I’m on a plane now, reading over the notes I’ve made from
the last four days. I’ve just come from
a week of listening, sharing and thinking about how society can be shaped and
shifted to support family caregivers. I
was thinking too, about how care is at the heart of social change.
The SIX (Social Innovation Exchange) Vancouver Summer School
brought together social innovators from across the globe. The place of care in social change was a
theme that ran through every discussion and workshop and we were nudged to
think about care through the cultural lens of Canada’s First Nations.
Day One began at the Musqueam Community Centre where a
native woman welcomed us at the doorstep by sweeping our bodies with a cedar
branch. A Musqueam choral group in
gorgeous, traditional regalia sang us into the meeting room as the blowing tall
grass framed the sea outside the windows.
What had this to do with caregiving? I listened as our Musqueam hostess told us
about finding herself through her culture.
Learning a forgotten language and studying the cultural traditions of
elders had given meaning and personal power to her life. “Language is culture”, she said. I asked myself, “Do we caregivers have a
language that gives us meaning and power?
Have we forgotten our language?
Did we ever have one, or do we need to invent one?” I reflected on how difficult it is to find
the words for asking for help or offering it.
Frances Westley in conversation with Vickie Cammack began
the day. Frances is unique amongst
respected academics in that she has two feet in the real world. “Getting to Maybe”, her book on the dynamics
of social change is as easy to read as it is profound and full of
possibility. But Frances is also a
caregiver. Her adult daughter suffers
from a serious mental illness, so Frances looks after her four year old granddaughter. Her personal experience permeates her work.
Frances began by inviting us to consider silently where we
stood on a happiness scale of one to ten at that very moment. “This exercise can give you a sense of what
you improve in your life… in your day.
Examine both the positive and the negative”, she said. “It gives you an idea of what can be
changed.” I vowed to share this idea
with caregivers and to practice checking in with myself regularly.
Frances reflected on the pressures of our contemporary world
– what pulls us away from being present in caregiving and being aware of our
own true selves. She described being pulled
between connecting (networking such as caregiving, chatting or emailing) and
doing (working such as tasks at home or producing a report at the office). Connecting with people is the great time
consumer, but we tell ourselves it is not ‘real work’. Our sense of what constitutes worthy labor is
from a bygone era, Frances lamented. And
so, we experience a sense of unrest and anxiety. We try to squeeze in caring for the people we
love between times when we are actually ‘working’. “And yet”, Frances said, “caring for each
other IS our real life. Shouldn't work be
for the sake of THAT?”
Vickie asked Frances about the role of resilience and vulnerability in igniting social change.
Frances began with resilience; “I have observed that resilient people
have usually experienced some form of isolation and they’ve figured out how to
overcome it. They’ve cracked the
code. Then, they’ve been able to figure
out how to facilitate collaboration.” I
thought about the successful and strong caregivers I know and how they fit that
description perfectly.
Vickie reminded us that both vulnerability and resilience
were necessary ingredients of innovation.
I wondered whether vulnerability was the opposite of resilience, but my
question was answered when Frances stated that they’re not. She described how vulnerability is only
negative if there is no engagement. If
both or all parties recognize their own and each others’ vulnerability,
positive change can occur. She described
a phenomenon called ‘catastrophic de-humanisation’; a relationship of true
exclusion where one party fails to recognize the value of the other. “And this is getting worse in our society”,
she said. “We are so busy that we feel
hollow. We don’t feel connected to
ourselves, much less to other people. We
are afraid to stop because we’re afraid to be confronted by our own ‘desert
spaces’. Our fear of the other actually
goes up. So, we become more afraid of
the vulnerability outside of ourselves and we become isolated.” I began to
realize that because care is not valued, those involved in care relationships
are often catastrophically dehumanized by members of society who are
distracted, fearful and hollow. Frances
summed her message up this way: “Whatever challenge comes into our life (something
that provokes fear of the unknown) SIT
WITH IT for a while. Admit the
vulnerability in yourself and in other people, too. That’s the way we can see that we all want
similar things. Because, cynicism will
be the response if you don’t recognize the vulnerability in yourself and in
others, and cynicism is the enemy of change.”
My colleague and mentor Al Etmanski inspired in an afternoon
session titled “The Sacred Headwaters of Social Innovation.” (Keep an eye out for Al's new book coming out soon!) Al is a disability Dad who co-founded PlannedLifetime Advocacy Networks in Vancouver, a model of support for caregivers and
their vulnerable children that has been replicated around the world. Love and necessity are at the headwaters of
innovation, said Al. People invent
solutions to their problems because someone or something they love is
struggling or in pain. But they can’t do
it alone. The disruptive innovator may
be the person with the original idea for change who shouts loudly about it and
attracts attention to the idea.
Bridging innovators support, identify allies and sometimes give
money. Receptive innovators work the
systems within agencies and governments to push a good idea forward. That’s the changemaker team that helped Al
push through the Registered Disability Savings Plan – a Canadian innovation that
provides a tool for creating personal wealth to families raising children with
disabilities. The headwaters of change
are pure love and pure necessity. It’s
up to us to ensure that the waters remain true to their origins as they flow
downstream and into everyone’s water supply.
We must protect the intentions of our fragile models of change for
vulnerable families and we must ensure that love is always the navigator. This is why, says Al, that care is always the
impetus and the guide for social innovation.
In my next post, I’ll tell you about love, power and
learning at the SIX Summer School.
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