Within the home, I am a helper…to an extent.
I over-help my kids. I foster a dynamic in which they loll about on computers while I hustle about being wife, husband and housekeeper. I disempower them and exhaust myself. Soon my body is going to give out if something doesn’t change. It’s not working for any of us.
In my relationship with society, I am helpee. Reaching out wild-eyed for a passing opportunity, a miracle, a benefactor, an angel, some income… Longing for someone to understand that I am ‘a single parent, unsupported, a carer, the mother to two children with special needs’…and for them to give me a lucky break. But actually, all I do is trigger people’s pity, or their revulsion towards ‘the broken.’ As one married friend told me recently, in her experience of corporate life, the single mothers, to whom the promotion and payrise would give the largest step-change in their domestic security (and thus their ability to carry out their job well) are the very last to get them…because they smack of need I guess. So that’s not working out well for me either.
So how about, in our house, we all move along the Helping Spectrum from helpee to helper? Helping eachother, and helping people who need help even more than we (think we) do.
It might just change the way we feel about ourselves. It might give us the sense of honour, dignity and connectedness that we have been yearning for.
It's Radical Love 