Getting by With a Little Help From My Friends

On Caring Relations

This past week was filled with some really lovely moments of celebration as a long time labour of love was finally shared with the world. My book Finding Hope: Radical Collegiality and Pedagogies of Care in Education is now out there ready and waiting to be read. To get the party started my husband made sushi and bought champagne while my 8-year-old asked important questions about the book’s contents (“Am I in it?”). And since last Thursday I’ve received some really generous congratulations on various social media platforms. When the author copy of the book shows up in the mailbox I will post the requisite selfie (because the publisher has asked for one) and then…get back to work.

Because there’s always more to do. Beyond writing and teaching and serving and caring, the ongoingness of life doesn’t stop. I’d like to think that we are all practicing the self-care habit of celebrating life’s wins, but the truth is that life doesn’t stop for a party. In fact pain is sewn right into the seams of any celebration if we hold the fabric up to the light and look at it closely. Like how my cousin’s art graces the book’s cover but she’s no longer with us to see it and celebrate her own success. And I know there are people I care about who are sitting in hurt right now, trying to balance very full plates, barely making it through the day (let alone to an academic book launch).

So we end up missing each other. Missed moments for care occur all the time and maybe a reason for writing the book was my effort to reframe how too many of us end up walking through life: alone.

Photo by Vishnu Prasad on Unsplash

I don’t want to be alone in times of celebration or sorrow. I’ve been there and done that — and suffered the consequences. But now older and hopefully a little wiser I am trying to break that bad habit. So when a mentor of mine, who I now call a friend, offered to come and speak in one of my classes I said yes! And when another friend offered to provide feedback on a project that

Observables

and I have on the go the obvious answer was of course! Too many times have I said no to offers of care because of some ill-fated need for independence. Trying to prove something to someone. But writing this book has shown me a lot about myself, about the necessity for caring relations to live! So consider sharing this piece with someone you love. Remind them, with Joe Cocker’s raspy voice playing in the background, that we’ll get by with a little help from (our) friends.