Journal of Sacred Work

   It occurred to me today for the first time. Life guarantees suffering, but not joy.

   Instead, from the moment of birth, pain is assured. Why is a baby's first breath often used to cry? Do they know this already?

   Empathy helps healing. Judy Herendeen (pictured) is one of the most empathetic people I know. A former Riverside psychiatric caregiver she describes, with stunning eloquence, her childhood exposure to Appalachian poverty during her early Children's Services work and through her Doctor-dad:  

   "I couldn’t believe people lived in such poverty. I would go on house calls with my Dad. He’d pull in a driveway to a wooden shack. Does someone really live here? Men with long beards and shot guns were sitting on the porch. I stayed in the car. I heard them greet Dad. “Hi Doc, the boy is in here”. Dad would go into the house followed by the men. When he came out, the men who looked scary to me now were smiling. Dad would be carrying a bottle of dandelion wine and a homemade pie… I saw people who wouldn’t let my Dad leave without being paid…Generational poverty and its cycle of destruction of the human soul is something you understand when you care enough to see it for what it is. Really see it."

   The legendary poet, Walt Whitman saw it while caring for Civil War soldiers: "…Returning, resuming, I thread my way through the hospitals,/ The hurt and wounded I pacify with soothing hand,/ I sit by the restless all the dark night, some are so young/ Some suffer so much…"

   Suffering is guaranteed. Joy is elusive. 

   How well do non-caregivers understand other's suffering? A grieving expert teaches, "The worst thing to say to sufferers is, 'I know exactly how you feel."

   Regardless of our agonies, other's pain is profoundly personal. Yet, we can, like Judy, learn to empathize and thus offer sufferers a caregiver's gift: Joy. 

-Erie Chapman

Photo: Judy Herendeen, by Molly Muth