M is for Migration

Recently, I read a book by Javier Zamora, the memoir Solito. It’s the harrowing story of how he came to the US from El Salvador at the age of nine. His parents had already escaped from the horrors of the war, leaving Javier with his grandparents. His family paid a coyote to accompany him to the US.

It took him three tries before he was successful. After immigrating, Javier went on to earn an MFA. On the acknowledgment page of his memoir, Zamora speaks of how much therapy he had to undergo to unearth the trauma of this important story.

My Migration

I’m not sure what drew me to read this book, or why the concept of migration has been nagging at me recently. Because it’s come up in my poems, I realize that my retirement and transformation from physician to writer have been a form of migration, from a place of trauma to a place of safety and hope. That doesn’t mean I don’t feel homesick for my old country. I have saudade (sow-dah-jee) as they say in Portuguese.

A Timely Story

A story from the clinic where I worked landed in my email yesterday. In December 2022, a patient, a migrant from Central America, had an unusual need for her case manager to address. She’d received a call from the U.S. Border Patrol. They had her three-year-old grandson in custody; he’d been found at the border, unaccompanied.

The patient herself had fled gang violence and crime, so she feared for her grandson. The case manager filed the necessary paperwork, and in January 2023, the grandmother was able to visit her grandson, ultimately getting custody. They were reunited with the boy’s mother two weeks later.

Listening and Offering Help

Listening and offering resources are the magic that social workers and case managers do every day. They’re invaluable to the patients and to the other people on the caretaking team. I couldn’t have cared for my patients without them.