A consecrated Catholic hermit does not come from one set of circumstances but from many. The hermit vocation is a call from God often after various other life phases have passed; usually the hermit is older when hears the call and discerns with help of spiritual director. Then the hermit professes the three evangelical counsels and usually makes vows that he or she has prayerfully written after counsel with spiritual director.
I was 48 years old when I first had the inkling, the call suggested by the Holy Spirit. It was September, 1999. I began discussing it with my spiritual father, a priest then 79 years of age. I began doing some reading and research about hermits.
It was not until December 29, 2000 that I entered into the consecrated life of the Catholic church; in a private ceremony in a small, precious, convent chapel the priest led a ceremony of 30-40 minutes duration in which the beautiful details I will keep private. But the written vows were made, including professing the three evangelical counsels, witnessed by signature, and unexpected a man and his young child entered in part way through, sat in a pew, and stayed until the conclusion.
I'm not going to write about the various life experience prior or the unfolding and enriching of my hermit life after other than to mention that I had a spouse who'd left when I was 33 years old following what I can call a crucifying car accident, and the following years were spent with gratitude I could rear my three children. A life-altering surgery when I was 36 left me physically disabled with constant, severe pain; there had been pain ever since the accident, but nothing so devastating to living a "normal" life.
The children each graduated college, the youngest leaving home in 2002, shortly after I had spent over 11 months as a postulant and then novice in a hermit community. It was one of which we lived in our own abodes in our own locale. This time period did give me more formal training as the opportunity arose 9 months after my entering the consecrated life as an eremite. And that brings me to the present, for I'll skip all the parts in between.
Presently, I'm recovering from what yesterday my surgeon reminded me was a "severe and extremely complex spinal surgery." I had the appt. at the six-week post-operative point. I learned the grim-to-me-prognosis yet the good news, also. The instrumentation is in the correct positions per x-rays, and I just need to keep on doing as I've been doing--carefully resting and gradually building strength and stamina. I asked about projects a year from now--gardening, painting walls....
He said would be best to scale down; I might be able to paint a wall or more, but anything I "do" of many bodily movements and exertion will cause compression on the non-fused sections of spine. I'm up to the thoracic and cervical parts; the sacrum and lumbar are fused and incredibly slowly healing. But healing--that is good news! I will still have all the old pain of the past 35 years, and it remains to be seen if the numbness and nerve pain down the legs will be permanent, as well.
But the lumbar is the most frequent bend-and-twist section of spinal movements. I must not do those movements; I will learn through physical therapy how to reach down by leaning with one leg raised up straight behind me, keeping the spine straight, the bend only at the one hip with other leg straight down, and opposite arm raised out straight while the other arm reaches to pick up whatever and so forth. Or, I can hold onto a counter or bar and, keeping the spine straight and stiff like a log, put one knee down on floor with foot behind, and keep the other knee bent with a right angle of leg. Then reach down with one arm while holding on with the other. It will be awhile before I am able to learn these movements.
He concurred that it will be best to relocate to a smaller abode in which there is little to no upkeep needed by me, or small enough to be practical if hiring someone to maintain exterior or interior. Walking will be perhaps the most essential exercise, but he pointed out that walking also causes compression on the spine. My task will be to determine and do what movements are most necessary but will cause the least amount of spinal compression of the non-fused thoracic spine, as most movements will cause to some degree, impact and deterioration of the discs and vertebrae right above the fused and rod-and-screwed lumbar. The goal will be to stay out of more surgery for as long as possible. I've read accounts that 5-10 years at this point is the usual time period before more.
So all and well; I'm grateful that the spinal cord and other major spine nerves now have space and are no longer being pinched off. I will have mobility as long as I carefully mend over the next 11 months. I will figure out what to do about this dwelling, Solus Deus Hermitage, which was to be a project, as well, as projects like painting and gardening have helped me distract the mind from pain.
But another aspect--I'm sure is the Holy Spirit bringing it to the conscious mind with enough specific for me to research--has surfaced. There have been aspects to consider, of the now adult children in which they set off in their post-college lives. Some I checked off as the healthy process of individuation from the parent which can be at times turbulent and painful, but ultimately is healthy and with good and productively necessary outcomes.
I had thought-flashings to research the effects on children and/or adult children of being reared by a single parent with chronic pain. I searched using variables including gender, adult, child, single parent, disabled, chronic pain. While I'd need to access a university system's log of research and dissertations, I did find a handful of abstracts and studies--including that of single parent of my gender, chronic pain, effect on children and that of adult children, of either gender parent.
A child grown into adulthood who is closer in proximity but also in relating with the chronically pained parent (and this goes also for the adulthood studies of a parent who is chronically ill with onset later in life) is most effected detrimentally. There are various reasons for this, and various aspects of the detriments and harm that is caused and will continue to cause on the adult child. I won't go into all of them, but they can be lumped under what we could call extreme burnout. Yet since an adult child closer in proximity or more involved has done so over time, the effects include feelings of guilt and shame when they have the genuine and understandable feelings of being chained, so to speak, to the pain and suffering and limitations of the parent.
The results for adult children of chronically ill and pained parent, I immediately recognized. And for an adult child who has accepted the bulk of interactions and "brunt", if you will, experiences it more the longer the feeling of "should-help" and morally "ought-to-help" conflicts with resentment, weariness, sense of not being free to live a healthy, active, adult life with his or her own spouse, children, and social network.
When my children were young and we all were reeling with the effects of spouse/father leaving, difficult divorce compounded with my surgery, loss of career, financial stability, insurance, and constant pain, I consulted a clinical psychologist. For a while he also talked with the elder of the three children, as the youngest was 16 months old when accident occurred. (The elder two were 6 and 8 years old at the time.)
The psychologist for awhile followed our lives and guided me in the major transitions. He gave me excellent pointers in single parenting and in pain management. He said the children would grow up knowing they were loved, protected, provided for, encouraged--and this would be their legacy. He pointed out every child--every one of us--has a legacy. And as adults we can benefit from whatever legacy we take forward out of the history of our childhoods--for better or for worse.
But I had never considered the on-going effects, later, of adult children with a now much older, single parent struggling with increased chronic pain. That reality is not somehow erased from the adult children's lives even if they live two- or three-thousand miles away and have immersed themselves in their own lives and careers and primary relationships, children, friends, travels, interests. Even if they don't often make contact, even if they go for a year or more without visiting the parent, whenever they do think of that parent or make contact or hear from the parent in text message, the reality remains of the single parent, now aging, with chronic pain and increasing disablement.
To me it seems suffocating! Even with empathy for the parent, it can trigger all that was painful and hard to cope with as children who'd have to fend for themselves at early ages plus help out tending the parent who was in bed quite a bit. When parent not in bed and could be up and about, there was always a pain siege waiting to hit again that would place the children into self-care and care-giver mode, both, once more.
In these situations, there is often one child who for whatever reasons continues the tending or more feels responsible as the others move on into their lives and cut free as best they can from the oppressiveness that truly is part of chronic pain or other types of suffering. (Mental, emotional illnesses come to mind. And there are other debilitating illnesses that do not result in the parent's death sooner than later, but which go on for decades.)
This is a current reality that I've sensed for several years and brought more to the fore when I lived closer in proximity. It is not helping the adult child. The detrimental, unhealthy aspects that the studies and research delineate are real and have been playing out off and on, up and down, back and forth in direct correlation but also conflict with the increasing aspects of the parent's chronic suffering to the increasingly active, fuller life of which the adult child is blessed. What to do about it?
Well, I've obviously been praying about it for some time, and I've tried various ways to figure it but was not on the right track. Not until the Holy Spirit thought-flashed in my mind yesterday, late afternoon, did I research the effects of chronic pain in a single parent upon children and upon adult children. And especially now the effect on children into adulthood adult is of value: present moment.
I will continue to pray but all the more I must be the one to arrange for others to help me. The "extern" I've written about recently is now necessary when the hermit is unable to fend for him- or herself in various aspects. I have a comprehensive plan for when the decline is permanent, but this is temporary. I will need help with errands and vacuuming, changing the bed linens, landscaping and various maintenance tasks until I am healed, strong enough to drive a short distance and do guarded household tasks.
It may be best to communicate to an adult child who is closest and has been relied upon in times of need. There could be misunderstanding as to why the reliance that has been for decades, is best to cease or be reserved for emergencies. In most cases, adult children coming to the rescue of an older parent in time of surgery or accident, is lovely and a good thing. For an adult child who has continued a steady stream of on-location care-giving and help, it can become not good at all!
Even a hermit who has been a single parent through out until the children out on their own or nearly so, does not stop being a "parent" or a "grandparent." Thus, this hermit must make necessary changes for the good of the adult child who can benefit from release of duty, to breathe adult life fully, to experience the amount of freedom from caregiving and that invisible weight of feeling on-call to responsibility or expectation of being needed not only by husband and children but also parent--decade after decade from young child onward. It is only going to get heavier, for longer.
My spiritual father all these years since my profession and vows, always placed charity foremost in guiding me as to relationships. He did not want me to deny family members' access; my situation was not about to become out-of-hand due to my adult children all in different locations. And he considered that it was best, over six years ago, to move closer to the adult child who promoted the idea and invitation to do so. Yes, it seemed as well to cast the net in that way--but for a variety of reasons, many of which had naught to do with being closer to an adult child in my later years.
People, in general, think it is best for parents--especially a disabled single parent to live "near family" in later life. It does seem practical.
But I'm realizing if the single parent has had rugged, chronic pain for already 35 years--veritably the bulk of the children's lives--the research and case histories beg to differ. It can actually be detrimental for the adult child or children near whom the parent lives. Research finds an increase in deficits in the adult child's life including communication issues, strain in marriage or external relationships, and problems can trickle into the adult child's children; plus as mentioned above, can cause conflict within the adult child.
Now I just need to do what any parent--hermit or not--would do, and even better yet for a hermit to do. I will get the tasks for which help is needed, covered by hiring or however. I will continue active steps to find an extern--or if best to have several externs, if only for one need each, I will pray and seek.
This is so lengthy, but writing it out has helped me. This is an aspect of this consecrated hermit's life that has been in some ways, emotionally hindering for me, too. I have for several years not understood or handled well what I now realize are valid effects that are damaging in ways that need to be stopped.
That is charity, and even for a hermit, charity starts as is said, with "home"--family or those closest especially when it is carry-over effect from prior to the hermit vocation commencing. My family are not Catholic, which further can complicate explanations; they do not think in terms of what a hermit would do, or how a hermit would handle these matters.
I now need to get up--physical therapist is having me extend the time I am up during the 8 times I am getting up each day. I hear water running outside, so the neighbor children may have left the hose running again. Or else it is unexpectedly raining.
God bless His Real Presence in us!
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