Arthur W. Frank

"I reserve the name “caregivers” for the people who are willing to listen to ill persons and to respond to their individual experiences. Caring has nothing to do with categories; it shows the person that her life is valued because it recognizes what makes her experience particular. On person has no right to categorize another, but we do have the privilege of coming to understand how each of us is unique. When the caregiver communicates to the ill person that she cares about that uniqueness, she makes the person’s life meaningful. And as that person’s life story becomes part of her own, the caregiver’s life is made meaningful as well. Care is inseparable from understanding, and like understanding, it must be symmetrical. Listening to another, we hear ourselves. Caring for another, we either care for ourselves as well, or we end in burnout and frustration."

At the Will of the Body: Reflections on Illness
by Arthur W. Frank
Houghton Mifflin, New York, 1991
Page 48