Stressors

Hunger was the stressor that I chose. This was evident in the life of the exchange student that I have been profiling in many of my blog assignments. I didn't think of hunger as an epidemic because the most hunger I had experienced was self imposed religious fasting.
He was hungry as a child. His father died at a young age (stressor). His mother had to raise him and his siblings. There were many. He came to the United States as an 18 year old, hungry. I took him shopping. He wanted such humble foods. Things you have to cook. I don't know how he coped with this stressor.He was thin. He was suffering from malnutrition.  He certainly has not become heavy as he has morphed into the way of the American culture in regards to food. Due to his formality and humility he doesn't ever complain about it. He supports his mother now as she is still in Zimbabwe. She is still poor. She is probably hungry most nights. There are probably many stressors that plague them. Chaos. Poverty. War. Isolation. Disease. Violence. All of these. The resilience is seen in the heart of my dear student. Many would attribute it to the strength of the human heart in rising above those stressors. I tend to think it was the hand of God. The prayers of the mother. There is no way human resistance alone can cope with all those components. It woudl take down the mightiest of warriors without divine help.

There was a little girl in my program that experienced the trauma of having her father experience a brain injury and not return to his normal self but that of a teen or maybe an early adolescent. He is enjoyable and fun to be around but certainly not a father or the man that he was. The sweet little girl then got very sick and was paralyzed. It was a rare virus that attacked her brain. She had to relearn to walk. All these things happened in her life and she just turned four. In response to these stressors she has imaginary friends. These friends are consistent in personality, name and character. They never change and the stories are that of real sisters that live within the home. Many theorists say this is a sign of giftedness(Berger 2012). There are some that would say that it is a coping mechanism for the stress. Either way, she is precious and delightful.