CASE STUDY #12: PORCHIA (Grieving Sibling)
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With 6,000 plus cases so far you can imagine that we have shared numerous cases of heart-wrenching grief with our group members. None of these have been more dramatic in nature than the case of Porchia. Two months prior to enrolling in our support group her brother was executed in a gang style shooting. Every exercise she did in class understandingly revolved around her brother. When we looked at “hope for the future” her thoughts were about seeing him in heaven.
Every ownership exercise (we spend considerable time looking at what we can control vs. what we must endure.) for her involved “survivor’s guilt” and wishing her life could be traded for his. Her heart ached for her parents as well. She said they all walked around the house on eggshells for fear of saying or doing something that would again remind them of their mutual anguish.
It was painful for everyone in the group that semester to experience her profound sorrow. Everyone became a little more sensitive. What she was going through got us all in touch with what really matters in our own lives.
In her exit interview Porchia was most grateful for learning to share her thoughts with group members. She especially enjoyed the humor involved in the games we played. It seems that the people that are hurting the most tend to relish a good laugh the most.
Michael Pritchard talks about working with terminally ill cancer patients as part of a medical study. He was brought in to deliver his stand-up comedy act and felt a little unsure of how far to go. (All comedians want to “kill” in each set but, not in a cancer ward) He did all the “safe stuff”; talking about his upbringing in rural Texas and being raised in a house of huge boys…”his brother “NARS” (not a rocket scientist) and his other brother who got a $4 haircut, one dollar per corner” until a weak voice from the back of the room called out “Aren’t there any cancer jokes?” Michael was blown away. We all know that cancer isn’t the slightest bit funny but then he thought of one of his favorite quotes: “We don’t stop laughing because we get old, we get old because we stop laughing”.
So he started doing death related material: “When I asked about the results of my physical exam my doctor tells me not to buy any green bananas”… and “How old was the oldest person that took out a 30 year home loan?” and “She was so old her social security number was “3”” stuff like that. Much to his surprise many of the group members were cracking up with this material.
The results of the project confirmed that terminal patients who laugh the most live the longest.
Back to Porchia: She did quite well in the group and earned credits she needed from her previous school district quickly.
She felt the biggest impact our program had on her life was getting her in touch with what a strong person she was. We had an exercise based on the rapper Shaggy’s song “HOPE” . The lyrics speak to “keeping hope alive” and what keeps hope alive for them. Before the loss of her brother she believed that “if somebody really close dies I would go insane. Well I haven’t gone insane and I’ve learned to accept that he’s gone.
This has been the hardest thing I’ve gone through so I now know that I’m able to do just about anything if I put my mind to it. So that’s what keeps hope alive in my life.” She expressed profound gratitude for the support she got from us but the reality was that she did much more for us than we could possibly do for her! She felt a major impact on her life from what she learned about herself in the group. Consistently this is one of the comments we get the most from our graduates.
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NOTE: At a dinner one night I found myself seated next to a gentleman who had been on the admissions team at Harvard University. I couldn’t help myself so I made reference to the doctor who is constantly bombarded by symptoms at parties in hopes of getting free medical advice. He was gracious so I asked “When you are reading college essays from students what are you looking for?” Without even a split second thought he said “How well they know themselves”. Since so much has been made of the predictive success of the admissions essay I flashed back to Porchia and thought to myself “She will do fine anywhere she goes.”
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Here is a quote to get us all in touch with our uniqueness (one of the linchpins of
self-esteem) as stated so eloquently by Gregg Vaultiberg:
“Be patient, for surely there is specific work for you to do…or did you think the universe went to 20 billion years of effort to create you if there was not a particular task that you and you alone could do?” (I'd like to think mine is the “I CARE” program.)
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Excercise #7 Learning Style Inventory
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Exercise #20 Things That Need to be Changed
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Exercise #25 Hope and What it Means
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Exercise #30 Thnigs to Remember
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