Nannies need other nannies

In deference to this week being National Nanny Recognition Week, I would like to take this opportunity to recognize the nanny community for the support they have given to me over the past year. I hope that my non-nanny family and friends will not take offense. This recognition does not, in any way, mean to negate or diminish the extraordinary ways in which you continue to show me your love and support, nor the ways in which you allowed Ryan and his family into your hearts. It is all of you, together, who make me better than I am and there will never be enough words or ways with which to adequately thank you.

A wise nanny often tells me, "Only a nanny knows another nanny's heart."

She's right.

Our jobs are unique...we work in someone else's home, usually without coworkers or supervision. We are entrusted with the care and safety of someone else's children, a task that cannot under any circumstances be taken lightly. We are asked to give our hearts fully and completely...then to pack it up at the end of the day, take our heart home with us, and bring it back tomorrow. We are both employee and part of the family...a part of the family who can, at any time, be cut out forever at the whim of a jealous parent.

I have a lot of friends who have bosses...but they don't fold their bosses underwear or help them navigate a difficult in-law. I have a lot of friends who raise children...but they are the parent, and they get to make the final decisions about what is right, what is wrong, what is important. A nanny navigates her professional role in ways that other professionals are usually not called upon to do. It is my nanny friends who do these things, like I do, and who thus understand the intricacies and intimacies of my work...because it is their work, too.

It is no wonder, then, that when I'm having issues in my job or dealing with nanny related things that I turn first to my nanny friends for advice, for support, and sometimes for a good kick in the pants back to reality. The internet has broadened my nanny support base from just a few local nannies I happened to find in real life to an international network of smart, compassionate, dedicated professionals who are always willing to share the wealth of their knowledge and experience.

And, as I have discovered over the past year especially, they are willing to share their hearts.

It was less than 13 months ago when I turned to my nanny friends for support when a former charge of mine was admitted to the hospital with painful, mysterious symptoms and then later diagnosed with an aggressive beast of a cancer. I wanted to be able to BE a support for Ryan and his family, but I couldn't do that without also receiving support. I needed a place where I could weep and wail and vent...a place away from Ryan's family because the very last thing I wanted was for his parents to feel like they needed to support me. They needed to support their son and each other. I needed people who understood what it means to be the nanny...a person who loves a child wholly, completely, without condition, and without being the parent. A nanny's love does not compare to nor compete with a parent's love, but it is still a vibrant, powerful, freely given love strong enough that every nanny I know would unhesitatingly lay down her life for her charges.

The first nanny friends I turned to were my real life friends, April Krause and Maria Harrington. Their response was instant. "We'll do a fundraiser for them." In just a few minutes, they had the whole framework for a fundraiser planned. Over the next several months the two of them dove into planning. They coordinated a team of volunteers...other nannies, teachers and parents from Ryan's school...and planned a spectacular fundraiser that netted thousands of dollars to help the Millers pay expenses. Nannies from all over the country found ways to participate, and I know that I don't have the full list of those who did. They sent monetary donations as well as items for the raffle. Kristin Grau, Beth Taylor, Petra Ortiz, and Ruth Bernero all showed up the day of the event to lend their hands and help things run smoothly. I got a lot of the credit that day, and it was entirely undeserved. The idea wasn't mine. The planning was hardly my doing. The credit belonged to a lot of people...to everyone who helped out...but mostly to April and Maria.

As Ryan's journey continued on, I leaned heavily on a group of nannies I've never met in person. I've met a couple, but most of them are known to me by their email addresses through an email group, Worldwide Nannies. In the early days I worried that my frequent mention of Ryan would grow old and irritating. I was immediately and strongly reassured by the group that this would not be the case, that they were happy to be the place I came with my worries, fears, tears, and joys about Ryan's progress. They reassured me, they told me it was okay to cry and that crying didn't mean I was weak or failing the family. They cried with me for him, they prayed with me for him, they cheered with me for him. And, because they did, I was able to be there for Ryan and his family. I could not have shown up for the Millers if I did not have people who showed up for me, even if the only way they could show up was through the internet.

Ryan was declared cancer free on St. Patrick's Day. It was on that day, when I shared that wonderful news with my friends, family, and nanny community, that I realized how truly and wonderfully generous they had been in their support. They weren't just supporting me, they had chosen to care for and even love Ryan. And, because they had chosen to risk their hearts on a child they had never met, their hearts broke with mine...not for mine, but with mine...when Ryan's cancer returned in May.

Word spread through the online nanny community. The support came not only for me, but directly to Ryan and his parents. For that, I am forever grateful. As much as I needed support, they needed it more. Nannies from around the US...and even beyond...sent cards and letters for Ryan and his parents. They had their charges make cards and draw pictures. Charlotte Hilliker, a nanny who made a special place in her heart for Ryan, raised hundreds of dollars in just a week or two and used the money to by Ryan an iPad...something to keep him entertained and busy while he was stuck in bed, paralyzed by a tumor in his spinal cord. She got donations from her own family and friends...as well as from the nanny community at large. People in the industry that I'd never even heard of were posting her request on facebook and on their own websites. They didn't know me. They didn't know Ryan. But they knew that someone in their community loved a child who was desperately ill, and so they stepped up to help.


When Kristen, Ryan's mom, called me on the morning of August 10 to tell me that Ryan had died just a few hours earlier, my first instinct was to call another nanny. I got ahold of Maria and choked out the news to her...and then asked her to do what I could not: to call our other nanny friends and let them know. I don't know how she did it, because she was crying as hard as I was, but she did.

There's a lot of the week or so following Ryan's death that is just a haze to me. Constant tears blur both eyesight and memory, and a shattered heart does little to retain events. Here is what I remember vividly: Going to my mailbox, day after day, for weeks, and finding cards from other nannies, many of whom I've never met and have never really interacted with; likewise, going to the post office box I'd set up for the family and finding cards for Ryan's parents. As broken and grief stricken as I was, I was able to take each step forward...each breath...because of the incredible network of support that reached itself out to me to hold me up. While much of that came from my non-nanny friends and family, I cannot discount the enormous wave of love and shared grieving that came from the nanny community. It is what held me up.

My real life nanny friends, too, were there. They showed up, en masse, to the funeral home, each bearing a cold Diet Coke (they know me well!). They grieved, too, because they had let this extraordinary little boy into their own hearts. During the sharing of memories, April...who usually is loathe to speak in public...got up and shared her own memory of Ryan and how much he'd impacted her life.

Several of those same nannies took the next day off work in order to attend Ryan's celebration of life service. I didn't want to get out of bed that day. I didn't want to have to say goodbye. I knew I had to, though. Ryan's parents had asked me to sing at the service and we had chosen a song that I sang to Ryan all the time during his infancy. If nothing else, I had to show up and do this one thing. I flipped on my laptop and there, on facebook, was the most unexpected outpouring of support. It had started the day prior, but it had grown into epic proportions. I'm not sure exactly who started it, if it was April Krause or Glenda Propst. My profile picture, for months, has been a photo of Ryan and me together, taken last April when he was healthy. Nearly every nanny I knew...and dozens I did not know...had borrowed that photo and made it their own for the day, noting that it was a show of support so that I would know I wasn't alone on this horrible, terrible, wretched day. It was enough to help me get out of bed, get dressed, and go to the church. It was so much more than that.

In order to sing, you have to be able to breathe deeply and well. I hadn't felt like I'd taken a full breath since that phone call from Kristen. I didn't know how I was going to sing, how I was going to not fall apart and just cry through the music. Taking the advice of a friend, when I got up there I simply shut my eyes. As I did so, the last thing I caught sight of was the row of my nanny friends. When I closed them, what I saw was the rows and rows of changed profile pictures from facebook...all that same shot of a beautiful bald boy being held by his former nanny. Somehow, that was all it took. I knew how loved and supported I was and, more, I knew how much Ryan had been cared about by so many people who would never get to meet him. I knew how much he had mattered beyond his family and friends, how much his life had made a difference in the world.

In the end, what has meant the most to me is exactly that: the love and support that so many of you gave to Ryan and his family. While your advice, prayers, encouragement, and reality checks make it possible for me to be one of many, many, many people supporting and loving the Millers, the fact that you opened your hearts to them directly is what has been the most inspiring and enormous gift.

At the funeral home, one of the mothers in the community said to me that my love for Ryan had not gone unnoticed. As she embraced me she said "You loved him with a mother's heart." What I was too choked up to say in reply is that really, I loved him with a NANNY'S heart.

And so did my nanny friends.

For that, I am forever deeply in their debt.