Stories of A
Caregiver
By Thomas Porter, Ph.D.
The moment a man or woman dons a military uniform, their family members – spouses, children- put on one, too. It is the “uniform” of a caregiver and it is not always visible to others. The uniform represents a calling – to protect and serve. This is what Dr. Thomas Porter, Sabine Ward, Dr. Raquel Cataldo, Colleen Saffron, and Sarah Dancer realized, as their writing group wrote about and discussed the change that they and their loved ones underwent after a sudden catastrophic loss. As psychologist Gordon Allport said in Viktor Frankl’s book, Man’s Search for Meaning, it was up to them “to weave these slender threads of a broken life into a firm pattern of meaning and responsibility.” One way for the caregivers to “weave” was through writing, storytelling, and art. This is why the group, “Writing Back to You,” formed as part of the Center for Military Families at the University of Texas at San Antonio—to share their experiences and to bring healing to others. UTSA faculty member Dr. Carmen Fies asked Dr. Porter to be the writing director and use his extensive storytelling background to support the group. He soon discovered that he needed the group’s support as well. “I had recently lost my sister and was quite overwhelmed with grief. As a child of military parents, I had also become my parents’ caregiver before they died. The group helped me realize what I had actually studied in my dissertation: losses could be shared for a higher purpose of serving others.”
Dr. Porter writes of his mentor, Chuy, who helped him years ago, then reappeared forty years later to create healing in his family. Porter, once a self-described “pothead teen,” found redemption in the care of his parents, years after turning his family upside down. Dr. Cataldo writes of her family’s hero, the service dog Hercules whom no one wanted, and how Hercules helped the family heal after the painful news about her husband’s disability. Shalia Swaggart writes of her son Bailey’s death and the respect, and enlightenment, that grief can bring. Colleen Saffron makes visible a coffee pot, a family artifact, around which the family gathers with a warm-but-somewhat “forbidden” cup of joe. Sabine Ward writes about the devastation her husband’s suicide caused and how to honor his memory by making his experience, and sacrifice, visible. And Sarah Dancer, daughter of a long-suffering father, Scott, talks about her father’s recent death and her unique experience as a grieving college-age caregiver whose pain no one sees. Caregiver stories keep going, perhaps never returning, until they find a target in our hearts -and awaken us to our own purpose and to make that purpose visible.
As the group wrote and shared - even online during the pandemic, a certain theme emerged. They would throw off their “Cloak of Invisibility” to make themselves and their loved ones “seen.”
38 ON THE move®
Volume 14 Issue 1