Caregiving is the heart of being human

By Pieta Woolley, Editor

As a parent, one of the lessons I teach my offspring is what is private, and what is public. In our culture, almost everything to do with our bodies is not for public, casual conversation.

The visual details of that infection, what smells, how you felt before you threw up, as compared to afterwards. I tell my teens that this is stuff we keep to ourselves, or share with a very small group of close friends and family and professionals.

Generally, this is good advice, for kids. But it's also isolating. So much of our human journey is our relationship with our own ever-changing body and mind - and the bodies and minds of the people we love. And, telling stories is how we connect with each other, and learn from each other.

So, writing stories about health is a privilege, because you can ask very intimate questions, and hear totally bare answers. Health writing transcends the politeness of how we normally converse about each other's bodies.

In this issue of ZEST, I am particularly thrilled to bring you the stories of two families who cared for people they love with passion and grit and vision - often through very difficult circumstances (Page 4). One family is the Chinns, who raised their son Robbie, who has Fragile X syndrome and autism. The other is the Gisbornes, who were able to care for Stan in their multi-generational farmhouse, for the seven years between a catastrophic surgery and his death this summer.

Caregiving is not for the faint of heart. It's tough, exhausting, isolating work that is the definition of hands-on love. And, most of us do it (Page 5). Talking about the stress of it can be taboo, but as Mark Gisborne said, "One thing we all figured out is that the mental and emotional health of caregivers is important to caring for someone else." Hearing other people's caregiving stories - which can get pretty wild - can be balm for folks in the midst of it.

Another way many of us offer care to those who are sick is by giving blood. However, there hasn't been a clinic here to collect blood in many years. Retired paramedic Glenn Holstine throws down a challenge on Page 21: if 3,000 people in this community say they'll donate a pint (he is collecting names via email), will Canadian Blood Services come here to collect it?

As Glenn points out, qathet is a community-minded, actively-caring region. We care for each other.

Often, because it's in the private realm, that care is nearly invisible. It's parenting. It's nursing. It's massage. It's marriage. Caring is cooking, and harm reduction, and taking your neighbour to the ER. Care, in other words, is the heart of health.