Starry Wisdom

So it begins.

I am starting this blog in part at the suggestion some friends that I chronicle my experiences as a hospice volunteer. We’ll begin there. Over time I am sure it will include excursions into other parts of my world. At least here I can say what I mean the way I mean it without having to be careful about “offending”, “trigger warnings”, “too blunt”, or any other such rot.

It would be a fine thing if people read and were inspired to think. To question. To challenge. And perhaps most of all to step outside of themselves and their comfort zone to light their candle and take that light into the world. More on that another timer perhaps.

At the moment I am going through the application process for hospice volunteer to be followed by some training sessions in October. I would like to start sooner but my schedule does not permit. In the meantime I thought I would share some of what led me to this, both as a sharing and to help me continue to sort things out as well.

In the beginning, mother was a narcissist. Of course I did not know it at the time. If I had and knew how I would suffer for that, I might have declined the “invitation” to this world. I didn’t have much choice in the matter though. But as I learned later she had a fully developed case of Narcissistic Personality Disorder (look it up in the DSM if you’re curious). How did that affect me / lead me to hospice? Loneliness. Not the occasional nobody-wants-to-play-with-me loneliness, but the soul-destroying lack of any empathic connection with my parent (dad left a few years after I was born). That connection is critical to a person’s sense of self … sense of well-being … sense of being cared for … sense of belonging.

I didn’t know how to process it at the time. Everything felt …. Cold. Wrong.

For an idea what it’s like, look up “Still Face Experiment”. A short movie in which a mother is seen interacting with her child (empathic connection in action) to start. Happy baby. Then she turns away for a few seconds and turns back and present a flat unsmiling face to her child. Within a minute you see the pain / fear / confusion in the child. Very much in distress. And then mother engages again and all is well.
So … imagine what it would be like to live your life, as a child and after, in that place. Imagine how you would feel.

Which is one of the things that brings me to hospice. I have seen people abandoned and set aside as they age and become ill. Alone. People not there, or there physically and not “present”. No heart connection.
This is a chance for me to stand against that. To be present for them if nothing else. To have them know that another person is there for them. Cares. Having known the pain and sadness of the lack of that, I am going to do something to make sure that people I can reach never ever feel that way when they most need the warmth, comfort, support, and presence of another human being.