Pieces of Ourselves: Initial insights on living with people with disabilities

Alternative Routes
Blog posting #8
BriarpatchMagazine.com

by Shayna Stock, with photography by Dominique Fenton

Shayna, John, Gray, and Debbie dancing at Debbie’s

birthday party.

“If we are accepted with our limitations as well as our abilities, community gradually becomes a place of liberation.”

I am sitting at the kitchen table in a community called l’Arche Saint John, in Saint John New Brunswick.

L’Arche Saint John is part of a network of l’Arche communities worldwide [http://www.larche.org/] that provide a community environment for people with developmental disabilities. Live-in assistants share their lives with the “core members” with a be with rather than do for mentality.

I am reading a book by Jean Vanier, the founder of l’Arche. Vanier starts off the book by describing some of the challenges of living in community. He describes community as a place where “our limitations and our egoism are revealed to us.”

“When we begin to live full-time with others, we discover our poverty and our weaknesses, our inability to get on with people, our mental and emotional blocks‚ our frustrations and jealousies, our hatred and our wish to destroy.”

I am reminded of Amy, a young woman who is thinking about starting a conscious living community in Saint John’s, Newfoundland. In our discussion about community, Amy expressed that, though she is very drawn to the idea of living in community, it is also one of the hardest things for her.

“It forces me to really go inside myself,’ she said, when I asked her why it is hard.

I think that the reason we don’t get along with certain people, and the reason that prejudices exist, is that other people often illuminate pieces of ourselves that we do not like. When we come face-to-face with those qualities of ourselves that we normally try to hide from, and are forced to deal with them in another person, we get annoyed.

Debbie, opening birthday gifts.

By learning to accept others, with all their limitations and weaknesses, we become more accepting of own limitations and weaknesses. In this way, I think working in a community like l’Arche is equally beneficial to the care givers as it is to the “core members” (which is the term that l’Arche gives to those members with disabilities)

Gray, one of the live-in assistants at l’Arche Saint John, told us a touching story about how she first got involved with the community. Finished with school and still unsure in which direction she wanted to take her life, she had been at an emotional low point in her life. She was doing some volunteer yard work for l’Arche Saint John, and feeling really sorry for herself. As she wearily shoved handfuls of leaves into a garbage bag, one of the core members looked her in the eye and said “come on, you can do it.” She had felt her calling, and was soon hired as a live-in assistant.

“I’m happy just loving people,” she told us.

As Vanier says, “If we are accepted with our limitations as well as our abilities, community gradually becomes a place of liberation.” Spending time at l’Arche Saint John has shown me that the challenges often associated with sharing our lives so closely with other people can lead to liberation.

For more information on l’Arche Saint John, visit

http://www.larche.ca/en/communities/nb/saint_john/.

The community is currently seeking another Live-in Assistant (preferably male). If you are interested, contact Dan Kirkegaard at larchesaintjohn@nb.aibn.com.

Shayna and Dominique are traveling across Canada in search of community, and sharing what they find with Briarpatch readers. Read their introduction to the project here.