To care and to be cared for:

 There are vast amounts of literature and research written on the concept of caring.  As a nurse, caring has been the hot topic of discussion and the main focus of my professional practice for most of my adult life.  Caring is innately interwoven in every industry besides health care, from automobile sales to pharmaceutical companies.  A car sales man’s pitch of putting emphasis on a car’s child safety features to a buyer totting around a child is a great example.  The sales pitch is based on the concept of the child’s parents’ desire to keep their child safe as concerned and caring parents. Another great example is the recent post USA election demonstrations against the winning presidential candidate, Donald Trump.  People are taking part in massive cross country demonstrations to highlight that the elected president’s uncaring views and approaches towards immigrants are unacceptable.  These caring Americans are showing immigrants that there are Americans who care, and as an immigrant, I can truly appreciate their gestures of support, acceptance and ultimately, care.  The point I am making is that caring is demonstrated in many different ways and that it is the driving force behind humanity’s survival and peace. 

    My career choice of two professions of public service such as nursing and education truly speaks about my desire to care for others. I believe that caring for others is a strong value that was instilled in me at a very young age.  I remember my mother, back home in Kabul, during very cold winter nights, providing shelter to homeless street people on our living room floor.  I have spent many years of my life being a caregiver at work and in my personal life.  I do not remember needing to be cared for personally, it didn’t cross my mind. I had the capacity and fortunately the ability to take care of myself independently.  However, there came a time in my life, as a young woman, when I started struggling to keep up with all of my professional and personal demands. 

     I felt no longer in total control.   I found myself alarmed, so I set out to find the solution to this new problem.  After countless counsellor appointments, hours of self research by reading self help books/blogs, long discussions and conversation with friends, colleagues, and strangers; I believe I have cracked the code to my problem. I came to the conclusion that I was experiencing the consequences of lack of self care, which had finally caught up to me.  I realized that I was raised and trained to be an independent woman by my mother, a very strong woman.  In her way, my mother was doing her best by raising me to be a self sufficient woman. However, my interpretation of this growing up was that I shouldn’t need any care from others.  Therefore, I ended up being very self sufficient, but not self cared.  Self sufficiency, based on being raised as a refugee and an immigrant, extended to basic necessities of life such as being financially independent, having a stable career, having my own family and so on.  There was not a strong emphasis placed on caring for oneself from an emotional, psychological or spiritual perspective.  According to Maslow’s hierarchy of needs (Wikipedia, 2016), my experiences of life and how I met my needs are in alignment with the progression of human development.  Due to experiences that took place in my life during my early years, physiological and safety needs became my main focus, and both needs are placed at the bottom of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs triangle, referred to as fundamental needs.  Although the same threats weren’t there any more from a physical perspective living in Canada since age 13, the internal drive was still quite active to keep going and work hard and stay focused.  It was only when meeting these needs were threatened professionally that my attention turned towards looking for a solution personally. 

    Through personal journey of self discovery, as well as support and care from others, the concept of self care became my passion and focus.  I became a keen observer of behaviors, attitudes and actions of self and others, from a critical lens.  I consciously started noticing caring and uncaring behaviors, at work and outside of work.  I became very conscious of my thoughts and behaviors that demonstrated caring towards others and myself.  I realized my strong sense of social justice and fairness intrinsic to my way of being.  I have strong beliefs about not abusing the world we live in and those we interact with.  I believe that everything in my life happened the way it was meant to happen.  I am blessed that at such a young age, I am on my way to realizing, what Maslow called, my full potential and the positive impact I want to have in this world.  I want to leave a blue print that will hopefully affect human lives in a positive way and caring way.

    I believe that needing care and caring for others is innate in all of us.  From the time that we are born and throughout our life spans, we need care in its totality, extending from physical to spiritual, in order to be holistically healthy individuals.  Looking back and currently being conscious of my interactions with others, I can name many occasions where others have demonstrated caring towards me.  Their gift of caring to me came in many different sizes, packages and ways, but the impact of each one was very powerful.  People have shown caring attitudes and deeds towards me in many unique ways, depending on my need.  It is through the way that someone will gaze at me with such kindness and care in their eyes when they ask how I am doing.  The managers that did not reprimand me when I took time off work to take care of myself in the middle of a teaching semester, which put them in a very tough predicament and stressful situation to replace me on such short notice.  In fact, instead of stigmatization or punitive actions, they provided me with the utmost support when I did come back to work.  My best friend demonstrates caring towards me by being a fairy godmother to my beloved dog, Buster, and loving him so unconditionally.  My mother demonstrated caring towards me by the values she instilled in me growing up.  In my teaching practice, I make sure that my nursing students are aware and educated about not just caring for their patients, but for themselves and their colleague as well.  As an example, I enforce that students only fill dirty laundry bags half full so that the housekeepers do not hurt their backs lifting the bags into the trolleys.  I actually make a point to hold a post conference discussion about the importance of this simple caring action as being first humans and then nurses. 

    As a human being, I have experienced the beginning stages of burnout as a direct result of lack of self care stemming from circumstances at birth well into my twenties, which luckily caught up to me, and initiated the process of positive change.  A process that was vital for my holistic health.  I understand the power of caring and its effect on us as humans.  It is important to me that I try to make the world a better place by incorporating caring into every aspect of my life.  Caring is contagious because when we consciously or subconsciously receive it form others, we understand its power, and more importantly, its reciprocal and reactive powers. 

Health and Self Care:

     The concept of health and health practices such as self care are influenced by many factors such as culture, social and ecological determinants.  For example, my earliest memories related to health and self care is from when I was a little girl and a refugee in Pakistan.  I specifically remember my cousins (my Mother’s side) making fun of my immediate family’s focus on eating healthy because my parents were more aware of the concept of health overall.  They would taunt us when we went over for dinners stating “sorry, this dish is not that healthy for you, are you sure you want to eat it?”  This scenario is a clear illustration of how culture, literacy, social and ecological determinants influence ones concept of health and self care.  Afghanistan, as a country, is one of the least developed countries in the world in terms of all the social determinants of health.   Financially, it is a poor country where food is scarce (but everything is organic because Western practices of GMO’s are nonexistent). The health care system and practices are outdated and limited.  The educational system is ineffective and nonexistent in most of the country.  To top it all off, war is part of its history and violence a part of everyday life.

    So even within our family unit, what created such a difference related to the concept of health and self care? I believe it had to do with so many factors.  First of all, health is not a forefront concept in a country where daily survival is a struggle in terms of daily necessities such as security, shelter, food and water.  Among our clan, we were the first family members to escape Afghanistan to a more secure place and the rest followed us after many years.  My immediate family was exposed to a different culture and ecological system.  The rest of the clan’s living situation back in Afghanistan continually degraded exponentially.  Their focus was survival and not health and healthy practices.  In addition, and what I believe to carry a heavier weight was the literacy levels of my Dad’s family compared to my Mom’s.  Even back in Afghanistan, as far back as my grandparents, my Dad’s side was highly educated.  In fact, some were educated outside of Afghanistan as doctors and nurses in 1980’s.  My parents (with my Dad’s influence on my Mom) were more health conscious than any of my cousin’s parents on my Mom’s side.  In fact, even back in Afghanistan, my parents always focused on nutrition and healthy eating as much as possible. 

    Fast forward to today, my own personal view of health and self care is a sum of my upbringing as noted in preceding paragraphs, and the journey beyond.  Today, what shapes how I define health and self care practices is influenced by being raised for more than 2/3 of my life in Canada, practicing as a nurse and nurse educator for more than 15 years, having a high level of education as evidenced by being enrolled in post graduate studies, and being more self aware of health overall.  Health to me means being whole, not just in the physical domain, but in emotional and spiritual domains as well.  It is not just about eating healthy and exercising; it is about taking care of my spiritual and emotional well being too.  I think of health as a 4 legged pedestal with physical, emotional, mental and spiritual health forming the four legs with equal length, width and distance apart, forming a strong base for the stool.  Anytime, there is disequilibrium, the stool of ‘health’ is no longer sturdy, but shaky and could even fall over if too skewed.   There is a need for balance between the four domains. Good nutrition and exercise needs to be balanced with social activities for emotional and mental health as well as spending time alone to connect to our self to strengthen our spirituality.

    Personally, balance between all four spheres of my being is my focus of self care practices.  I work hard to make sure that in a 24 hour period, I focus equally on activities that benefit all areas.  However, despite my due diligence, achieving balance is proofing a challenge.  I do better with physical health than in the other spheres.  This can be due to my upbringing, the current focus of Western society on physical health or the social and ecological determinants that are unique to my entity.  However, I am not the only one struggling with balance in my community as evident by the mental health crises.  This is a city where our obsession with physical health is promoted in every aspect of society.  For example, a lot of funding is spent on making gyms accessible, putting focus on nutrition and related research, however, access to mental health resources such as quality counseling is only available to the privileged with an extended benefit package.  In conclusion, just like other health practices, self care, is a complex phenomenon, unique to everyone and interrelated with all other social as well as ecological determinants. 

An introduction

In the hustle and bustle of today's life and all that encompasses it, it is so easy to get caught up with the 'doing' as opposed to 'living' life.  Take a minute and pause to live that moment in life that was meant to be experienced by only you, only in that moment!

Be mindful everyday!


This quote by David Cunliffe reflects where I am at currently in my personal journey of spirituality and general well being.  This is not my original poster image due to copy right issues so I had to research another image because it was important to me to introduce myself with a meaningful image and quote.  

I was born in Kabul, Afghanistan, during the Russian invasion.  I was the youngest of 7 children and apparently the most rebellious and imaginative of the bunch, as per my Mother.  Despite the ongoing war and instability, my fondest memories of my childhood are from Afghanistan.  Although life was hard, even for middle class families such as mine, it was still great.  My Dad worked for the government and my Mom was a stay at home Mom.  We lived in a very social community surrounded by (geographically and otherwise) family and relatives.  My Grandma, uncle and aunties all lived on the same street.  I was always out playing and eating at other relatives' houses. Despite the occasional  overhead rockets and bombs, we lived a satisfying life.  To top it off, we had property in the countryside where I spent all of my summers with my Mother and older sister.  We had a farm house with a view of a lake with all kinds of farm animals (I even got to name them).  We also grew and imported fruits to the retailers in the capital city.  The yearly summer/fall visits were not exactly vacation time for my Mother because the sole purpose of the visits was for her to oversee the harvesting of the crops and also to bring livestock back to the capital for the ensuing winter for food.  My Dad in the meantime stayed in the capital during the summers due to work commitments and to take care of the rest of the children.  There was always social events to attend such as weddings, engagements, birthdays and so on.  It is my definition of a healthy and connected community.  

However, it was short lived because we had to escape to the neighboring country and leave everything behind in the middle of the night when I was six years old.  That was the start of a lot of hardships and survival became a means to life as refugees.  Despite the struggles, there was still a sense of 'refugee' community.  There were other Afghan refugees and we all struggled together and still maintained social gatherings.  Even thought this new found community was not as stable as the one we left behind because we all knew it was a temporary state, it was still a community with shared interests, goals and struggles.  I have a lot of fond memories of my adventures there.  Sadly, I lost my dear Father to cancer at a young age of 10.  Shortly after, we immigrated to Vancouver and a whole new era of life and disconnections began.

I understand the value of community disconnectedness at a personal level.  Having a sense of community and belonging is important to our health, especially mental health.  Even though we struggled to live during war and as refugees in a whole different country, we still felt and lived happy.  We were mentally, emotionally and socially healthier.  We were connected as a community.  Once we arrived in Canada, social isolation took effect because we were not connected to our community anymore.  We had to learn to be Canadians and to do that, we had to adopt the new culture and disassociate from our old culture in its totality.  In the interim between letting go of my old culture and the total assimilation of the Canadian culture, my main focus, as expected by my family, was academic success. Academic success was how I defined myself and my self worth from early teenage hood until my late 20's.  It was a time filled with anxiety, uncertainty and instability.  At some point in my late 20's, I started noticing that I was not living a fulfilling life.  My focus became healthy living and building healthy connections, to others and to everything around me.  I started exploring mindfulness and meditation.  I started the journey of becoming a TOTAL healthy person.  It is noteworthy that by this time, I had been working in the health care industry since late teenage hood in various different roles.  I preached the concept of healthy living to my patients and students in terms of health promotion, but I now know that they were merely recitals, what I was taught in nursing school.  The concept of healthy living and healthy communities became meaningful to me through life experiences as well as through education.  Hence, health and education are interconnected topics.

My decision to enroll in the HEAL program was based on personal and professional reasons.  This was reinforced to me after our first weekend of classes.  This course will complement my personal growth and challenge me to dig deeper and find my own meaning of health.  Professionally,  as a nursing educator, I am part of a bigger community of health care providers and this course will equip me with valuable resources that I can draw from and share with others.  I am really looking forward to working with all of my fellow students, faculty and staff at SFU and growing as a community of proactive healers.  I am hoping to be a learning resource by sharing my personal and professional experiences and insights with others in hopes of affecting positive change within our group and our community at large.