Our modern-day heroes need healing & compassion
I recently met with Kay Bunagan and Teddi Dizon, two young psychologists with the Ugat Foundation, an NGO that helps families at the grassroots deal with psychological problems. They wanted to get me interested in something they are very passionate about: Project Leap Year, a mission to help our OFWs cope with the psychological problems they go through because they are away from their home, loved ones and country.
Try to imagine being an OFW in, say, Italy where Kay and Teddi and their group of psychologists currently operate. Let’s get into the mind of someone who has left everything familiar and important in the hope of earning enough money to keep his loved ones alive. In the name of love, one turns his back on everything that spells “home” and lives and works in an alien culture away from the people whom he loves and who sustain him. It is hard to miss the cruel twist of fate here.
There are countless hardships and sacrifices OFWs encounter. The feeling of alienation living in a strange culture, and learning a new language and customs are just some of the tough situations they face.
Add the disempowering feeling of being denigrated to the task of doing lowly, menial jobs even if they have college degrees and professional experience in the Philippines. That does something quite devastating to a person psychologically. There is also the extreme loneliness of being far away from the reach and touch of loved ones.
There are a lot of things OFWs and their families go through.
There are the unintended and unpredictable changes in the family dynamics. OFWs miss out on birthdays, weddings, graduations, baptisms, house blessings, anniversaries, Christmas, Easter and other family bonding moments.
They are also not there for the less dramatic but equally important moments like family dinners and simple family time with the spouse and kids.
Children in turn grow up without one or sometimes both parents, missing out on the parental love and guidance they need. They are raised by surrogate parents like ates, kuyas, lolo, lola, aunties, uncles or whoever is the adult they are assigned to.
All this surely takes a toll on family life. The situation is bound to cause some kind of resentment on the part of the children. As time goes by, the unusual situation loses its novelty but not its unintentional negative consequences. Family life settles into something less than what it once was. The formerly richly nuanced relationships are reduced to something more like a simple financial arrangement: one parent works abroad while the spouse and children left behind spend the money.
The effect of all this on the OFW’s psyche can be quite a burden. He (or she) can suffer a kind of psychological fragmentation. In the OFW’s mind, the family members are somewhat unrealistically “frozen” in time, and they might live with an idealized impression of the kind of people their children or spouses really are or have become. There is a gaping hole in the OFW’s understanding of the reality of what has happened to the family. They has, after all, missed out on much of their lives, and vice versa.
Kay and Teddi point out that many OFWs are in denial and even delusional about their situations, and that of their loved ones. Their capacity to earn money and send it home has superseded all other responsibilities and concerns. It has become the justification for everything. And it is easy to understand how this has come to be.
Kay told me about an OFW woman enrolled in the therapy they offer who had stayed in Italy for many years. She was finally able to bring over a daughter she hardly knew, only to discover that they were now alienated from one another. Her daughter was not only a stranger but harbored so much resentment towards her mother for having “abandoned” her. As part of the woman’s therapy, she had to vent all her bad feelings by writing down everything she had gone through and sacrificed as an OFW. Since she was not computer literate, she asked her daughter to type the document for her. It was only then that her daughter realized what it took for her mother to “raise” her financially until they could be reunited.
The Leap Year Project, so named because it was started only this year, offers psychological workshops, interventions that deal with the fragmentation and “compartmentalization” OFWs suffer in the hope that they can be whole and empowered enough to reconnect with themselves, and eventually their loved ones and their community. And the great thing is, according to Kay and Teddi, the Leap Year Project is remarkably effective. OFWs who go through the workshop not only heal but also pick up skills that help them help others in the community.
In effect, it is a great service to our modern day “heroes” who most need it.
It takes a lot of resources to keep this going. The cost of airline tickets alone is a big drain on meager resources. Kay and Teddi’s team of four psychologists would like to get more of their colleagues involved to deliver this service to other OFW communities in other countries. The workshops demand that the psychologists stay a month at a time to make sure that the process is thorough, even if they hardly receive any compensation for it.
I am writing to urge you, dear reader, to help this compassionate effort in any way. Aside from financial contributions, they also need volunteer staff, videographers, editors and even participants who can help them raise funds by joining the workshops they offer.
To inquire how to help, call 426-5992 or e-mail ugat@admu.edu.ph. The way to help our OFWs is to help them restore a true sense of authenticity in their lives, and their relationship with themselves, their loved ones and their own Filipino-ness.
* * *
Last Basic Photography Workshop until May. Sign up now and learn how to use that DSLR to make sure your summer photos are great.
When: March 24
Where: 113 B. Gonzales, Loyola Heights, QC.
What time: 1 p.m. to 6:30 p.m.
How much: P3,920 VAT inclusive.
Call Ollie at 0916-8554303, 426-5375 or write me at jpfotojim@gmail.com for inquiries and reservations.
