This issue brings two testimonies from mothers of fragile, difficult-to-raise children.
We tend to believe today that with advanced medical support, school integration, and other resources, raising and educating a disabled child is no longer as hard or painful as it once was. It's true that things have improved and that parents are no longer isolated as they were years ago.
But when disability is complex and mysterious, things become more complicated. Mothers, no matter how much help they receive from institutions, family, or doctors, face alone the weight of feelings that are hard to carry: haunting questions (who is this mysterious child? How can I understand him? What meaning does his life have?); rebellion and rage (why me, when I'm already so fragile? Where is your help, Lord?); guilt (what did I do wrong? I'm not capable of loving him as I should...); helplessness before his life so unlike that of a "normal" child (if only I could understand what's in him! Why doesn't he respond to my care? How can I accept that he's so distant from what a child should be?)
We must learn to read their words with deep humility, not letting them pass over us unheeded. Each one carries silent tears and should reach our hearts as a call to compassion—to carry together their pain and their struggle.
This is true of all the suffering of our brothers and sisters. Woe to us if we look away and say—as we so often do—that we can do nothing about it. Woe to us if we close our hearts to the cry of pain from so many people we don't hear because they're not beside us.
Learning to suffer with others is a first great step toward that peace of heart we all long for: to be brothers and sisters not in words alone but in bearing each other's burdens together, every day, wherever we find ourselves.
We hope that every parent facing a painful and seemingly insurmountable situation can say—as the widow of Commissario Calabresi did—"I couldn't have done it alone. We did it. All of us together, because the solidarity, the handclasps, the prayers of so many people kept me from feeling alone. They gave me strength, and I felt deeply this communion of people."
Mariangela Bertolini, 2010