Who cares for the caretakers?
This is a question that has been heavy in my chest for the last few weeks. About a month ago I found out that a beloved being who I collaborated with for three years in Berlin is dead. Grief has been upon me. Out of respect for him and his loved ones, I will not share his name or details about how this came to pass.
I will say that he was a deep care bear. Someone that provided community support for many years, providing harm reduction services. In my experience, people who care for drug users are some of the most compassionate and loving people on this planet. This work - harm reduction - generally emanates from a deep well of empathy, acknowledgement that we are all trying our best to navigate the wounds of late stage capitalism, and have a right to body autonomy (as long as it’s not harming others). Finding moments of joy and connection through altered states can be a soothing balm in and amongst the extractive dynamics of this coercive, economic system. My harm reduction buddies are kindred spirits and it is deeply painful to see such a bright light leave this world.
In the process of my grief, I have been feeling, crying, consciously numbing, resting, reflecting and trying to learn what I can from this experience. In some ways, it feels like a mirror is being held up to me, asking: what can I learn from this?
Since childhood, I have often played the role of caretaker within my family and community networks. Awareness of this tendency has caused me to resist becoming a professional therapist because I am still trying to figure out how much of this habitual role is a survival mechanism (to receive love and feel useful)…
In the midst of my own questions as a caretaker, or someone who holds space for others, it’s become clear that there is currently a deep asymmetry in the Western world when it comes to care (who bears this load and who doesn’t). Women and people assigned female at birth are socialized to do huge amounts of care work and emotional labor. It’s often considered to be a core attribute of who we are even if the asymmetry becomes detrimental to our wellbeing. Some examples of emotional labor include: being expected to remember friends and family birthdays and organize around this, being responsible for comforting those around us when they experience difficulty, planning household logistics, doing the majority of cleaning and food prep in our homes or being the primary person doing elder or child care, to name a few. For a deeper look into emotional labor, check out this insightful Meta filter thread. African heritage folks and other global majority peoples have also been disproportionately conditioned or coerced into care roles within the West. In the UK context, we have an over-representation of global majority staff in the National Health Service. In both the USA and UK, global majority workers are over-represented in domestic work and child care. This paid care work is often squeezed around the other emotional labor that is expected or needed, in order to navigate the various challenges that come from oppression, resistance and state violence in our communities.
So, to any men or people identified as white reading this, I invite you to reflect on how much care and emotional labor you engage in? Is this limited to your family (blood or chosen) or do you engage in care work in the wider community? What would you need in order to provide more care for others in daily life (even in small ways)? I know it’s a challenging time. A time of deep unraveling. I ask these questions not to shame but to encourage curiosity and reflection so we can move towards more networks of support. We need all of us.
Some of us are holding far too much. Doing too much care and support work without having our basic needs met, while others with more structural power are living their hyper individualist life. It’s imbalanced. How much we are holding, or have capacity for, often relates to the ways we are racialized, if we have disabilities, if we are queer or trans, documented or undocumented. There are always different variables to take into consideration. However, I'm curious about what it would look like to share the load a bit more? To develop peer based support infrastructures to look after each other and our ecosystems? I feel we all have a role to play in that. I am in this process of exploration myself...
There is much to learn from Disability Justice scholars like Mia Mingus and Alice Wong (and disabled folks in general) who have had to develop robust care infrastructure in adverse conditions, often with little state support. Care work doesn’t necessarily have to be our career or life work but surely it is a crucial aspect to weave in?
Let’s be real. We are living through a pandemic exacerbated mental health crisis, alongside multiple genocides, ecocide and political contexts I don’t even feel to mention right now… Though I will say, look up Project 2025 when you have space / feel reasonably resourced/ with loved ones who can process with you. This moment is asking a lot of us and we all need support. Not everyone can afford therapy. Individual therapy as a model is a very Western practice and it’s not accessible to many for a whole host of reasons. Just telling someone: “Go to therapy” is not necessarily realistic depending on their finances or lived experience.
As much as somatic therapy has massively benefitted me, I don’t think it’s a sustainable or realistic model to expect a small group of paid professionals to provide all the care, grief support and attention to help us navigate the discomfort that is present.
We need to start developing and cultivating robust peer support models. This will take time but I believe we can do it. As a side note, I am thinking about making a regular somatic practice group for paid subscribers of this substack. If you would be interested in this, please holla / comment. If not in this forum I will experiment with other shapes…
If we think about it in terms of fermenting social change, what are the small practices that can lead to more support in your life and community? What can you experiment with that can grow into something that feels like a site of refuge within the next two - three years? Having been part of a free, radical peer counseling network for five years myself, I have a lived experience of this kind of support being possible. A small example from my daily life is that one of my close family members and I now have a weekly check in on the same day each week. This small practice is a huge source of connection and intimacy in my life.
In my lived experience (as well as having many caretakers / therapists / healers in my life), the current asymmetry in care - with some people holding and giving huge amounts- and many not much at all, ends up creating some of the following dynamics:
(1) An inappropriate amount of responsibility on a few people.
→ Many caretakers feel that they can’t take a break, because no one else is there to support.
(2) When caretakers experience our own struggles it can feel deeply isolating and lonely because often few / no people in our close circles are equipped to care for us in the ways we need.
→ Many caretakers have historically surrounded themselves with people who require a lot of care because we have learnt to care for others more than ourselves (and this becomes “normal"). I am glad to be re-patterning this in my own life.
(3) When caretakers burn out, have a mental health crisis or set boundaries as our responsibilities change, people who have been reliant on us can get angry and feel that we are letting them down.
→ They may not have enough support (I don’t want to downplay this reality).
(4) Many caretakers find it difficult to meet their own needs and are under-resourced for so long that they develop health issues or chronic stress which then results in less sustained support for those who rely on us.
This is a systemic issue and is something that I feel we all need to attend to, for our collective well-being. The care system to provide support for elders, children and disabled folks more broadly is deeply broken and in need of change so that people can receive the care they need and be able to live with safety, dignity and belonging. That could be a whole essay in itself so I’m not going to write too much more on that for now…
Caretakers: This may sound a bit contradictory but I sense that as we navigate our way through the unraveling of late stage capitalism, we will need to prioritize ways to resource ourselves and meet our own needs in order to sustain the capacity to build robust, peer based infrastructure (until that exists and we can rest into that more). For me, daily somatic practice (resilience toolkit), meditation, prayer, movement 3 - 4 times a week (dance, tai chi, pilates and yin yoga) & plant friends are the ways I resource myself and support my capacity to do what I do, including care for others. Monthly grief rituals also help me. I suggest developing a container / Smörgåsbord of things that work for you. It’s ok for this to change over time.
Invitations / Affirmations for caretakers (feel free to say out loud & repeat daily if you like!
It’s healthy to notice my needs and prioritize them (even if my elders struggled to meet theirs).
I lovingly give my body-mind the recovery time and care required for me to function well and experience (enough) ease.
I care for myself so I have the capacity to build networks of care and re-pattern systems of extraction.
It’s healthy for me to have enough money to meet my essential needs.
→ It is not capitalistic / evil to do this.
→ None of us have chosen this coercive game but we are forced to play or suffer. It’s not fair but until we create something new, this is the situation.
→ Please make sure you are meeting your needs (where possible). I invite you to compost unhealthy leftist / activist notions that suggest we need to be precarious as we age without savings in order to be anti-capitalist.
→ Having stable housing and enough food to eat is not wrong, what is wrong is that a system of artificial scarcity prevents many people from having their basic needs met.
An invitation:
Identify at least two or three people who can skillfully hold space for you in moments of crisis. If you can’t think of anyone, please prioritize cultivating new connections with that purpose in mind. You deserve support when times are tough.
Invitations for folks who do not identify as caretakers / have more structural power and less caretaking responsibilities…
I’d invite you to notice, what are ways you care for others around you?
If you are unsure, I invite you to ask people you are in close relationship with for their reflections on this.
I invite you to notice what you would need, in order to offer care in some way within your capacity, in your community context?
→ This could be an accountability buddy, some kind of movement practice to resource you, a peer counselling / recovery network, somatic therapy etc.If you are looking for some ideas, I invite you to practice care in any of the following ways:
→ Bring / buy food for someone who is having a hard time.
→ Help someone clean their house if they are finding this challenging.→ If you have the resource available, pay for someone who needs it to have a massage / acupuncture session or restorative yoga class (or something that feels supportive to them).
→ If you have a friend struggling financially (and you have enough), give them some money.
→ If you have spare resources, donate to folks in need (ex// Esims for Gaza or survivors of Hurricane Beryl in the Caribbean).
→ Write a letter of appreciation to someone who has touched your life.
→ Give new parents or carers a break by looking after their child for an afternoon.
→ If you have a car, drive one of your friends in need to the sea or somewhere in nature and listen to them about what is happening in their lives. Only give advice if requested.
An invitation for everyone: Please check in on the care takers in your life. Reach out. It might seem like we're doing okay, and holding it together, but underneath the surface other things might be going on. It really means a lot to be checked in on. Thank you to everyone who reached out to see if I was ok after my last substack and social media post. It really warmed my heart and confirmed within me that it is supportive to reach out for help when I am going through a tough moment.
I know this is quite the moment to be alive… I encourage you to be soft, curious and compassionate where possible. The questions and invitations in this newsletter are something that can digest over time. We need each other and we will take the time it takes to work this out.
May we grow networks of care, ferment our ways beyond domination culture and compost Babylon! Wishing you moments of softness and joy this summer.
Thank you for reading. If this resonates with you, please share with someone else. If you would like to support my work, here are a few ways you can do so:
You can become a paid subscriber to this newsletter (posts will come twice a month, usually one longer and one shorter with upcoming events).
You can order the book / audio book version of Tending Grief.
You can ask your local library or bookshop to order Tending Grief.
You can write a review (if you’ve read it).
You can work with me.
appreciate and feel this,, published on my bday too :) loving ya
i feel so deeply seen ❤️🔥 thank you. i am really sorry for your loss also. i would definitely appreciate the regular somatic practice spaces for sure 🌱