Anecdote
We sit at a table in silence. Several days have passed since the news of the earthquake in Turkey and Syria. One of our friends lost her cousin, the cousin’s husband and their three children. We all get up to hug her. We share in the special food she made for the occasion. It is a tradition from home accompanying death, she says.
We feel the weight of the grieving.
Add the distance.
One more friend gets a call from her mother asking her to reach out to distant family in another part of Europe who also lost a relative. “Don’t send a message, call them,” she insists. For our friend, to call would be overwhelming. She doesn’t want to call.
Hearing the cries, the pain, brings more pain and there is enough pain here.
We support her choice.
As a community, we embrace when we are face to face, and share stories; exchange translated text messages when we are apart. We attenuate fears. We fuel hope to heal more. Again, we hug.
Our circle of care…
Over the years of growing awareness, understanding and practicing of mutual accompaniment, we came to define a key element in enabling it: the balance in the Triangle of Care – care giving, care receiving and self-care. The better the balance, the better we can give and receive for ourselves, our community and in our environment.
In the beginning, it was predictable – “Caregivers” were typically women residing in Croatia with more privilege, if not financial, at least, of mobility, knowledge of the lay of the land and language. “Care receivers” were the recent arrivals who did not speak the local language, and were obviously limited in terms of movement and rights.
In the mainstream narrative, the distinction is still prevalent: care-giver is a local, volunteer, donor, or benefactor. The care-receiver, a refugee, foreigner, beneficiary, migrant—or similar category. This begs reexamination because, even if superficially benevolent, the actions may be ones of further humiliation and/or control, in a system that regularly and insistently cares only for itself, and not for those who it is supposed to represent and are in need.
Our experience is full of stories of loss, sadness, tragedy and a plethora of coping and transformative trials and journeys. Some people may bear the brunt of being caregivers and are unable to receive. Others are submitted into the position of being only receivers of care, reinforcing hierarchy, patriarchy, inequality, inflexibility, loss of collective feeling, and exclusion. We continue to learn that the imbalance of the care triangle, the toxic aspects of care, manifest as stress, loss of confidence, burnout, depression and dependency. This, in turn, hurts the whole community in the long run.
Care is so invisible, unrecognized, and undervalued, that bringing the limelight to care, and balancing the triangle of care, have become very powerful acts of resistance, strength and courage.
Mutual accompaniment is a way of being in the world that recognizes our interconnectivity, our shared and unique struggles. For us, solidarity, in part through horizontal participation, is how we keep check on power relations and privilege, to fight against oppression and inequality.
Mutual accompaniment supports authenticity and integrity of individuals and communities through humility, trust, patience, and continuation. It is a means for individual and collective empowerment. Far from easy, we try to practice mutual accompaniment as social activism of radical availability.