Welcome to Tales of Care

"If we lived in a society where equity, respect, access, and justice were realized, and unearned privilege and inequality and oppression were transformed, the impact of trauma exposure in our lives would look dramatically different. Suffering would still occur. People would sustain injuries and contract illnesses and even hurt each other. The difference is that we would only have to confront that suffering at face value: an injury, an illness, a hurtful act. We would not have to wonder if disparities between rich and poor, white people and people of color, heterosexual people and gay/lesbian/bi/transgendered people, and so on contributed to the suffering. We would not have to wonder if we personally benefit from the disparity that underlies the suffering. We would not have to wonder if we are vulnerable to the same disparity. We would not have to decide whether we should act to change the disparity, or if we should blame the person suffering for the disparity, or if we should ignore the disparity altogether.” 

Laura Van Dernoot Lipsky (2009) Trauma Stewardship: An Everyday Guide to Caring for Self While Caring for Others

Everyday I care for others, it s my job and it is something that I am paid to do. When I wake up in the morning I mentally prepare myself on the 40 minute walk to experience the day to day of the patients that I navigate. As a care navigator I walk with underserved individuals and together we face their barriers head on. We experience the resistance set in place by the health care system and we succumbed to the systems expectations in order to surmount to our desired goal.
Equity, respect, access, and justice is not something that my patients do not experience, in fact those concepts are usually the reason that many of them drop out of the health care system; allowing themselves to fall prey to not only opportunistic infections, but a continued cycle of disempowerment from their environment.

They are contributors to their environment, but are also victims and the scars that they carry because of the injustices they have faced is what builds their personal barriers to care. It is no surprise that their health is often a reflection of their surroundings- the garbage that piles up on the curb, dirty syringes on the ground, human waste, and unwashed streets. There is no respect, their is no concern, and the lack there of is what forces the access that should be a priority (after all, it is what improves equity in care) to become a mirage. Their health outcomes are at the mercy of others. The lack of resources for an overhaul on their rooms, the SRO building, their neighborhoods makes it impossible to think of alternatives to improve their wellness.

We navigate together through murky waters in search of solutions. We navigate through dirty streets, taking in air that has the aroma of smog with a dash of urine. We sift for resources for personal improvement when there aren't none- after all, if there isn't enough to clean the streets then there isn't enough for free food.

In Tales of Care I examine the environment and its affect on personal and community health. I look at concepts like equity, respect, access, and justice, in relation to personal and community health in order to understand how they influence our environment and our chance for opportunity to improve our health and well-being.