Dana Boyle

This week I observed an interaction between a mother and her child who is autistic.  I was sad after witnessing the interaction.  It wasn’t mean or cruel.  It lacked tenderness, when there was an opportunity for the child to be truly seen and loved.  I hear this mother complain about her child all the time.  This opportunity was one where the child was being angelic (something you’d think is rare from what she describes) and she chose to do something other than spend time with him and celebrate him at that moment.  Something else was more important than highlighting the good in her son.

There’s a button that gets pushed for me when I see someone treated with callousness or disregard.  It’s happened to me since I can remember.  I felt it at three or four years old.  I can go through my life memory by memory and recount times when that button was pushed.

There was the time kids at middle school were making fun of a boy who had cerebral palsy, mocking how he talked and walked.  It made my heart whimper.  I spoke up for him and then I wasn’t cool by their standards.

There was the time a mother kicked her son who was no more than 18 months old in the torso, knocking him off the porch, across the street from my parents’ house.  I was enraged, and I silently went inside and called child protective services.

There was the time I was in kindergarten and a little girl in my class peed her pants.  She’d asked the teacher if she could go to the bathroom, and the teacher harshly scolded her, telling her we’d already had a bathroom break.  There she sat, in a puddle, in our five-year-old circle on the shiny hardwood floor, crying as the teacher admonished  her in front of everyone to get paper towels and clean up her mess!  I cried.  Then I got paper towels and I helped her.  And I got yelled at by the teacher for helping her and for telling her it would be ok, we all had accidents.

There was the time I was in high school and an honors English teacher of 12^th graders asked a boy who was shy to read aloud.  As his classmates, we knew he was shy, and he had a hard time speaking in groups.  He stumbled over the words, starting over and stammering through.  The teacher rudely stopped him and said, “If this is how you read in an honors English class in 12^th grade, I give up.  Are you stupid or something?”  Her words pierced me.  I raised my hand.  She called on me, and I asked her if I could say something.  She said I could.  I told her that she’s an educator of children, and that she just called a child stupid and she has no right to do that because that changes who he is.  I told her that if she feels it’s ok to call a child stupid, she should not be teaching and that if she did not apologize to him I would march to the principal’s office and make him aware of what just happened.  I told her it was unacceptable and uncalled for, and that the boy was obviously a bright kid or he would not be in this class, and explained he was just nervous.  My classmates were silent.  The boy was red faced.  The teacher said, “You’re right.  I owe Mr. ______ an apology.  I’m sorry.  It’ll never happen again.”  But it didn’t matter.  She called him stupid.  To this day I wonder if he has a voice in his head telling him the same.

There was the time I was in the grocery store doing my shopping and a couple was behind me on every aisle.  The husband was berating his wife for every choice she made, every item she wanted or needed, and screaming at her about how she thinks money grows on trees.  There was a particular personal item she needed and he refused to let her put it in the cart, resorting to name-calling and threatening her.  I wanted to ram him with my cart and take her home.  What I did do, after minding my business the entire shopping trip, was purchase the item for her and hand it to her as she was checking out behind me.  I looked straight at her husband and handed her the item, saying, “Here, honey.  You deserve this,” and I walked away.

I’m not writing this to highlight good deeds I’ve done.  I tend to react how I do because it hurts me to see people treated with such disregard, their spirits trampled on.  I’m writing this to remind anyone who reads it that the way you interact with those around you is important work.

I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel. ~ Maya Angelou

It’s probably easy for some of us to be disconnected from other souls around us.  I’ve always been so tuned in that I feel other people’s pain and absorb other people’s emotions.

Don’t get me wrong.  I know I’ve had a few moments myself where I’ve disconnected and hurt someone’s spirit, and I was immediately full of remorse and sadness because I felt their pain right away.

I’ve also been on the receiving end of someone stomping on my spirit, and not only does it hurt to have your spirit stomped, it also hurts to tell them they’re doing it to you and be invalidated and ignored, or worse, for the behavior to continue.

Every one of us is special.  We are all here for a purpose.  We are all connected.  Each one of us is a gift.  What we do to others, we do to ourselves.  Every one of us just wants to be truly seen and valued in this life.

None of us has the right to make someone less than, to humiliate someone, to degrade them, or to flat out wound their spirit and change who they are.

It occurred to me yesterday as I observed this mother and her child that while everything in my life seems to revolve around connection and relationships, what I truly value in that realm and want to see is tenderness – reverence for others, compassion, kindness, respect for the soul that God created who is standing in front of you.

You don’t have any more right to be standing where you are and occupying a human body and breathing in air than the person you’re dealing with does.  The people in your life are gifts to you.  They aren’t here by accident.  Act accordingly.

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