I am in the early days of learning how to move and be differently in my body.
I took a fall while rock climbing this week. Dropping to the earth from fifteen feet up a wall, my body tried to protect itself. I landed on my outstretched arm and dislocated my elbow.
I remember being on the wall. I remember being on the ground. I don’t remember the moments in between.
I am learning how to move with three limbs.
There are many things I can do with my body. There are many things I can’t anymore, at least not alone.
I am learning how to receive care and assistance in new ways. At the same time, I am present to my desire to find new ways to do physical tasks independently. Things like opening a jar or cutting a piece of fruit. I notice my resistance to offers to do tasks for me, particularly the tasks I can still do. My independence and agency are cherished, even as the reality of our interdependence is in a particularly strong expression these days.
I keep remembering my grandmother. I wish I could apologize. Sometimes we learn too late.
When the COVID-19 pandemic began, I moved to Paris to accompany my then 99-year-old grandmother through the weeks and months of confinement. I’d never been a sole and full time caregiver for an elder before. In my deepest desire to help her, to relieve her of any burden of excessive effort, I began doing nearly every task for her. I thought I was helping. Instead, I overtook the daily routines and tasks that she still had the capacity to do.
Only now, as I move slowly, finding new ways to accomplish what were previously simple tasks, am I able to experience an embodied compassion for what my grandmother was trying to communicate to me.
Perhaps when we offer or express care, it is not always best to ‘care for.’ We may be wiser to ‘care with’ – to acknowledge the agency and capacity of each person in the caring relationship, both those offering and those receiving care. In this way, to extend care is not to do something for someone. Instead, to care with is to accompany another, offering assistance if and when an endeavor exceeds their limitations in a given moment. Such an embodiment of care allows for a fuller acknowledgement of reciprocity in relationship. I may extend care in a certain expression, and receive care in another. Further, whereas I may currently be in a position of being largely receiving of care, and in the future, I will be able to offer care in return.
Our independence does not negate our interdependence. Just as our interdependence does not negate our independence. These are not mutually exclusive. Perhaps, rather they are mutually constitutive.
It is in the claiming of my own agency that I am able to be present and in service to others.
It is in the recognition of the connection of my life with that of all beings that I am not only called into service, but also supported and sustained through community care, accountability, and nourishment.
There is great power in both agency and compassionate relationship. May we embody the bridge that joins these expressions of humanity, in doing so, honoring the dignity of ourselves and each other.
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