Each year, I have the pleasure of traveling to Washington, DC during Brain Injury Awareness month, so in mid-March of this year, I once again boarded the plane for the cross-country trip to meet with other dedicated brain injury advocates from around the nation, and to educate Oregon’s federal delegates, and their staff members, about the myriad ways they, too, can support Oregon’s brain injury survivors.
One of the easiest requests I had for our federal delegation this year was for them to join the Congressional Brain Injury Task Force. In my eyes, it is inconceivable that not a single member of Oregon’s federal delegation, either on the Senate or the House side of the legislature, is a member of this important task force, but that is the case.
My request about joining the Brain Injury Task Force was not a new one. For some of the delegates, I have been making this same request for seven years, unfortunately, to no avail, so when I pressed one of the staffers about why their member had not joined the task force, I was given a response that made me think deeply about my request, and the “Why” behind it.
“We don’t generally join task forces,” I was told by the staffer, “because they are just symbolic and they don’t really get anything done.”
So, there it was, finally, the real reason why some of Oregon’s delegates had yet to join the Brain Injury Task Force: It is merely a symbolic gesture.
It would have been easy for me to accept this response and admit that I understood where this staffer was coming from, recognizing that the delegate doesn’t have time to “waste” on something that is merely symbolic, but then I took a few minutes to think about their answer and I realized that the staffer, and the delegate, were missing the point entirely.
The weakness of their response existed in their lack of understanding of the word “symbolic” and what that word means to Oregon’s brain injury survivors.
“Symbolic,” in this context, means that the delegate cares. It’s that simple. The delegate cares enough to make a symbolic gesture of support. And when a person cares about something, or in this case, someone, the person they care about feels noticed, feels seen, feels recognized, and most importantly, feels understood.
That’s why symbolism matters to Oregon’s brain injury survivors, because it shows them that they are not alone in their struggles, and that even their members of Congress support them, even if only symbolically.
So, with this blog post, I am again appealing to our federal delegates to do something symbolic because for Oregon’s brain injury survivors, symbolism matters. Since this argument applies equally to all members of Congress, including the Texas delegates, I am asking you all to join the Congressional Brain Injury Task Force and show brain injury survivors everywhere that you care about them. That’s all it will take for this underserved community to know you stand with them, actually and symbolically, and it will make a huge, positive difference.
