Whenever You're In Trouble - Stand By Me

I had the privilege of spending the day with my niece yesterday. We spent the day baking and making homemade ice cream. She is a gentle, sweet soul. When I was mourning the "loss" of all my motherly duties and loving attention because my son moved away for college, she came into the world and magically healed my achy heart. Between my sister's happiness of having a child, and one look at her sweet little face, my heart was a goner. As I spent the day guiding her and having some "deep" conversations, I had flashbacks to being with Babushka in her kitchen. It had been so important to her that I learned all the different traditional recipes like perogi, kapusta, borscht, and Paska from scratch. I am sad to say, although I remember specific techniques, the only recipe I actually managed to retain is her recipe for borscht. I woke up way too late in life to the fact of how important those teaching moments really were; not just about the recipes themselves, but the life lessons included in her conversations with me while we were making them.

To Babushka, family was EVERYTHING, followed very closely by her community. Her church community, her neighborhood, her friends; Babushka valued each and every connection she made. It wasn't until I took an Anthropology class in college that I truly understood the significance of those connections in her mind. It's this fundamental lesson that she modeled throughout my life that drives me through the decisions in my professional life as the head of HR for my company, and helps me to navigate the crazy Covid-19 world we live in today: we are not an island. It is only through strong community bonds that we can survive and thrive.

As I mentioned, my grandmother survived a famine and a World War. My husband and I stumbled upon a movie on Amazon Prime called Bitter Harvest that brought their experiences to me on screen and in living color. As I watched the movie, I recalled all the stories my grandmother shared with me. They were crazy stories about people hollowing out the legs of their dining tables to hide their family's treasures to keep them from being confiscated by Stalin's goons, or people pulling out their teeth for the gold in the fillings to pay for food. She lived in a small rural community outside Kiev, next to the Dneiper River. Resources were so scarce, that it was only with the unity of the community that families were able to survive. For your family to hoard the few resources available, meant the destruction, if not death, of other members of the community and eventually, yourself. Not to mention, it was quite likely that those members were related to you in one way or another. Decisions were not only about how they affected you, but how they affected others around you. Like that famous line from Star Trek, I was raised to believe, "The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few, or the one."

As I mentioned in my previous post, "Sometimes Life Stinks...Don't Let That Stop You", the ability to push through the most difficult times is a character trait called "resilience." The American Psychological Association recommends focusing on four core concepts to help you build your ability to bounce back from difficult times: connection, wellness, healthy thinking, and meaning. The article on their website encourages you to "Build Your Connections" by "prioritizing relationships" and "join[ing] a group". It touts the benefits of connecting with empathetic individuals who can make you feel like you're not alone in dealing with adversity, or joining a group to help you reclaim hope. All of my grandparents' stories involved friendships they made in each stage of their lives and through various struggles. Given the number of times they relocated to different areas and countries with different languages and cultures, it was especially important to connect with members of their "own" community. It's a basic human instinct: seek out "your own kind", especially under circumstances you perceive as leading to either life or death. In every new community my grandparents moved to, even if there were no Russians or Ukrainians nearby, my grandmother would seek out the local Eastern Orthodox Church. If no Orthodox church was available, she would visit and participate in the local Church, whatever denomination it happened to be.

Whether within or without the Christian community, my grandmother always made an effort to connect with people around her neighborhood, and local businesses. I witnessed her stumble over broken English or Spanish, but she would hold conversations with anyone. She established a relationship with local business owners who would recognize her when she came in. On more than one occasion, this connection benefited her in her transactions, too: the better cut of meat, setting aside some special product, or a "special discount" just for her. The key to these relationships; however, is they were mutually beneficial. My grandmother would look out for them as much as they looked out for her. It wasn't BS, either. She was genuine in her concern for their (or their family's) well being. My grandmother had very little worldly possessions, but she would give you the shirt off her back if you needed it. Even toward the end of her life, my grandmother continued to care for her community. She had made friends with her Japanese immigrant neighbors. Over the years, they cared for each other in their own way, and they communicated in their limited, broken English. As her neighbor deteriorated with dementia, it was my grandmother's intervention that kept her fed, and eventually lead to civil services' involvement to properly care for her. She never forgot what it was like to struggle, and the difference a helping hand could make, so she made it a point to always pay it forward. For those who know me well, I'm sure a lot of who I am makes a lot of sense just about now. :-)

I'm not trying to portray my grandmother as a saint; she was a human being with plenty of flaws like the rest of us. We had many an argument because her definition of "her own kind" didn't necessarily match my own. She was a product of her age, her experiences, and her education. She could be quite judgmental, but despite my frustration as a young lady, I learned to forgive her shortcomings and understand where they came from. What I focused on, instead, were the lessons to be learned from her examples, despite those shortcomings. One of the biggest lessons, as I alluded to earlier, is the importance of community connections and family bonds. I grew up to believe it was my obligation to help when and where I could.

In this busy life we lead today, and the overwhelming amount of negative information that bombards us on a daily basis, maintaining connections is so important. I am fortunate to have a supportive family (both my own and the one I married into), and friends. If you find yourself in a new community, or far from those you know and love, take a page from my grandparents' playbook and join a community group (religious or otherwise). If you are suffering and don't feel comfortable talking to the people in your life, please join a support group. According to the Mayo Clinic, "A support group provides an opportunity for people to share personal experiences and feelings, coping strategies, or firsthand information about diseases or treatments."

Following in my grandmother's footsteps, in my daily life (personal and professional), I make it a point to make genuine connections with people I encounter, no matter how fleeting that encounter may be. As a member of my community, I try to ask how I can help; not what's in it for me. Blessedly, my friends, family, and the community, have supported me in kind, even without my explicit request. I'll leave you with a quote from Thomas Merton, from his book No Man Is An Island ,

"But if we live for others, we will gradually discover that no-one expects us to be 'as gods'. We will see that we are human, like everyone else, that we all have weaknesses and deficiencies, and that these limitations of ours play a most important part in all our lives. It is because of them that we need others and others need us. We are not all weak in the same spots, and so we supplement and complete one another, each one making up in himself for the lack in another.”