Lessons from a Caregiver

What I'm learning as I try to care...

Photo by Enric Moreu on Unsplash

Sometime today, most likely, my Substack will hit a milestone of a 1000 subscribers. In the Substack world, it’s kind of a big deal. You get a badge to put on your Substack—an emblem of sorts, stitched onto the webpage that says, “1000 people are reading your poems now.” I can go to a page on my Substack to also learn that 10,000 people have read my poems in the past 30 days. They are getting passed around across cyber-land like we pass around the best place to get ice cream in town on a hot, sunny day.

I’m really, really pleased. Pleased with Substack as my place to share where my own soul intersects with the world; pleased that you hare here with me; pleased that someone posted in the “comments” on a recent post, “We’re among friends here.”

Pleased to find my new voice lifting words out of the ladle of my soul as I dip the ladle in time and time again to see if anything might come out.

Pleased to welcome so many of you here—and pleased that people who know my old voice—people who have read my books are standing with me now in my new voice. And pleased that those of you who I’ve never met are taking the risk and time to read me and become a sort of friend here in this way.

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I found a poem with eight words that stopped me in my tracks, from Emily Dickinson. She writes:

“I am out with lanterns looking for myself.”

—Emily Dickinson

Poetry, for me, has been a way for me to light a lantern to look for myself, as well. I strike a match to the wick of my old soul. I feel the flickering inside. I feel the flame catch on and sometimes, I feel the warmth as I sit here and feel this Voice inside start to pull up some vowels and consonants from my dark abyss. These words somehow offer me a light—dispel a great darkness in me and around me. And I feel strangely warmed by these few burning words. My hope is that you may be warmed as well…but sometimes bothered by what I am bothered by these days. Poetry is not always comforting. It must be disturbing if it is real, true and authtentic.

When I wrote books, my editor coached me, “Try to say what you mean in the first few sentences. Don’t be clearing your throat—-coughing up the flem, in multiple paragraphs, what it is you really want and need to say.” That kind of literary coaching was so good and vital to hear. But my books averaged 55,000 words. My poems are but a few dozen. There’s little room to cough in a poem. And this also fits my existentail angst these days about the world’s situation; our divisions and so much going on that feels—what’s the right word?—awkward?

In these days of Gwen’s long, long recovery, not only have I shifted into the role of her Caregiver, but it has dredged up within me complicated and conflictual feelings that are not so pretty to hold in my heart.

I’m coming to the conclusion that I am not a good caregiver. Though I was educated, trained, mentored and tutored by some of the best, writing about care is far, far different from giving care.

So I wrote my poem from this place of confession and self-awareness.

See what you think as you work your way through my poem, “The Caregiver.”

My poems on Substack are for those of you who take a step in and join me in this journey of saying more in less words through a poem. I’m so glad to welcome you here and especially to thank those of you who choose to offer me your support and affirmation.

This is a poem that might help any of us who have been a caregiver; any of us who have tried to stand in the gap of marriage vows which say, “in sickness and in health.” This is a poem for a mother with a sick child or a child with special needs. This is a poem for children who stand up and care for their fathers and mothers. This is a poem for anyone trying to care at all. This is a poem to ask for a blessing on the heart of the one who cares.