Caring for the light; not denying the dark

What if we started thinking about care—caring for kids, caring for the aging, caring for our families—not as a personal juggle, but as a broken and fixable system?

For too long, we’ve patched the work of care together using duct tape and force of will, while neglecting to admit that this is a collective struggle that transcends sectors and economic strata. The gift of the coronavirus? It’s laid bare just how broken our care system is, but also how ripe for re-design.

When I wasn’t writing this newsletter or working on my book in the last month, I was probably doing one of these things: caring for my daughters or curating this list on the 100+ people re-imagining care in this country. It’s called the Care 100 and it was designed and produced by my collaborators at the Holding Co.

Check it out sometime today. Spend time with these people. I have, and I can promise that it gives you a sense of just how varied, inventive, and gentle we really can be.

Our headlines tell a different story right now. The news that 545 migrant children have been lost by our government is unfathomable. I will not forget it. I must not. But I must also not forget that a social worker named Brenda Eheart negotiated with the Pentagon to buy an old military base outside of Chicago and then filled it with families, foster kids, and surrogate grandparents, or that a bunch of kids with disabilities gathered at a camp in the middle of the woods and it sparked one of the planet’s most important revolutions, or that people are tearing nursing homes down and replacing them with small, intimate homes where elders can age in place safely and with lots of laughter and joy.

This is all the truth. It is all our truth.

Today, try to hold some of the dark and some of the light side by side. Don’t turn away from either one. That’s the muscle I’m building in these horrible, beautiful times.

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I’ll be part of an interesting discussion about White parents and school integration here this afternoon. Join us!

I first started really thinking about care as a system when I wrote this series at The New York Times about a year ago:

“Does America Care About Care? Not Enough”

“Child Support vs. Deadbeat States”

“A New Wave of Caregivers: Men”