Rachel Naomi Remen, M.D. has helped me realize that many of us are healers long before we earn the skills to help others heal. Some of us never get medical training or become therapists or nurses, yet we are healers anyway because we care about befriending life. Rachel tells the story of a medical student who cared so much about relieving suffering that he told this story, translated via Rachel: As a child he had lived in a Victorian house in San Francisco and his mother used to bathe him every day in a claw footed bathtub. At the end of the bath she would stand him up, pull the rubber plug and reach behind her for a towel to dry him with. One day while he was waiting to be lifted from the tub he inadvertently stepped on the drain, cutting his foot badly on its sharp edge. He had shrieked and his mother had cried out too, lifting him out of the tub, holding his bleeding foot, and warning him to never ever stand on the drain again. So every day after that, when she pulled the plug and turned away from him to reach for the towel, he would be very careful not to stand on the drain. One day he was standing there looking at the drain and being careful not to stand on it when he suddenly noticed the water, circling the drain on its way out of the tub. Seeing this for the first time he became concerned. The edges of the drain were very sharp. What if it hurt the water to circle the drain? So every day after that when his mother lifted the plug and turned to get the towel, he would carefully drop his washcloth over the drain to be sure that the water would not be hurt going down the drain. We were all healers long before we were experts. How have you befriended life? Did you have experiences from childhood when you helped protect life? Were you a healer long before you were an expert?
Posted on: Wed, 16 Jul 2014 18:24:21 +0000
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