Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: co-care agreements?

[Eris Weaver (eris]

Muriel Kranowski wrote:

> > My takeaway was that, at least in the abstract, we're willing to provide

> > and to accept various kinds of concrete shortish-term help and some

> > medium-term help, but most people didn't want to give or accept very

> > personal or quasi-medical care or to make open-ended commitments except
of

> > a trivial kind. 

 

Here's another thing that gets left out of these conversations.

 

While we have community-wide agreements and expectations, we also have
individual relationships with each other. Some of my neighbors are like
family to me; some I wouldn't necessarily choose as friends but we have
cordial working relationships; I have ongoing low-level conflict with one.
Most of us are going to be willing to invest far more time and effort - and
of a more intimate nature - helping those with whom we have deeper
relationships. (I was willing to give B an occasional ride to the doctor; I
spent time in the hospital spoonfeeding A.) We also differ in our
willingness to receive certain kinds of help (W did NOT want any community
member doing ANY personal care at all). How much people are willing & able
to help others also depends upon their own burdens at the time - I have less
energy to help others when my wife is recovering from surgery.

 

Any community-wide agreements made about all this are necessarily going to
be abstract and somewhat vague. It's still useful to have the conversation,
but be wary of making assumptions that because we're in community we're
going to be able to take care of everyone's every need, or that people will
be cared for equally. 

********************************************

Eris Weaver, FrogSong Cohousing (Cotati, CA)

Graphic Facilitator & Group Process Consultant

eris [at] erisweaver.info . 707-338-8589 . http://www.erisweaver.info