Who's in charge here?
One of the things that makes it hard to rally for people who provide care, besides the thing where so few people identify as a caregiver, is that there's not really anything to rally against.
Sometimes there's a figurehead to point to. Someone who cuts funding to a program people rely on. Or an anecdotal experience that captures a particularly broken part of the system.
In Walk Out, Walk On, the authors dig into the idea of heroic leadership. We're raised with this idea that these singular heroes have built the world and one day we can be the ones to save it.
“In today’s turbulent world, things we have no control over -- that no one has control over -- can change our lives forever. No one is in charge of our food system. No one is in charge of our schools. No one is in charge of health care. No one is in charge of homelessness. These highly complex systems have emerged over time through thousands of small, local actions, and they cannot be solved even by the boldest visions of our most heroic leaders."
Sure, there are plenty of incredible people to profile in one article or another. I don't want to minimize their work. But no one built the healthcare system.
And caregiving touches so much more than just the healthcare system. If only it were that simple, right? Caregiving cuts across everything in our lives and impacts every type of person. There's no problem to solve and no hope of finding a solution.
But there are a million individual solutions that we can create on our own, in our own lives, and as countless small communities.
PS. Speaking of endlessly complex situations with no clear problem or solution, I have a topic I've been researching and not making a lot of headway. There are plenty of reasons why someone who is serving as a primary caregiver would need to stop providing care.
Have you or someone you known handed off care to someone else? What if there's no legal 'next of kin' and no money? How does it work in your legal jurisdiction? Hit 'reply' and share what you know.