Night nurse considers getting healthy

I have written about the experiences of my sisters over the years, when they were hurting, grieving, questioning. Without having walked the same paths, I at least found some shadow that has brushed over me through which to look into those spaces and try to diminish the distance. Smaller losses, more trivial pains… I reached out as best I could, not to say I understood what they felt but to offer an attempt to try.

Recently, I’ve learned it’s common for certain types of people to share stories of their own, when hearing someone else’s story, as a means of empathizing through the perception of a shared experience, even if the link is tangential. You might tell me your child has broken his arm, and I might respond with a story about taking my cat to the vet. I’m not trying to change the subject, but to connect the experience of taking a child to the ER, which I’ve never done, with something that might be a little similar: a medical crisis in a living being I care for.

It turns out this is not considered good social behavior by many people. That is not the point of this writing.

I have never tried to write about my sisters in their experience of personal violence. It has not felt like a space I had any right to speak in. That shadow has not darkened my path. No one has ever battered past my No. I’ve barely ever needed my No. Among my many sisters who can’t imagine that, their daughters, their sons, our brothers… Who am I to say anything?

The only thing is, since I was young, too young to know the value of that trust, I have been a person entrusted with the stories of others. I carry this like the keeper of an oral history. There is no repository for “the stories of the people who have hurt the people I love” except in my memory, and yet it feels important to mark the space I keep for them.

It’s not a space of fury or hopelessness, though both have been there. It is instead a place of strength, resilience, and sheer awe at the determination each of them has employed, simply to come far enough down the road to tell me their story.

I visit it often, especially after I’ve spoken with one of the sisters whose story I know, and try not to wonder why we each have the path we have. I just hold the space. It’s not the sort of space you ever want to expand, but I hope to continue to be the kind of person who feels like a safe ally in sharing the memory of what must not be forgotten if we are to work towards lives that are no longer touched by violence. I’m here, and I’m listening.