Can participating in a community of care make us better citizens?
To examine this question—and how cultivating caring relationships might be able to make us more caring citizens—I turned to the city of Geel in Belgium.
In Geel, for centuries, people in the town have been welcoming adults with mental illness into their homes in kin-like relationships. Adults with mental illness live like family members in the homes of their foster parents. Foster parents take care of boarders, and boarders help take care of the foster families.
This foster family care emerged from a tradition of pilgrimage to Geel’s church of St. Dymphna, a tradition that goes back to the 14th century. The story of St. Dymphna goes back even further—it is set in the 6th or 7th century in Ireland.
St. Dymphna, the story goes, fled Ireland when her father decided to marry his daughter after his wife’s death. This demand for incest, the telling of Dymphna’s story in art tells us, was madness—her father is often shown with a demon on his shoulder, which is how madness was understood in that time. St. Dymphna fled to what is now Belgium. Her father found her in Geel, and when she again refused his demand for marriage, he beheaded her. St. Dymphna became a virgin martyr, who resisted the sinful demands of her father, who was also her king.
A church was built to honor Dymphna and pilgrims came seeking healing, especially healing of madness, over which they saw Dymphna as triumphing. The pilgrims participated in strange medieval rites—staying in the sickroom attached to the church and saying prayers. The sickroom was soon full. Augustinian sisters operated a larger guest house next to the church. This, too, was overflowing. The church authorities asked if people in the town would house “boarders” or “guests,” while they waited their turn to participate in the medieval rites. And so, Geel’s tradition of foster family care for adults with mental illness was born.
Of course over the last 600 some years foster family care has changed dramatically! There is a hospital in Geel, the Openbaar Psychiatrisch Zorgcentrum (OPZ), that oversees foster family care, connecting adults with mental illnesses to foster families, overseeing medical care, and providing support when there is a mental health crisis, as well as when living together in a family setting leads to tensions or conflict. The OPZ also provides optional day activities for adults with mental illness.
When a judge decides that someone in Belgium cannot live alone due to mental illness, that person has a variety of options… they can choose to participate in foster family care in Geel, where they live in a family home. OPZ staff accept adults with mental illness who are stable into foster family care when there is space, something that isn’t always available. OPZ staff work to place interested adults with mental illness into foster families where they think they would be a good fit. If either the foster family or the boarder doesn’t find it to be a good fit, then the OPZ staff moves the boarder to another family, to see if that fit is better.
Foster families receive some payment to host boarders in their home. Some foster families are drawn to participate in foster family care due to this payment; however, the payment is not high; it may not even cover all the family’s costs. The OPZ and foster family care are funded by Belgium’s federal government; however, the OPZ worries that this funding is not sufficient to attract new foster families, nor cover the OPZ’s costs. Foster families participate in foster family care for other reasons, too—someone who is widowed might invite a boarder into their home for companionship. And still many foster families participate in foster family care because their parents or neighbors did so—it’s something that the town as a whole is familiar with; it’s a local tradition.
Because the town welcomes people with disabilities, even people who don’t host boarders in their home are often familiar with people with mental illness, which seems to be less of a big deal in Geel—there is less stigma around mental illness.
I visited Geel in 2022 during its twice a decade “Dymphna Days,” during which many people in the town turn up to remember St. Dymphna. There’s a special mass in the church and then an ommegang or procession through the town. In the procession, there are floats representing important moments in the story of St. Dymphna. There are also floats representing important moments in the life of the town of Geel. These are interwoven—St. Dymphna’s story becomes part of the town’s story.
And Geel puts on a big musical with hundreds of participants that tells St. Dymphna’s story—the musical is called “Gheelemania.” The 2022 musical featured a telling of St. Dymphna’s story that was connected to the story of people struggling with things like divorce, alcoholism and loss, set in contemporary Geel. This telling and retelling of Dymphna’s story develops its meaning for a new time and helps the members of the town see the story of Dymphna in new ways. The people of Geel see Dymphna as merciful—and they think of their town as “the merciful city.”
What I found was that participating in a community of care, like Geel’s foster family care, doesn’t automatically make you a better citizen of your town or of your country. But connecting the care that one does in their small foster family to the story of Dymphna helps members of the city of Geel emphasize their care for others in ways that not only benefit the boarder who lives with them, but also benefits the other people they encounter in their town. Geel uses the story of Dymphna to encourage its members to work toward being a more caring town.
