal past is compressed within the present encounter. It is "in that gesture which, from where you are, may appear/ ambiguous, whether it's for/ comfort or support, though/ believe me, it's not/ the distance makes it/ seem that way, it's not/ the distance at all." (p. 79). The ambiguity of this gesture of reaching for Linda's shoulder arises out of its two-sidedness: because "whether it is for comfort or support" has much to do with acknowledging the reflectivity that is bound up in this action of reaching out to another. The gesture remembers a personal past in the context of an intention to be there for another. As Wallace has indicated, this particular gesture of reaching for Linda's shoulder arises out of the action of cradling one's knee and the memories of hurt that this action occasions. In reaching out for Linda's shoulder, Bronwen Wallace is comforting the woman and yet also, in some very deep way, supporting and comforting herself as an adult and as the formerly physically hurt child. In the action, with its movement, touch, and feel, Bronwen comforts herself as if reaching back into her childhood. Is the gesture to comfort self or to support the other person? Well, of course, it is for both. And it is the very ambiguity of the gesture that creates the space for both.

Wallace, B (1987). The stubborn particulars of grace. Toronto: McClelland and Stewart.

I'll stop here only to stress that these these two examples were written by professional writers and are intended merely to provide a bit of stimulus for you in reflecting on "a time when you received care – the other cared for you" and "how you knew you were cared for."

Cheers,

Stephen.