What does it mean to be a caregiver?

When people ask me what my job is there are several answers I could give. I am a babysitter, a nanny, a childcare provider, and a caregiver. In recent years I've begun using the last most frequently. I think it most accurately describes the kind of babysitter, nanny, childcare provider that I am. I seek to provide families with a safe, loving, engaging space for their children and a meaningful and mutual relationship based on learning with me.

I am only weeks away from graduating Mount Holyoke and beginning the next leg of my journey onward to become a registered nurse, then a lactation consultant, and a full-spectrum doula somewhere along the way. I was recently thinking about my future in nursing and the way that it appears (on the surface) to be so completely different from my undergrad work at Mount Holyoke studying Liberal Arts. What I mean is that I am moving from a space that emphasizes personal growth, emotional engagement with the material, and models of messy learning to one that is all about efficiency, patholigization, and the removal of human subjectivity. From the classes (biology, anatomy, statistic for God's sake) to the clinical practice it is seemingly based on logic, problem solving, and placating upset "customers". You will often hear nurses describe a large portion of their jobs as customer service. But in this model of capitalist, hyper speed, transactional health care, where is the space for what I have learned at Mount Holyoke? Where and how do I navigate bringing love into "hard" science? 

I love in excess. It is the dead elephant I drag into every relationship. The word, the commitment, the actions, it comes naturally to me. It is a part of myself that has made me look more deeply at ways of loving. In the past year I have experienced shifts and significant losses in relationships I believed I would feel strongly attached to for the rest of my life. I have experienced heartbreak from non-romantic relationships that have made me confront that perhaps I love too much or that my love can be outgrown. It is through this love-in-excess that I often position myself as caregiver. Romantically, platonically, in my work as a nanny, and as my future in nursing.

Nursing, at large, is about empathy. Because it is the job of a caregiver. But it is not enough for me to care for my patients as medical patients. It is not enough to meet needs and do charts. I aspire to be a feminist nurse. To distinguish my care from the institutions of medicine I may work for. Feminist healthcare means patient advocacy, creating space for personal narrative, for asking before telling, and for a physical touch that is not only with permission but with acknowledgment of the powerful relationship between patient and health care provider and  and the recognition of the patient as more than a passive body. Because I care I cannot settle for less.

I wonder, in positing this model of feminist healthcare that refuses to dismiss love from studying microbiology and uses love to fuel this feminist work-- even if it means my work takes longer, takes more from me-- if I can learn to advocate for myself as patient.

One of my favorite blogs, Feminist Midwife has a post about seeing patients. Stephanie writes, 

"Throughout my day, I see people. The phrase “I see patients,” is a common one in clinical care. It does not impart any actual depth in how one performs that task. For me, when I say, “I see patients,” I almost choke up with the weight of that phrase. I see people’s lives in 15 minutes. I see the weight people carry on their shoulders and behind their eyes."

When will I, as a caregiver, see myself?

-M