Tuning in...An act of care & LOVE 💖🖤💖🖤
Yall, I find lessons about caregiving everywhere...
This time it was while reading Yung Pueblo’s post from yesterday titled “Befriending the Challenge of Love” which is ostensibly about romantic partner love... And yet I noted, “oooh, some of the lessons really seem to broadly apply.”
The line below had me thinking about all relationships and the parallels....
“A relationship is not an escape, it is a deep form of arrival, one where if you want the relationship to succeed, you will have to face yourself with great honesty and give your partner a high level of presence so you can keep feeding the connection the two of you have.”
This seems essential to ALL healthy relationships that we want to sustain....And since I focus on relationships between caregivers and those they care for...let’s go there...
If we think of “partner” as the person we are caring for, what gems and precious resources can we find for ourselves in this sentence? in the whole post?
Some of the treasures I found:
“...you will have to face yourself with great honesty...”: If only I had a dime (inflation) for every time I received a hard-to-swallow truth about myself from a young person I was caring for...or try a whole class of them. I have been told all about myself in so many ways.. from my appearance to my behavior. I have had my own words handed back to me on a platter. The phrase: “yeah, you’re right” has become a regular part of my communication thanks to the younger folks I have worked with. And it’s usually followed by a course correction of some sort. Most recently, a hygiene-focused 3-year-old noted some lint between my third and fourth toes and my ashy ankles. Some might say that this little one chose violence... to me it was the unvarnished truth of someone who has yet been conditioned to give anything else. And it led to action: I took an extra long bath that night and used at least three moisturizers.
“A relationship is not an escape...”: There are times when I have tried to set aside my “personal” stuff that “only affects me” to put on my “caregiver” hat...but I always find that “wherever I go, there I am”1. All of me. There was the time that an unexpected class visit from a team of folks I did not know had me so twisted up inside, I actively ignored a crying young person, my student, who I was entrusted with the sacred responsibility to care for, all in an attempt to maintain “control”. Pretending to just be the “effective teacher”, and ignoring the side of me that struggled with deep doubts about my abilities and existence led me to deny a young person the care they deserved. The “effective teacher” and the insecure person were both real parts of me that actually worked well to complement each other. Typically, when I was in tune with my insecurities, those were the moments I was also most effective. I showed up fully in my humanity. Turns out trying to leave parts of myself out of interactions usually results in me acting in ways that do not help me or those I’m caring for. The times I have been able to notice in the moment, I have been overly detached emotionally, or short and less compassionate, or scattered and not mentally or emotionally present. “Presence” brings us to my final item, and the point where I remind us all (myself included) that perfection is NOT the goal.
“...a high level of presence...can keep feeding the connection…”: For me this speaks to being tuned in as the goal...not perfection. “Presence” allows for resets and naming when and how I’ve shown up in ways that don’t align with who I want to be, because those moments will ALWAYS come. I am human.
Story Time: In the last several weeks, I loaded two young “partners”, a 5-month-old and a 3-year-old, into the car for a trip to the zoo that we were eager AND on track to leave for 45 minutes earlier. I noticed that my actions were faster than usual...I was actually breaking a sweat... and we weren’t playing tag nor was my other friend, “Anxiety,” visiting. Next I noticed my words were quicker and shorter than my normal, and my tone did not feel pleasant. I paused. And I didn’t just stop for the pause, I named it in the moment. I put the car back in park and glanced in the rearview. “Hey, Friend. I’m going to take a moment to breathe. I’m not being as patient with you or me as I would like to be.” We sat quietly for a minute, The Little Mermaid (Halle’s) album played in the background, and my 3-year-old friend looked out the back window and sang along.
A sudden, unplanned, and unagreed upon outfit change had thrown us off the zoo schedule. Now, I’m competitive. I like to meet a time goal and I set them liberally and realistically to make for likely, reasonable wins. I pride myself when I beat the clock. When it comes to caregiving, if I’m ever competing, it’s with myself. And usually I’m tapped into the fun of it, but for whatever reason I wasn’t in that moment, and my attitude was NOT feeding our connection. As I was about to put the car into drive again, I stopped and took an extra ten seconds. I’ve found that when I tell myself I’m ready, it is often helpful to wait another ten seconds to truly be sure. I literally count to ten. After the extra beat, I turned and looked at my friends and thanked them both for being patient with me and helping me be more patient with them. A sweet quiet-ish voice responded, “you’re welcome” and off we went to the Zoo where a time was had by all.
Me tuning in enough with my own body to recognize that I needed a sacred pause, was a moment of presence that benefited us all that day. I don’t know that it is possible to ALWAYS be present, with anyone, including ourselves, AND if we tune in enough, moments of frustration, impatience, anger...those emotions often maligned as “bad” (*whispers* “there are no bad feelings”)... can be powerful teachers and guides. Whether or not my 5-month-old and 3-year-old friends realized it, I modeled taking accountability, taking action to show up differently in that moment, as well as demonstrating that our connection comes before schedules and plans (Beings over Things) ...among other embedded lessons.
Yung Pueblo follows the line above with suggested actions that can support connections. While I think it is really difficult, nay impossible, to prescribe specific actions folks should take to build connections (we are all so wildly different with our different contexts, wants, likes, preferences), it all seems to boil down to tuning in... with ourselves and with those we are caring for.
Now one last bit of realness for this post: I have found from my experience of receiving feedback about my caregiving and offering feedback to other caregivers, commentary on caregiving can feel prickly. We are all doing the absolute best we can...and within a system that is often unkind to caregivers, especially caregivers who are Black, queer, women or gender expansive folks. This is not meant to be “another thing to do” or a reprimand. I invite you to take what feeds your soul now and leave the rest. And, from my experience, the more I have practiced tuning in to myself and my “partners”, the easier and more enjoyable caregiving has gotten, and the deeper my relationships have grown. And in the end that’s all I really want.
🫶🏿🫶🏿🫶🏿
A variation on “wherever you go, there you are”, which I first encountered in the book written by Jon Kabat-Zinn, though it seems to be understood that this wisdom has been passed along in cultures that practice Buddhism long before it was used as Jon Kabat-Zinn’s book title.