Author combines work and dream to aid caregivers

The writing career Eleanor Manning always dreamed of and the nursing career she grew to love have merged in her new book: "Voices: Meditations for Caregivers."

The book is a collection of true vignettes from nearly four dozen caregivers and patients the author has known in her 32 years as a nurse.

Each vignette, written in the first person, is followed by a brief reflection and blank pages where readers can write their own thoughts.

Writer inside

Though "Voices" is her first published work, Ms. Manning has spent her life writing journal entries, slips of paper with notes about patients and private musings. As a student at Catholic Central High School in Troy, she dreamed of teaching English literature, and her mother always looked at her and said, "There's a writer in there."

But since Ms. Manning was the oldest of seven children, she knew her family couldn't help her financially with college, so she became a nurse instead -- and loved that career. She has worked in urgent care, labor and delivery and hospice care, and is currently clinical office coordinator for Troy Family Physicians.

Over the years, she wrote about the people she cared for and caregivers she met. Nurses, she said, often become confidantes to families struggling with an ill parent or child.

"You find yourself taking on a lot of different roles: nurse, friend," she remarked. "As women age, that happens more, because they're nurturing."

Emotional support

With all the support systems in existence for people who are ill and need care, from rehabilitation centers to hospices, Ms. Manning has found much less emotional support for the caregivers -- particularly family members who are caregivers by need, not profession.

"Professionals are paid caregivers at certain hours of the day. When their shift is done, they can have a normal life," the author explained. "With regular people that are caring [for others], it's usually thrust upon them quickly; they're in grief and shock because of the diagnosis; and it's usually 24 hours" of caregiving each day.

Ms. Manning wanted to help people let their feelings out. "If you can write it, maybe you can say it; and if you can say it, maybe you can accept it," she theorized.

Birth of a book

Her opportunity came when a friend who taught at Troy High School borrowed some of her writings to help his students learn about emotions. When he returned them, he told her, "There's a book here."

Ms. Manning decided to organize her reflections and try to publish them. Because caregiving is emotional and time-consuming, she made each vignette brief so that readers could read just one at a time, even randomly from any part of the book, and reflect on it.

She changed all the vignettes to first-person accounts and removed identifying details, then shopped her manuscript around to publishers. It was accepted.

The thrilled new author added one-sentence reflections after the vignettes at her publisher's request and left room for readers to recall their own experiences similar to the vignettes she described.

"Voices" is now with its second publisher, Xulon Press, a self-publishing firm. It has an epilogue of vignettes written after Sept. 11, 2001.

Common threads

"I'm hoping that [readers] will identify something in each story that's familiar," Ms. Manning told The Evangelist.

She has found that in all caregiving, stories of frustration, resolution and healing are common threads. In one of her book's vignettes, for example, a daughter becomes the caregiver for the alcoholic father she barely knew, who is now dying. She resents him and yet becomes his primary support.

"There are other circumstances where children are alienated from parents," Ms. Manning said, "and wind up, as adults, having 'kid issues' -- fear and sorrow and outright rage at the parent -- and have to jump past that because they're being called to care for the parent."

Through her book, Ms. Manning hopes that such caregivers come to know that "it's okay to feel angry when you're tired, you're working a full-time job and taking care of kids, and you have to take care of your mother. It's okay to work through these things."

In addition, she would like caregivers to remember that caring for another human being, even though it's frustrating, is also "a great blessing."

("Voices: Meditations for Caregivers" is available at W.B. O'Connor Church Goods Inc. in Latham; call 785-7750. It can also be obtained from Xulon Press; call 1-866-909-BOOK. Eleanor Manning will hold a book signing on May 11, 11 a.m.-3 p.m., at The Irish Mist Restaurant in Troy; call 266-8915.)

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