Journal of Sacred Work

There are so many kinds of "courage" that a question mark accompanies the word.

The oddness of being recruited from courtrooms to hospitals in 1975 thrust me face to face with bravery beyond anything I had seen. Caregivers calmly facing bloodied accident victims, screaming drug addicts, patients throwing bedpans… It takes courage for hospital or hospice workers just to show up. 

We are born with survival fears. Courage must be learned. It took me into adulthood to begin honing a calm that leaders (and trial lawyers) must show under fire.

Bravery's most infamous showcase? War. In the life-changing World War II film series "Band of Brothers" one soldier tells another, "The only way to survive is to understand that you're already dead. That's the way it is in war."

That is one path to courage. Soldiers are routinely spotlighted. Courageous caregivers never secure either the credit or the empathy they deserve. 

The stereotype: Males start wars. Females heal. 

Want to see five shades of courage? Study the eyes of America's first black female nurse. Civil War caregiver Susie King Taylor (1848-1912) : 1) chose caregiving, 2) in wartime, 3) as a black person 4) a woman, 5) was a teenager. For all that, she was attacked.

"There are many people who do not know what some of the colored women did during the war," she wrote. "There were hundreds of them who assisted the Union soldiers by hiding them and helping them to escape. Many were punished for taking food to the prison stockades for the prisoners."

This week, on August 6, pioneering battlefield nurse Susie King Taylor would have turned 126. Take a moment to honor her Radical Loving Care™.

-Erie Chapman

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Photo: Wikipedia