In times of change, crises, or unexpected events in life, Vanier emphasizes the importance of an “accompanier.” He defines the accompanier as “someone who can stand beside us on the road to freedom, someone who loves us and understands our life (128),” and as someone who “helps us to be reconciled to our past and to accept ourselves as we are, with our gifts and limits (129).” Who is someone who has been an “accompanier” to you? How did they remind you of your gifts and limits? What is the role of accompaniment in community, according to Vanier (130)?ħ. Do you consider yourself in a position of social power? Can you think of your own “inner handicaps”? If so, in what ways are you able to hide or downplay them? What keeps you from exposing these inner handicaps to others?Ħ. On page 100-101, Vanier writes that those with social standing and power have subtle ways of hiding “inner handicaps,” and in order to accept another’s disabilities, we must be able to accept our own. Who has led you into the world of the heart? How so?ĥ.

Vanier writes “…people with intellectual disabilities led me from a serious world into a world of celebration, presence, and laughter: the world of the heart” (89). In a “society is not set up to cope very well with people who are weaker or slower” (46), how do we become skilled at listening to the wisdom of those whose life patterns fall outside of the “social norm”?Ĥ. Describe a relationship where you feel like you truly belong.

Vanier writes: “We do not discover who we are, we do not reach true humanness, in a solitary state we discover it through mutual dependency, in weakness, in learning through belonging” (41). On a scale of 1-10, how lonely do you feel right now?Ģ. Vanier describes the deep loneliness that so many feel: “Loneliness is something essential to the human condition it can only be covered over, it can never actually go away” (7).

Becoming human vanier