Perhaps we occupy more locations than the place in which we breathe at this moment. We live in the minds of those who think of us and care for us. And some part of us lives in the places we have been and might be in the future. Wherever you are, you, as a caregiver, have the chance to live not in your yesterday or your tomorrow, but in your now.
Caregivers are the subjects of great demands because they are presented with such great needs from others. We place a heavy burden on caregivers to ease our pain, cure our disease, sit with us in the midst of our anger and sadness as well as in our happiness and joy. The challenge to conscientious caregives is not how to take a break, but how to give themselves a break. Poets always say it better. And Mary Oliver says it best of all in these words…
Wild Geese
You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting–
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.
Journal of Sacred Work 
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