From the Heart Through the Hands: The Power of Touch in Caregiving

by Dawn Nelson

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Forres, Scotland: Findhorn Press 2001 183 pp (8 1/2 x 11 inches), 11pp annotated bibliography $23.95

Dawn Nelson brings us an excellent book on wholistic use of touch, detailing its effects on body, emotions, mind, relationships, and spirit; a book written with warmth, humor, and above all with deep wisdom about dealing with the human condition.

Caregiving touch involves the use of your physical self to bring healing to another. While we tend to think in terms of doing something to the person we are helping, Nelson suggests that our healing presence may be the most important aspect of what we bring to the interaction.

…the mental idea or mind state of “helping” sets up an unequal relationship between two people, casting them in roles of strong or weak, capable or incapable, powerful and powerless. In the quest for authentic relationship, it may be necessary to give up our well-intentioned desire to help. This does not mean we cannot use out skills and abilities to relieve suffering and to offer support to those who need it. It means we must examine out attitudes, our motivations, our attachments to roles and tasks: we must investigate out intention in relationship. We may need to set aside role identifications that create dependent relationships in favor of just opening our hearts, out minds, ourselves, to those whom we wish to serve. If we can commit ourselves to remaining present and in contact with another, whatever unfolds, then the truth of our contact with that other can flow through and between us and the relationship that evolves can instruct and heal both people.”

The following poem, addressed to her nurses, which I first saw quoted in a newsletter from Lagunda Honda Hospital in San Francisco, California, is said to have been written by a ninety-year old woman in a geriatric ward of an English nursing home. It was discovered in her locker after she died, by staff members who thought she was incapable of writing.

What do you see, what do you see?
What are you thinking when you are looking at me?
A crabbed old woman, not very wise
Uncertain of habit, with faraway eyes
Who dribbles her food and makes no reply.
When you say in a loud voice, "I do wish you’d try.”
I’ll tell you who I am as I sit here so still,
I’m a small child of ten with a father and mother
Brothers and sisters who love one another;
A bride soon at twenty, my heart gives a leap
Remembering the vows that I promised to keep
At twenty-five now I have young of my own
Who need me to build a secure happy home.
At fifty once more babies play round my knee
Again we know children, my loved ones and me.
Dark days are upon me, my husband is dead
I look to the future and I shudder with dread
My young are all busy rearing young of their own
And I think of the years and the love I have known.
I’m an old woman and nature is cruel
‘Tis her jest to make old age look like a fool.
The body crumbles, grace and vigour depart
There is now a stone where I once had a heart.
But inside this old carcass a young girl still dwells
And now and again my battered heart swells
I remember the joys; I remember the pain
And I’m loving and living all over again.
And I think of the years all too few… gone too fast
And accept the stark fact that nothing will last
So open your eyes, open and see,
Not a crabbed old woman; look closer… see me.”

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