Excerpt
The following is an excerpt from the book I Will Not Be
Broken
by Jerry White
Published by St. Martin's Press; April 2008;$22.95US/$26.50CAN;
978-0-312-36895-1
Copyright © 2008 Jerry White
Reach Out
No one survives on their own, and no one thrives alone, either. Yes, you might
feel an excruciating loneliness after one of life's hurtful blows. But we are
simply not built to survive solo. Isolation will kill us, not protect us. We
humans are social animals made for community. Even when family and friends annoy
the hell out of us, they remain an essential part of our survivorship.
One must find peers, friends, and family to break the isolation and loneliness
that come in the aftermath of crisis. We have to let the people in our life into
our life. In our hour of need, we may even depend on the grace of mere
acquaintances or total strangers. Some will surprise us, coming out of the
woodwork to help. Others -- very often our best buddies and closest siblings --
will disappoint us terribly.
I often told myself during points of crisis when I felt tempted to isolate, "Dammit,
just make a call to someone . . . " To survive, we must find empathetic souls --
sympathetic surrogates. Our inner victim may shun this, preferring to retreat
into a shell. However, our inner survivor craves people. We need to find people
who understand what we are going through. Social support is absolutely
essential.
I have never been a big believer in the "self-made man." We all live off
previous generations, combined gene pools, and preexisting social networks. We
have benefited from anyone and everyone who has ever been kind to us, encouraged
us, taught us, mentored us, or parented us.
Still, when you are in a deep, dark, relentless pit of pain, it's hard to think
of others. But make no mistake about it, they are there. Others are in the room
with you, in the wings of the hospital with you, in prayer for you, in kitchens
cooking for you, on cell phones spreading the word on your behalf. In trauma,
you may have become the lead character, but there is an ensemble cast of
participants and a host of witnesses. How you keep the door open to
relationships will determine the extent to which you are able to thrive years
later.
I benefited greatly from social support while in Israel. Frankly, if you're
going to step on a landmine, you might want to do it there, where trauma is
sadly normal. You'll find a lot of peers and families who have known your
suffering -- they've been there. And when you share a hospital room with others
in the same predicament, you don't have a lot of time to brood alone.
In the hospital, I shared a room with "guys like me." Hundreds were getting
blown up in Lebanon at the time. If I'd come back to the States I would have had
plenty of great friends and family, but no one who had experienced war injuries.
Back in Boston, it was difficult for my relatives to understand; few people were
thinking about war and terrorism, let alone minefields. In Israel I was normal.
I had peers and we supported each other. It was another key to recovery.
Friends and classmates from my studies at Hebrew University heard about my
accident and many made the three-hour pilgrimage repeatedly, taking two or three
buses from Jerusalem to the hospital in Safed. My room was an open-door party
place of sorts. They'd bring guitars and cookies and music. The atmosphere was
so Israeli casual that friends even slept on spare hospital beds. I suspect they
wouldn't have allowed that at Mass General in Boston.
With so many people coming and going, it was clear that social support -- a
primary ingredient for overcoming crises -- was not missing from my life.
Perhaps I was spoiled with too much, if there can be such a thing. There were
days when I was exhausted by support . . . I didn't want to have everyone and
his uncle pouring through to gawk or make small talk with me. But still, too
much is better than not enough (if you have to choose). I certainly can't
complain.
Fritz and David remained my core support, changing bedpans and urine bottles on
demand, washing me, shaving me, helping to deal with the basics, while still
keeping their sense of humor as I yelled each time they knocked the bed without
warning, triggering new ripples of pain. I also recall fondly the blond nurses
on missions from Denmark -- Krista, Anne, Hannah, Irene -- saintly beings who
brought light (and shortbread cookies) with each visit. My Jerusalem classmates
brought comfort food, good humor, and music, including Ray, who played guitar
and sang the same hymns again and again, at my insistence.
A few weeks after my accident, an Israeli stranger paid me a little visit -- an
extraordinary moment in which another survivor reached out to me. He walked up
to my bed and said that he, too, had stepped on a landmine, but in Lebanon. "Can
you tell which leg I lost?" He was wearing blue jeans and walked with a perfect
and steady gait back and forth in front of my bed. Was he showing off? Was I in
the mood for this game? "I can't tell." I really couldn't. "That's my point," he
said. "The battle is not down there, but inside you, in here and up here,"
pointing to his heart and then to his head. "By the way, do you still have your
knee?" Yes. "Can you still have kids?" I think so; yes, it still works. "Then
what you have is a nose cold. You'll get over it."
He turned and walked out of my room as steadily as he entered. I never met him
again, and to this day I don't remember his name. But I'll always remember that
visit, that moment. It posed a choice, a mental fork in the road. I thought to
myself, If this Israeli guy can do it, I certainly can. Maybe I'd be okay in the
end. Maybe I would be able to walk and then run and swim and play tennis again.
Women would still be attracted to me. Maybe I'd eventually start a family. It
dawned on me that losing my leg wasn't the same as losing my life.
I believe this provocative peer visit was the beginning of reclaiming my power.
Just as Albert Schweitzer describes, "At times our own light goes out and is
rekindled by a spark from another person. Each of us has cause to think with
deep gratitude of those who have lighted the flame within us." Well, if you're
out there, my anonymous amputee visitor, shalom vey todah hevri -- "Peace and
thank you, my friend."
Copyright © 2008 Jerry White
Author
Jerry White, author of I Will Not Be Broken, is a recognized leader of the
historic International Campaign to Ban Landmines, co-recipient of the Nobel
Prize for Peace; as well as cofounder of Survivor Corps. He lives in Maryland
and Malta with his with Kelly and four kids. For more information, please visit:
www.survivorcorps.com.