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| Barb Polan Barb’s Recovery |
I’m not one to plagiarize, but I ran into a great concept and don’t know its origin, so I’m going to relate it, admitting that it’s not mine, but flummoxed as to whose it is. I ran into it on the tinybuddha page on FB, but in an essay written by a contributor. Of course, FB is the source for all great concepts these days. Here goes:
All of us belong to one or more “tribes,” groups containing people we relate to. The tribes tend to be discrete.
For example, I have my my immediate family tribe; and old college friend, rowing, and neighborhood tribes.
One of my most important tribes these days includes the members of the online stroke survivor community. That tribe comprises the people on the planet (in North America, it turns out) who best understand the road I’ve been travelling during my four-year pilgrimage (per Oliver Sacks, in “A Leg to Stand On”), and are willing and eager to talk about their journeys.
They are the ones who understand, encourage, challenge, and inform me. We also all understand each other’s pain.
And that makes me wonder sometimes whether belonging to the tribe helps or hurts me more.
Every day I encounter someone – sometimes a virtual stranger (as opposed to my virtual friends) on the periphery of my attention – who breaks my heart. I sit in bed in the morning staring at my iPhone and sniffling, or I do a quick online check in the middle of a writing session and have to fetch a box of tissues: the wife of a stroke survivor had a horrendously bad day getting expensive and lousy care for her husband; a one-time survivor has just had a second stroke; or a survivor’s wife has been diagnosed with cancer. None of us deserve any of this, and their grief pierces my heart.
Yes, I understand their pain, and they understand mine.
We are a tribe.
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