Women's Portraits

Margit Tischberger

“My Garden is the Filling Station for my Soul”

For 40 years Margit Tischberger was the works council in a big mail-order company, life and social counselor, logo therapist after Viktor Frankl, since 2010 a voluntary, mobile hospice companion.

Gerti: How are you today?

Margit: “I am fine even though I have just finished two month of intensive care taking at the mobile hospice. The woman was only 44 years old when she has died just a week ago. That leaves its marks and it also should leave its marks.”

Gerti: I have already learned from your biography that you choose the contact to people and listen to their problems. How do you explain to yourself why you have chosen this path for yourself?

Margit:” I just like people. And I get a lot back, also during the company until death. Through the death of my 14 year old brother I was confronted with death for the first time. When I was 39 years old my husband had a deadly accident at work. Two years ago I nursed and accompanied my sick mother. It was like her last task for me :”Accompany dying people.” I started my hospice education for the second time because I realized that I was “mature” for this task. I want to be entitled to accompany people.”

Gerti: How can you help people in difficult life situations? Can you remember one particular case?

Margit: “I would not want to  take out one particular case. I want to be a support overal, not to give advice but to develop common strengths. My own life crisis made me stronger. It is like a present from Universe that I am doing so well. That is the reason why it is possible for me to give positive things to others. I guide support groups under the topic grief management. I also had to learn to accept when somebody says: I can’t do this anymore and let him go."

Gerti: What do you think about getting older, a topic of our EWA project?

Margit:  “Many people complain about losses, like wrinkled skin and that the figure slips. They ask themselves if their partner still likes them. I see myself as an example, never had the menopause only “years of transition”, I take myself like I am. Even though I have heard many times:”Just wait until you are 60/65 years old, then...” As somebody who likes to do sports, like biking, I also had to get used to the fact that I am slower than 5 years ago.

As compensation I see nature more consciously now.

My daily life is filled. I try to find a balance between voluntary work and private life. Private things are marked in my diary green.”

Gerti: Then the month of April must have been really green. There you started your personal pilgrims’ path?

Margit: “For my coming 60th birthday I gave myself a special present by walking the Austrian Jakob’s Way fro 21 days. I started preparing myself half a year before, put my hiking boots in my room and looked up the route every day. It takes a lot of discipline to keep on hiking, altogether 500 km. Sometimes I walked up to 13 hours per day. Then I thought about Viktor Frankl and his sentence “Why do I just have to put up with everything?”

The experience is hard to be put in words. Although I like to write, this time not. What I thought, what I saw, people I met - who sometimes just walked beside me for an hour or gave me a drink - that belongs only to me! Sometimes I cried out of gratitude and because many things were overwhelming. It was the path to myself. My personally best birthday- gift.”

Thanks for the interview

Margit Tischberger, born in Ansfelden, a small town in Upper Austria, still lives in a house with garden- “the filling station for the soul”.One daughter, one granddaughter and one grandson. Her hobbies are: reading, hiking, work in the garden, wood work, movements of different kinds and especially encounters with people.

Gerti Zupanich (Interview and Video), Margit Tischberger (Fotos)