What would you give up in order to feel loved? In order to be able to deeply receive love and truly belong? What would you give?
Would you give up your status?
If you knew that doing so would make you feel love, would you give up your beliefs about what makes a person important? Would you give up the esteem of society? Would you give up the false security that comes from believing you can take care of yourself?
In our dominant culture of hyper-individualism, a lot of us don’t have positive feelings about caregiving. Many of us have learned to resent care obligations because we have no village and no systemic support. Maxed out parents, overwhelmed adult caregivers, and grown ups who were once parentified children all have reason to not eagerly sign up for more responsibilities. And yet resentment doesn’t make the needs stop, we’ll have them as long as we’re alive. Sustainable solutions and productive reframes are all the more necessary for those of us who have been overextended.
Some resentments we carry about caregiving aren’t about the actual labor we’re being asked to perform, but about beliefs we have about the kind of person who provides care. The over culture conditions us to think all kinds of things – that we often don’t even know we think – about status and caregiving. I grew up hearing all kinds of warnings about ‘burger-flippers’ and garbage men from adults trying to encourage teens to buckle down in school. I heard all kinds of racist and xenophobic talk about what kind of jobs were meant for who and what kinds of jobs are worthy of respect. I heard insults and degradation about motherhood from all kinds of places. If you believe that the work you do is an expression of your value as a person, and society clearly doesn’t value the work of caregiving, then performing caregiving work makes you worthless. If you internalize that viewpoint, needing to provide care feels humiliating.
What kind of work do you believe you are too good to do? Who do you believe is the person who should be doing that work? And who benefits from these beliefs?
Caregiving is the lowest status position in society. CNA’s and janitorial staff, housecleaners and nannies, grounds tending and public maintenance, are all most likely to be done by the most vulnerable in our society. It is a sign of status to not have to care. The higher status you are, the fewer people you perform care tasks for, and the more people you pay to perform those tasks in your stead. Soft hands, skin untouched by the sun, impractical clothes, being rendered helpless in the face of mechanical failure, these are all signs of status signaling you’re someone who is cared FOR, not someone who CARES.
When we buy in to the lie that caregiving is beneath us, we end up supporting systems of oppression. We will agree with or look away from the dehumanizing lie that certain jobs don’t deserve to be compensated fairly or treated with dignity, that social safety nets are unnecessary, and that any troubles people experience are their own fault.
When we tell ourselves that we’re ‘just not the caregiving type,’ we are internalizing the dominant culture’s propaganda that these skills are innate. That there is a ‘type’ which provides the care and that there’s no responsibility for the rest of us to learn. Which teaches us that – again – caregiving jobs aren’t worthy of respect, but it also teaches us that we should be ashamed over any skills we don’t have and leaves us unprepared and desperate when our own care needs become unignorable.
By the very nature of our humanity, we’re all caregivers. We are wired for co-regulation and belonging, and we have very needy bodies. But meeting those needs requires learning skills, and like any skills, we will each discover different preferences and talents. I don’t love time with babies, but I’ll hang out with teenagers all day long. There are many ways to provide care based on what we have to offer, and it is all necessary for the health of our community.
We are a species that survives together. We are interdependent. We were not built for isolation. We have to take that lesson from the pandemic and make it mean something. If we are going to build a new world centered on humanity, we need each of us making the contributions we have to offer. The future we need to build to survive is a connected future and we each have a role to play.
Caregiving is the Muscle of Body Loyalty dedicated to your social health. This aspect of our health doesn’t get much support, which is why we are in a loneliness epidemic. Our disconnection from each other is literally killing us. We have the need to be cared for, we have the need to provide care, and we have the need to belong.
Caregiving is any practice of providing care as a means of nourishing social networks and developing care skills. There are endless ways to practice caregiving: taking care of children or elders, time with pets, navigating healthcare, political action, tending a relationship, creating a home, volunteering, gardening, mutual aid, performing arts, cleaning and maintenance, community outreach. Anything where you are committing to a responsibility and intentional about providing care to it.
Providing care forces you to live in the present as it acquaints you with the reality of body needs. Through caregiving you can learn to destigmatize your own care needs, learn the skills necessary to perform these tasks, and build a trusted network of care that will help you meet your needs in return.
When we believe our worth comes from our work, then we will fight against anything that interferes with our work. Maybe especially our own body needs. We’ll gaslight ourselves with ‘you’re fine,’ instead of admitting an injury. We’ll power through an illness. Work through lunch. Take pride in how little help we ask for, even when it causes our suffering.
How many of us believe all the self care affirmations and spread them through our friends, right up until it’s time to direct them at ourselves? Then self care advice is true for everyone but us.
We don’t just have the need to be cared for, we also have the need to provide care. We need our love to be accepted. We need the sense of purpose that comes when our contributions are valued, and we need the intimate connection and trust that is built when you take care of someone.
Providing care is the cure for the loneliness we feel. If you can overcome the stigma and believe that you have a right to care in return, you create opportunities for connection.
Before you can perform these tasks, you have to learn how. Every job requires training, and most of us have never received training on how to provide care.
Caregiving requires knowledge in a lot of different areas, cooking, cleaning, emotional regulation, teaching, childhood development, medical care. Each one of those areas is a profession people dedicate their entire energies to, and yet we also expect this knowledge to be default.
When we provide care to our communities, we have inspiration to learn. Especially when it comes to care, we seem able to do things for others we can’t for ourselves. We can learn these skills, and then we can practice and improve by using those skills in service of our loved ones.
Caring for others shows you how to accomplish care tasks, but it also shows you how your effort contributes to someone’s well being. It gives you evidence it’s worth it. Then when taking care of yourself becomes challenging, you will know that your efforts will pay off, because you’ve seen it.
When you perform care tasks for people around you, you are creating actual security for yourself by building a network of care. Caregiving will build a true sense of internal security because it creates actual material security. Fortunes are lost, power is seized, but community is where actual security lies.
Deeply special relationships are built in those vulnerable moments when we need care. In both directions – the caregiver and the cared. I’ve experienced it with my son and I’ve seen it again and again in teachers, nannies, paraeducators, spouses during an illness, adult children tending to aging parents. When you are caregiving, you are with someone in the realest of the real. In intimate, tender, moments of need. If you can meet them there, being just as real, witnessing the vulnerability, that is connection. That is the sustenance we crave to meet our social needs and stop the loneliness.
It’s convenient for Power to condition us to believe these tasks are simplistic and unworthy of respect. We’ll think it’s acceptable for professional care providers to be barely paid. We’ll tell our children ghost stories about a future without dignity to keep them diligently and fearfully preparing for their future in the workforce. We’ll tell mothers and family caregivers that they are innately equipped for the job, abandoning them alone in their shame when they know how they struggle. We’ll internalize the systemic shame of having our human needs denied and think that buying the next home workout appliance or MLM skin care regimen is all that stands between us and happiness.
Our care needs are our humanity made manifest. Helping each other meet those care needs is how we can fall back in love with humanity and fight for a world built around it.