"The sign of the poet, then, is that by passion he enters into life more than other men. That is his gift – the power to live." – George Edward Woodberry

     How do we find our "power to live." How do we become care lovers rather than job haters? How do we move from gray world to bright hope?

    The answer at the core of caregiver’s woes comes from Dr. Victor
Frankl in his landmark book, “Man’s Search for Meaning.” Frankl details how
the concentration camp victims who survived were fueled by a belief
that their life had meaning. Woven into that meaning was an enduring hope.

     Watching the horror unfold around him, Frankl noticed that death came more rapidly to those
who uttered one three-word phrase, “I give up.”

     In the same recovery room with the spiritually flat-lined nurse previously described was another veteran caregiver whose joy was
striking. I noticed immediately that she was speaking to her unconscious
patient as she turned him, adjusted his tubes and stroked his face. I knew,
also, that this patient would remember nothing of this nurse’s compassionate
behavior.

     “How do you keep up your energy in
this job?” I asked.

     “It’s not a job,” she answered.
“This is my calling.”

     For the tired nurse, it’s just a
job. For the tired nurse, the patient before her is “just a body.” For the
tired nurse, every task is a routine.

     So long as the nurse sees her
patient as a body, she will see her work as someone who “cares for bodies.”

     For the energized nurse, her work
is a calling. For the energized nurse, the patient before her is a human being
in an altered state. For the energized nurse, every action is done to give the
patient the best experience possible in
that moment.

     So long as the energized nurse sees
her patient as a person in an altered state, she will see define her calling as
caring for sick people who need her help.

     Love brings enormous results. Fear and boredom paralyze our days.

     Can the tired nurse change? Only if
she is supported by a culture of care and trained to see her work in new ways.

     This is the work of Radical Loving
Care – to develop cultures where caregiving is an honor, not a chore; to awaken
everyone in that culture to new ways of seeing people in patient gowns, to
support caregivers in understanding that all of their work is sacred.

     Radical Loving Care brings a new
dawn into the lives of harried caregivers. It brings renewed meaning. It brings
hope.

-Erie Chapman

[Excerpted from the forthcoming book, Inside Radical Loving Care.]

Photograph copyright erie chapman 2013