Depending on One Another

A.H. Reaume, disabled from a brain injury, wrote about how dramatically her life changed with some help once in a relationship. Her partner does the household chores and makes sure she eats well and regularly. 

"Being in my disabled body feels different with him than without him in my life. I can work more and make more money. I can do it with pain even. I have much higher hourly earning potential, so I work more hours than he does, and he does things that make my life simpler. I've never made more money freelancing in my life, and I can do that only because of him. I feel better. Being partnered as a disabled person is a vector of disabled privilege we really don't talk about enough. I could not do this single."

It made me think of all the men throughout the last couple hundred of years who made huge contributions to society with the help of someone doing all the other work necessary in their lives. Her partner isn't doing anything different than has been done by countless wives. 

And it reminds me of Margaret Trudeau explaining how her mental health was kept in check by a mom who kept her life on a routine, and how much it all fell apart first in university and later when she became the wife of a Prime Minister and any semblance of a routine went out the window.

It also raises the important issue of people with disabilities who stay with abusive partners because it would be so much harder alone. Aloneness should be a choice, not the result of a misfortune. We've got to find our way back toward connecting with others in our community, living together or calling on each other whenever possible. In my city, there's an excellent group called Mamas for Mamas, who will connect with moms who just need help to clear away the dishes or someone to watch the kids for a bit. It's a brilliant idea! 

A big problem is that we feel guilty when workloads aren't perfectly equal or remunerated in kind. Or we might feel used if we're on the giving end of things. It's a capitalist mentality. But a much better maxim to judge fairness is:

"From each according to ability to each according to need."

It's an idea that goes back to the Bible (Book of Acts, Gospel of Matthew, and First Corinthians), and the First Nations' potlatch, so don't reject it out of hand because you think it's Marxist! 

Instead of thinking, should I have to do this, we can consider can I do this. It requires enough self-awareness to know when the right answer is No, not today. My favourite line shared with me when I quit as trustee was, Disappointing people is a sign of having good boundaries.

And of course people pounced on the story, calling the relationship codependent: "A partnership should not be a caretaker/patient relationship." 

Why not?

We worry a lot about helping people so much that they become dependent on us, that they depend on us, as if that's a bad thing. We're in such an independence kick that we shun support and think our place in this world is not to support others. We're supposed to be able to everything all on our own or else we're not worthy of something. Our value can't be a measure of our capabilities, but just from our very existence. 

Another post went down a similar road but with children,

"If you have a child or support someone with ADHD, you have to get over the bootstraps mindset so many of us were conditioned to believe and just doe the shit for them (with permission). . . . They can't keep up with their chores and feel horrible about it? Scrap the chores and figure out which one chore they do have the capacity for. Troubleshoot how to make this chore more automated. Build onto the list slowly from there. Do this with patience. Stop shaming ADHDers into believing that they should power through rather than figuring out accommodations for themselves." 

As a mom of three, all of us with variable capacities, we've found it works better to have a collective brain. Instead of it being a problem that one of us keeps forgetting to put the milk away, or take the key out of the car ignition, or whatever, we work collectively to make sure things get done. No judgment. No hassles. We can do it all together. 

Now that 10% of people are currently struggling with Long Covid, and the numbers of infections keep rising, so the number of people with disabilities will keep rising, we need a much better way of thinking about dependency.