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I’ve been in Alberta for 129 days, which is 100 days longer than anticipated.
You can learn a lot online. There are incredible resources where people share what their experiences of care work are like.
But as many of us who are feeling starved for “real life” human contact know, it’s not the same as talking to someone in the same time and place. Finding things online is also a process mediated by algorithms and silos. Finding what we’re looking for requires that we know what we’re trying to find and using the “right” keywords.
When I started researching care work, I thought I knew what I was trying to find. I met with subject matter experts and people leading programs for caregivers in different cities. But the people who keep shaking up my views about what’s possible aren’t the ones with business cards bearing official sounding titles. They’re usually people who don’t consider themselves experts and don’t think of what they’re doing as caregiver support.
The weird magic of serendipity encouraged me to travel more and to spend less time organizing formal meetings and interviews so I was free to see where I ended up.
Which is how I ended up spending lockdown in Calgary and stage 1 & 2 in Canmore, instead of at home in Toronto.
I hadn’t been planning to be in Toronto, anyway, which is why going home wasn’t an option. I’d rented out my apartment in anticipation of spending time in Washington, DC meeting with advocates and then heading to the Atlantic provinces. I kept hearing that there was no support for caregivers in rural Atlantic Canada, so I’d arranged to spend a month in rural Newfoundland to start.
University of Calgary researcher Alison Grittner welcomed me into her home for more than two months. Then I joined a shared house in Canmore when their roommates cut their working holiday short and repatriated.
Sometimes it’s not possible to come up with creative solutions when you’re in the middle of a crisis. In order to get through we have to just keep taking the next step and responding to the most pressing need.
That’s what makes “expanders” so important. Expanders are “people who expand your idea of what might be possible for you. They're not necessarily role models — you might not want to be like them in a lot of ways, and you might not want to go as far as they do — but when you meet them you realise your life could be a bit bigger than it is, or your options a bit broader (As defined by McKinley Valentine).”
Care work has undergone a huge shift with the novel coronavirus, as we’ve been returned to the binary choices of the age of the Victorian asylum: surrender custody and accept extremely limited visitation or do everything yourself.
As day programs, PCA support, help from friends outside your pod, and other supports have vanished, caregivers are coming up with all sorts of DIY responses to make it work.
When store shelves were empty, neighborhood Facebook groups redistributed supplies. Bored teenagers are running errands for people who can’t. The usual neighborly deliveries of garden bounties and baked goods have become a thing. People who are out of work are pairing up with people who are suddenly without the home care support they require. People are sewing masks and preparing meals, desperate for a way to feel helpful during a crisis.
The more we know about how other people are making things work, the more our ideas of what’s possible are expanded and the less we have to come up with solutions on our own.
Were you cut off from support you relied on? Were you already managing without formal support? What solutions have you come up with to make things work? Are there projects popping up in your community?
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Support for us who are caregivers is mostly online and on phone and text these days. That's why some of us blog - to encourage and support those who care for loved ones with chronic and/or degenerative conditions. Even though we cannot see each other face to face, we can be thankful for technology at a time as this. It helps to know that others are going through something similar. We are not alone.