Vulnerable: Privilege or the Lack Thereof
While there are ways in which I am genuinely vulnerable, as I’ve shared in the past two posts, there are many other vulnerabilities which I’ve never experienced. I’ve never struggled with food insecurity or housing insecurity. I’ve always been able to pay the rent or the mortgage. I’ve been able to qualify for a mortgage. I’ve always had health insurance and access to healthcare to meet my needs. Where I’ve lived, even around the world, the local tap water has always been safe to drink (note: I said lived, not visited). I am a cis-gender, heterosexual, white female middle class American, and the only descriptor there that lends any indication to vulnerability is my gender. I can speak of vulnerability, and I’m aware I speak from a very privileged place. Those without adequate access to clean water, food, housing, security, work, healthcare and those who truly have no one in the world are more vulnerable than me.
Both of my pregnancies were high-risk, because of my rheumatoid arthritis and the medication I take to manage it. Yet the infant mortality rate in the United States is twice as high for a Black baby as for a White baby.* Even more mind-boggling is that the maternal mortality rate in the United States is almost THREE times as high for a Black mother as for a White mother.**
Another type of vulnerability I have witnessed in the hospital is a patient who has no one to call to notify that they’re in the hospital. When visiting a new patient, I will offer to call a friend or family member so that someone knows that the patient is here, the patient will occasionally say that there is no one to call. Often, the patient turns their head away from me while saying this, as if in shame. Other times, the patient requests me (or another chaplain) to check on them, just so that someone is keeping tabs on them.
I once met a patient in the trauma bay, when she came in after jumping out of a moving car. The medical team thought her motivation was to kill herself; she later told me it was because the driver was being physically abusive and she decided the risk to jump out was worth it to get away from that individual. We visited several times over the course of her hospital stay, about six weeks or so, as she recovered. Then, she made it a point to give me the information for the rehab facility she was transferring to just so that someone would know where she was.
There was another patient whose only family member to call was their abuser.
During my last on-call shift a couple days ago, I met the loveliest elderly couple. They arrived in separate ambulances after an accident and the wife was very anxious about her husband. However, just as often as she asked about him, she also asked me if I would stay with her or come back after I went to check on her husband or call her granddaughter. She was very sweet about it, but she was also quite fearful for her husband and what would happen next. The hospital can be an overwhelming and scary place, making the patient feel quite vulnerable. For someone new to the system, it may feel more like whims and fancies than policies and procedures. Thus, as a chaplain, I have the privilege, in many senses of the word, to share the routine and procedure with new patients, so that rather than being privileged information, it can become more common knowledge.
Vulnerability can be a feeling; it can also be a fact. Using privilege to help those who are vulnerable feel less vulnerable, or actually be less vulnerable, can make all the difference.
* You can find this statistic many places; here’s one: https://www.marchofdimes.org/peristats/data?reg=99&top=6&stop=92&lev=1&slev=1&obj=1 .