Maya Angelou once said that there is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside us.
It is so very apparent for us to see this apply to the courageous, warrior mothers and families we serve. As if being a parent or a sibling or a grandparent to a child not alive is not hard enough, those we serve are faced with everything from platitudes to downright accusations.
The attack is real.
And, we are not so far removed that we remain sterile and unscathed.
Those who stand in the gap to bring love to the hurting, we ourselves become targets of attack, simply, inherently, unavoidably, for our love.
Counterfeit logic is currency as a rationale to taunt. Gossip. Slander. Accuse. Confuse. Betray. Lie. To turn away, cast aside, shut out.
This weapon is placed in the hands, hearts and minds not only of our most apparent enemies, but can even appear in those we have befriended.
Those in the stillbirthday community have to find what we each rely on for strength in such times. Do you denounce your rightful place as a love bringer? Does the filth the attacker is spewing, when they are all alone with you, seem to start to make sense? Do you succumb to defeat?
My hope for you, is that you create an oath of love. And that you bring your situations to your oath of love before reacting or responding.
My oath of love states that
- a quiet reproof is more valuable to the one who receives it than a public condemnation will ever be to anyone who hears it.
- I apologize, when I know I have the responsibility to.
- I maintain my innocence and refrain from apology when presented with counterfeit logic.
- I maintain confidentiality even toward those who violate it the most toward me.
- it is not my responsibility to satiate curiosity.
- truth is not measured in votes or “likes” or “shares” or nods of agreement, no matter the source.
Love, therefore, holds untold stories in my heart.
As Maya might call it, then, this is an agonizing love.
To know that those I love are burdened by the attack of confusion, of accusation, of offense that stems from its own dark places of fear, previous prejudice, wounds unrelated, it’s hard. It’s hard to see those I love, standing for love, and being accused of being unloving. It is hard to be the person standing for love, and yet being accused of being unloving.
More than hard. It is a monumental agony.
One that itself, tempts and taunts and provokes the temptation to retaliate. To simply blast out the truth of the backstory. Because there is always a backstory.
With courage you will have the strength to be compassionate. -Mark Twain
Friends, before you even consider standing up for something you believe in, consider what you will stand on during your own pain.
I’m just a girl. And I fall, a quake, I fail. But I have an oath of love that I bring my pain to, and I beg my oath to show me clarity, to give me discernment, to shower me with endurance, to show me strength.
Like a Hippocratic Oath of doing no harm, I call myself to an Oath of Love.
Do you?
To the Visionaries, I want to come alongside you. Please know that you can Ask the Founder if you feel cornered or alone. We’re all in this together.
Hippocratic Oath
I swear by Apollo Physician and Asclepius and Hygieia and Panaceia and all the gods and goddesses, making them my witnesses, that I will fulfill according to my ability and judgment this oath and this covenant:
To hold him who has taught me this art as equal to my parents and to live my life in partnership with him, and if he is in need of money to give him a share of mine, and to regard his offspring as equal to my brothers in male lineage and to teach them this art—if they desire to learn it—without fee and covenant; to give a share of precepts and oral instruction and all the other learning to my sons and to the sons of him who has instructed me and to pupils who have signed the covenant and have taken an oath according to the medical law, but no one else.
I will apply dietetic measures for the benefit of the sick according to my ability and judgment; I will keep them from harm and injustice.
I will neither give a deadly drug to anybody who asked for it, nor will I make a suggestion to this effect. Similarly I will not give to a woman an abortive remedy. In purity and holiness I will guard my life and my art.
I will not use the knife, not even on sufferers from stone, but will withdraw in favor of such men as are engaged in this work.
Whatever houses I may visit, I will come for the benefit of the sick, remaining free of all intentional injustice, of all mischief and in particular of sexual relations with both female and male persons, be they free or slaves.
What I may see or hear in the course of the treatment or even outside of the treatment in regard to the life of men, which on no account one must spread abroad, I will keep to myself, holding such things shameful to be spoken about.
If I fulfill this oath and do not violate it, may it be granted to me to enjoy life and art, being honored with fame among all men for all time to come; if I transgress it and swear falsely, may the opposite of all this be my lot.
From:
—Translation from the Greek by Ludwig Edelstein. From The Hippocratic Oath: Text, Translation, and Interpretation, by Ludwig Edelstein. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1943.
