To care and to be cared for:

 There are vast amounts of literature and research written on the concept of caring.  As a nurse, caring has been the hot topic of discussion and the main focus of my professional practice for most of my adult life.  Caring is innately interwoven in every industry besides health care, from automobile sales to pharmaceutical companies.  A car sales man’s pitch of putting emphasis on a car’s child safety features to a buyer totting around a child is a great example.  The sales pitch is based on the concept of the child’s parents’ desire to keep their child safe as concerned and caring parents. Another great example is the recent post USA election demonstrations against the winning presidential candidate, Donald Trump.  People are taking part in massive cross country demonstrations to highlight that the elected president’s uncaring views and approaches towards immigrants are unacceptable.  These caring Americans are showing immigrants that there are Americans who care, and as an immigrant, I can truly appreciate their gestures of support, acceptance and ultimately, care.  The point I am making is that caring is demonstrated in many different ways and that it is the driving force behind humanity’s survival and peace. 

    My career choice of two professions of public service such as nursing and education truly speaks about my desire to care for others. I believe that caring for others is a strong value that was instilled in me at a very young age.  I remember my mother, back home in Kabul, during very cold winter nights, providing shelter to homeless street people on our living room floor.  I have spent many years of my life being a caregiver at work and in my personal life.  I do not remember needing to be cared for personally, it didn’t cross my mind. I had the capacity and fortunately the ability to take care of myself independently.  However, there came a time in my life, as a young woman, when I started struggling to keep up with all of my professional and personal demands. 

     I felt no longer in total control.   I found myself alarmed, so I set out to find the solution to this new problem.  After countless counsellor appointments, hours of self research by reading self help books/blogs, long discussions and conversation with friends, colleagues, and strangers; I believe I have cracked the code to my problem. I came to the conclusion that I was experiencing the consequences of lack of self care, which had finally caught up to me.  I realized that I was raised and trained to be an independent woman by my mother, a very strong woman.  In her way, my mother was doing her best by raising me to be a self sufficient woman. However, my interpretation of this growing up was that I shouldn’t need any care from others.  Therefore, I ended up being very self sufficient, but not self cared.  Self sufficiency, based on being raised as a refugee and an immigrant, extended to basic necessities of life such as being financially independent, having a stable career, having my own family and so on.  There was not a strong emphasis placed on caring for oneself from an emotional, psychological or spiritual perspective.  According to Maslow’s hierarchy of needs (Wikipedia, 2016), my experiences of life and how I met my needs are in alignment with the progression of human development.  Due to experiences that took place in my life during my early years, physiological and safety needs became my main focus, and both needs are placed at the bottom of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs triangle, referred to as fundamental needs.  Although the same threats weren’t there any more from a physical perspective living in Canada since age 13, the internal drive was still quite active to keep going and work hard and stay focused.  It was only when meeting these needs were threatened professionally that my attention turned towards looking for a solution personally. 

    Through personal journey of self discovery, as well as support and care from others, the concept of self care became my passion and focus.  I became a keen observer of behaviors, attitudes and actions of self and others, from a critical lens.  I consciously started noticing caring and uncaring behaviors, at work and outside of work.  I became very conscious of my thoughts and behaviors that demonstrated caring towards others and myself.  I realized my strong sense of social justice and fairness intrinsic to my way of being.  I have strong beliefs about not abusing the world we live in and those we interact with.  I believe that everything in my life happened the way it was meant to happen.  I am blessed that at such a young age, I am on my way to realizing, what Maslow called, my full potential and the positive impact I want to have in this world.  I want to leave a blue print that will hopefully affect human lives in a positive way and caring way.

    I believe that needing care and caring for others is innate in all of us.  From the time that we are born and throughout our life spans, we need care in its totality, extending from physical to spiritual, in order to be holistically healthy individuals.  Looking back and currently being conscious of my interactions with others, I can name many occasions where others have demonstrated caring towards me.  Their gift of caring to me came in many different sizes, packages and ways, but the impact of each one was very powerful.  People have shown caring attitudes and deeds towards me in many unique ways, depending on my need.  It is through the way that someone will gaze at me with such kindness and care in their eyes when they ask how I am doing.  The managers that did not reprimand me when I took time off work to take care of myself in the middle of a teaching semester, which put them in a very tough predicament and stressful situation to replace me on such short notice.  In fact, instead of stigmatization or punitive actions, they provided me with the utmost support when I did come back to work.  My best friend demonstrates caring towards me by being a fairy godmother to my beloved dog, Buster, and loving him so unconditionally.  My mother demonstrated caring towards me by the values she instilled in me growing up.  In my teaching practice, I make sure that my nursing students are aware and educated about not just caring for their patients, but for themselves and their colleague as well.  As an example, I enforce that students only fill dirty laundry bags half full so that the housekeepers do not hurt their backs lifting the bags into the trolleys.  I actually make a point to hold a post conference discussion about the importance of this simple caring action as being first humans and then nurses. 

    As a human being, I have experienced the beginning stages of burnout as a direct result of lack of self care stemming from circumstances at birth well into my twenties, which luckily caught up to me, and initiated the process of positive change.  A process that was vital for my holistic health.  I understand the power of caring and its effect on us as humans.  It is important to me that I try to make the world a better place by incorporating caring into every aspect of my life.  Caring is contagious because when we consciously or subconsciously receive it form others, we understand its power, and more importantly, its reciprocal and reactive powers.