Transcript

My Philosophy of Healthcare is to not be afraid to use your brokenness to service others. In the year of 2006, Thanksgiving Day, my stepfather passed away. To be honest, I did not know how to feel for him because we never had a relationship and I was never treated like his own daughter and he never ever told me that he loved me. I can remember the time when I was 6 and my mother had instructed me to go and give my stepfather a kiss on the cheek to tell him Happy Father's Day. I had such a bad feeling about this because I just didn't know what or how I was going to react or he was going to react. When I went ahead and approached him to give him a kiss on the cheek he had stood out his hand and told me, "That's Enough." I think at that point it just let me know what kind of relationship me and my stepfather had. When he passed away, there was such ill feelings towards him that I could not let him rest in peace. I never knew my real father so I lost it altogether. My oldest brother took the time to ask me how I was dealing with my stepfather's death. I was honest in explaining my feelings, that I felt guilty that I was angry at a person who was no longer on this Earth. My stepfather was supposed to step in, since he was all I knew, where my father failed but he never did. My oldest brother told me that some people have other ways of showing their love, the only way they know how. He told me that my stepfather was in deed proud of me and he spoke of me frequently to his neighbor. I didn't understand why my stepfather didn't tell me this but this allowed me to look at the situation in a different way. It made me not only look at how I was feeling but how he was feeling as well. I looked at how he provided for my family, and all of my siblings...there was a lot more to him than what my feelings confined him too. I think about the conversation my brother had with me every time I revisit my brokenness and I feel better about it each time. My sister was having a hard time accepting the loss of her father but because of the conversation I had with my brother, I was able to tell her that her dad was not gone and in fact she has many memories that she can revisit when she thinks of him, some people don't have that and she should cherish it. I knew she knew that I was talking about me. In my brokenness, I was able to help her get through this sad time in her life. That made my sister cherish even more the memories she had of her dad and to this day reminds me of the conversation we had at the time of her dad's passing. And still encourages me to find my biological father.