(Photo Credit Rémi Walle – Unsplash)
By Holly Gustafson
The month of May has been a busy one in our family: dance recitals, band performances, and out-of-town soccer games every single weekend have filled our calendar and kept us on the run all month. I’m grateful to be at the tail end of this busy stretch, and looking forward to wrapping up the school year and enjoying a bit of time off this summer.
But the month of May is also a significant one to me for another reason: May is Mental Health Awareness Month, and as someone who has walked a complicated mental health journey my entire adult life, I’m especially conscious of the importance of drawing awareness to an often overlooked and even more often stigmatized issue.
I commemorated this month of Mental Health Awareness by speaking at Christ the King parish on May 17. Months ago, I’d been asked to give this talk on women’s mental health, and I had lots of thoughts and great ideas about what I might provide. But in the two weeks leading up to the event, I met so many women who were struggling with their own mental health, or struggling to deal with the mental illness of family members and close friends. And in these vulnerable discussions I had with these women, many of whom felt heartbroken and helpless, a new theme for a completely different talk formed in my mind.
In his Apostolic Exhortation Evangelii Gaudium, Pope Francis speaks of the importance of accompaniment, that is, the importance of being willing to walk with the needy others in our lives, particularly through their darkest times, and lowest valleys. “This ‘art of accompaniment’ teaches us to remove our sandals before the sacred ground of the other.” (Evangelii Gaudium, 169)
I have many tools in my mental health toolkit that have helped me through my most difficult mental health challenges, and help me maintain the mental wellbeing I am so fortunate to be experiencing right now: these tools include prayer, meditation, and spiritual reading; walks outside (no matter the weather); sunshine; rest; and, above all, the patient and compassionate accompaniment of the many people who have walked my journey right along side me.
Like my friend, Joan, who said my prayers for me when I couldn’t pray. Or my friend, Laura, who came over and gathered all the dirty laundry from the floor of my children’s rooms (several of whom were potty training at the time with varying degree of success), and returned the laundry washed, dried, and folded to my back door. Or the many friends who, when I wasn’t at my best, spent time with me anyway, expecting nothing from me, and giving all of themselves. Or my husband, who reminded me that I was brave.
There really is no better patron saint of the virtue of accompaniment than St. Damien on Moloka’i (who also happens to be a May saint, with his feast day falling on May 10). Father Damien was a Belgian priest who was one of the first missionaries sent to Hawaii, where he cared for those in the leper colonies on the island of Moloka’i. Here, he conducted his hand-on ministry of accompaniment, building houses and hospitals, cleaning and dressing wounds, and making coffins and digging graves.
Each Sunday, Father Damien would address the lepers at Mass with the greeting: “My fellow believers…” always identifying himself compassionately with the people whom he served. Many years after arriving on the island of Moloka’i, while he was making his morning tea, Father Damien spilled boiling hot water on his foot… but felt no pain. Immediately he realized that he had contracted leprosy himself, and when he addressed the congregation at Mass that morning, his first words were “My fellow lepers…”
Father Damien continued his ministry of total accompaniment with the lepers of Moloka’i until his death four years after contracting the disease. He remained with his fellow lepers, offering them hope and encouragement in the midst of their physical suffering, and gave them consolation in their isolation from society. “I would not be cured,” said Father Damien, “if the price of the cure was that I must leave the island and give up my work.”
But we don’t have to contract a dreadful disease in order to emulate Father Damien, thank God. The art of accompaniment is actually quite simple: we need only patiently share space with another. This is particularly good news for those living with and loving people who are struggling with mental illness; when it seems like there is nothing we can do to help or bring hope, there is always accompaniment, the act of treating the experience of others (no matter how melancholic or uncomfortable it may feel) as worthy of our time, attention, patience, and compassion, the act of treating this space we share as sacred, holy ground.
St. Damien of Moloka’i, pray for us!
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Holly Gustafson lives with her husband, James, and their five children, in Regina, where they attend Christ the King Parish. Holly received her Masters in Linguistics at the University of Manitoba, and now pursues her love of language through art, writing, public speaking, and unsolicited grammatical advice. The best advice she ever received was from her spiritual friend, St. Faustina, who told her that when in doubt, “Always ask Love. It advises best.” |
