I keep finding myself thinking about something Leah Libresco Sargeant wrote in Other Feminisms in response to common sayings about oxygen masks and empty cups:
If we can give only out of our own abundance, only the comfortable and well can be generous. If our pains and crosses can be our gift, we are never left unable to begin friendships or care for others.
Have you ever found yourself dividing the world into givers and receivers?
Are there times when you could not care for yourself, but could care for others?
This Twitter thread is a poignant reminder that resilience is the strength to accept and move through emotions, not to eliminate them:
People who are forced to leave their jobs to take on unpaid care work aren’t considered unemployed, since they’re not available to work.
This might explain why universal basic income studies have found that they don’t disincentivize work — most people who aren’t engaged in paid employment have compelling reasons to be out of the paid workforce.
It makes sense that people themselves are best able to determine what they need, not government agents or algorithms.
It’s exciting to see guaranteed income programs becoming widespread, providing crucial stability to unpaid family caregivers and underpaid professional caregivers.
That doesn’t mean there’s no role for experts. The government can make it easier for people to know what programs they qualify for by using the information they already have about us, rather than leaving us search for help ourselves and then re-prove that we qualify — often in a moment of crisis.
Have you used caregiver support programs? How did you find out about them?
Emily Ladau and Ashley Harris Whaley put out a thought provoking series of graphics on identifying as a family caregiver. They feel that identifying as a caregiver is co-opting the disabled identity for ourselves.
I find this idea interesting because my reaction is so conflicted!
Quite a few caregivers seem to merge their identity with the person they’re caring for. When I ask people to introduce themselves, often they introduce the person they’re caring for instead. When I ask how they are, they tell me how the person they’re caring for is. A boundary has gotten lost.
Identifying as a “mom” does not mean that person is co-opting the identity of a child, even if we can all think of a parent who does seem to live through their children.
A lot of people don’t identify as caregivers until it’s become their full-time occupation. Identifying as an “autism mom” can be the equivalent to identifying as a math teacher or a building superintendent. It’s sometimes a way to stave off judgment for not being engaged in the paid workforce.
It’s hard to not identify with something you spend so much of your mental, spiritual, and physical energy doing. Being the parent of a child with a serious heart condition is quite different from being the parent of a child without one — and has little in common with being a person with a serious heart condition. Being a nurse is not the same as being a patient.
Trying to fact check how someone feels isn’t a very effective response, though! If disabled adults are saying they feel violated when their parents identify as caregivers, we need to listen.
“One of the toughest things to navigate in online disability spaces is the tension that often exists between nondisabled parents and disabled adults. Our hope is to help shift things away from the divide between these groups. To do that, though, we need to have some real talk.”
I appreciate how Ladau and Whaley are creating space for this conversation. Understanding and respecting people is critical to providing care with consent.
If you haven’t already, I suggest you check out @DisabilityReframed on Instagram.
Are you kind of a nerd about the ways the US healthcare system is a shit show? If so, you should check out Out of Pocket.
Nikhil Krishnan discusses things about the medical industrial complex that normally make me want to scream in a way that is delightful and funny. And, of course, fascinating.
Talking to a friend who was born in Germany, I realized vaccine passports are nothing new.
While scanning in documents unearthed at his mom’s house, he’d found his original birth certificate and vaccination records. The WHO vaccine passport he had looked a lot like this one, just with the patina of something that was printed in 1986:
When he moved to the US, he was given the same form I have that serves as proof of vaccination whenever it’s required, usually to enroll in school.
His also looked like a photocopy of a photocopy of a photocopy, despite being filled out two decades after mine.
There’s a lot of fuss in the media about security for vaccine passports right now. It’s interesting to remember that vaccine passports are nothing new and the system we’ve been using for at least 40 years is decidedly low-tech, has no backup, and has no security precautions.
Of course, it’s different to vaccinate people against diphtheria during an outbreak than when it’s become a routine childhood vaccine.
When my dad would tuck me into bed as a little kid, I had two favorite bedtime stories: an explanation of gravity and the story of a relative dying of diphtheria after the vaccine had been developed and before it had been distributed.
This is beautiful. Click through to see the whole series by @caring.is.radical.
What inspired you this week? What gave you new perspective on an existing issue?