April 18, 2025 // Diocese

The Importance of Caregiving in Building a Culture of Life

Scott Warden

Editor-In-Chief

On Monday, April 7, the University of Saint Francis hosted the second in a series of lectures that aims to build a culture of life in Fort Wayne and beyond. The university and the Chesterton Academy of St. Scholastica, a new classical high school in Fort Wayne, welcomed Melissa Shanks as the keynote speaker at the Cultura Vitae Lecture Series.

Scott Warden
Melissa Shanks speaks at the University of Saint Francis on Monday, April 7, as part of the Cultura Vitae Lecture Series.

While Shanks is a graduate of the University of Notre Dame School of Architecture and serves on the Sacred Art and Architecture Committee for the Diocese of Fort Wayne-South Bend, the subject of her talk at Saint Francis wasn’t on sacred spaces or how artistic beauty can bring us closer to the infinite beauty we find in God. Instead, she spoke about the beauty of her daughter, Nora, the sacredness of being both mother and caregiver to a girl with special needs, and the joys and challenges that come with such a relentless responsibility.

Toward the beginning of her lecture, which was titled “Beauty in the Broken: The Gift of Caregiving in the Culture of Life,” Shanks shared that Nora was born without any noticeable abnormalities, but at 3 months old, she and her husband, Jason, began noticing “small oddities.” At a young age, Nora was diagnosed with a range of disabilities, including cerebral palsy and autism, which caused her developmental delays, uncontrollable seizures, and an inability to speak. “Each diagnosis added a layer of complexity to try to understand her needs,” Shanks said.

Many years later, Nora was diagnosed with a rare genetic disorder called Glass syndrome. “This condition’s name oddly is appropriate to the way it feels to care for Nora,” Shanks said. “She, like so many with profound special needs, is so vulnerable that, as a caregiver, you sometimes feel the need to handle her as you would a delicate glass vase that you carry with you throughout life and try not to break.”

Shanks continued, admitting that “for years, I tried to fix her and felt that was why God gave her to me. I spent most of my professional life working to fix and transform this world into something beautiful. Nora and mothering became part of that same challenge. … It was exhausting, nerve-racking, and isolating,” Shanks said. “But I began to realize that she isn’t a project to be fixed. She is a person to be loved.”

Throughout her lecture, Shanks expressed the challenges of being a mother and caregiver to a daughter with special needs in a culture that values ability and perfection above all else. She also called on those in the Church to accompany families who are caring for people with special needs.

“We can see there is a huge opportunity to love as Christ loves and grow in our own ability to trust God the Father with our own weaknesses,” she said. “Seeking out these individuals and seeing them and their families as prophets of our own weaknesses and God’s love for us would turn the world upside down and set it on fire with God’s love.”

Scott Warden is editor-in-chief of Today’s Catholic.