Recently, Donna Thomson asked us to consider where we feel like we belong.
When Adrienne started The Caregiver Space, it was because there wasn’t anything like it. Caregiver support groups were off-line, in church basements and community centers. They required a time commitment she couldn’t make while having two people dying of cancer at home. She needed something online that could fit into her life.
These days there are a lot of peer support groups for caregivers.
One of the reasons it still feels important to keep The Caregiver Space up and running is that there aren’t a lot of spaces for caregivers where people like Adrienne and I feel like we belong.
Adrienne created The Caregiver Space based on what she needed and couldn’t find. We’re here for all the people who don’t feel like they fit the “caregiver” stereotype. There are a lot of people who provide care who don’t fit the popular idea of a typical caregiver.
That can be because of demographics, like being a young queer spousal caregiver.
It can also be less specific, like being someone who’s always been perfectly capable of saying “no” and yet who still finds themselves overwhelmed by caregiving responsibilities.
We welcome anyone, but we’re not for everyone. Our first priority is to be a place for people like us: people who don’t quite fit in.
If you shop on Amazon, you can shop using smile.amazon.com and they’ll donate a portion of the proceeds to the nonprofit of your choosing, at no cost to you.
While we don’t get much from Amazon Smile (our last check was for $15) every bit counts towards covering the cost of running The Caregiver Space. Even as a small organization with a single employee, it costs nearly $100k a year to keep things running.
I’m back in Calgary for the summer. Please hit ‘reply’ and let me know of any interesting projects I should check out or people I should meet while I’m here.