Caring for the Caregivers Part 1
by Mary Lyon
I had the great honor of being invited to teach a crafting class for a retreat event called "Caring for the Caregivers." The idea behind this two-day retreat at the Aldersgate Center in the beautiful Pacific Palisades area of Los Angeles came from a friend who's established this approach to refresh and replenish the spirit and energy of the caregiving community. This includes all sorts of caregivers, including nurses, counselors, ministers, or other health care workers and assistants, even pastors' wives and other church volunteers involved in elder care.
The invisible caregivers
After all, in the landscape of human suffering and illness, those who give care are overlooked - even invisible, as the needs and interests of their patients have a higher profile. Caregivers can suffer burn-out within only a few years. They're ALL overworked, under-compensated, and mightily overburdened. My role in focusing more attention on the caregivers during this retreat is basically hosting a two-hour escape. My class is about giving yourself permission to relax, let go, catch your breath, laugh, and PLAY!
The Power of Whimsy
To encourage these caring but exhausted folks to indulge in something a lot less serious than they're faced with in their jobs, I use recycling and whimsy. For years I've taught kids' classes involving throwaways like egg cartons, plastic yogurt cups, soda can pull-tabs, empty toilet paper tubes, and plastic lids of all sizes.
You add a few hot glue guns, an inexpensive bag of colorful plastic beads, flex straws, Chinese takeout chopsticks, and pipe cleaners in all colors, and you're set. Did you know, for example, that a bunch of toilet paper tubes, properly connected by hot-glued pipe cleaners, can turn into a snake? Could you guess that an old aluminum pie plate, creatively adjusted, can become a magnificent jellyfish?
Can you imagine a four-inch plastic lid could be the basis of a self-portrait? Bottle caps make terrific eyeballs and pull-tabs can serve as some rather glorious eyelashes and eyebrows. Shredded newspaper or a wild knot of pipe cleaners turn into some really excellent coiffures! Those free CDs you get in the mail can morph into some hot wheels for a ridiculously fantastic car or wings for a psychedelic dragonfly! And while you're fooling around with all this crazy stuff, you can't help but start giggling!
Check back next week for part 2.
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