The struggles
I’ve shared concerning the transition to working creatively
from home and supporting our family’s shift to living
simply are discussed in-depth in a book I’ve been reading called Radical
Homemaking: Reclaiming Domesticity From A Consumer Culture. Shannon Hayes does
an amazing job of unpacking all the issues I sit with. My internal
squeamishness around being the “woman at home” trying to do most of the cooking
and managing of food resources, my (and I admit) ego concerns about not having
a role that’s paid and yet desperately wanting to move away from participating
in the consumer circle of consumption.
Hayes uses two
terms like opposite sides of a coin, “life-serving economy” vs. the “extractive
economy”. “[The] extractive economy – where corporate wealth was regarded as
the foundation of economic health, where mining our earth’s resources and
exploiting our international neighbors was accepted as simply the cost of doing
business – to a life-serving economy…where our resources are sustained, our
waters are kept clean, our air pure, and families can lead meaningful and
joyful lives.” These definitions were the words I have been searching for to
describe the tension I felt when working to be, in the words of Grace Lee
Boggs, “a more human, human being” to others and the world around me. Before
transitioning out of my job, this tension made me feel perpetually guilty for
being so exhausted after a day of work to be unable to actually practice these
values I held so dear.
In writing about self-care practices for social change makers, I’ve been told by people in discussions that
self-care is only for those who can afford it. Yet, who’s defined what
self-care is? Corporations have carefully crafted a message that even self-care
must be bought and this has been, like a Ping-Pong ball, refracted throughout
our consumer culture. We are told that we need certain brands of lotion to feel
comfortable in our skin, a gym membership to be fit and expensive vacations to
have a break. None of these options are the only ways to take care of
ourselves, but we are told it is so, over and over again. How do we move
through the information we are sold to the truth?
It’s a question
and path that I no longer feel quite so lonely on. Radical Homemakers patiently
holds your hand as you wade into the confusion of wanting to be a “good
feminist” and the desire to be “successful” through the messiness to the
different choices some are making.
I’m definitely
still processing what I’ve read so far. None of the interviewees were openly
disabled, however there was a parent of a disabled child interviewed.
Interestingly this parent used the term “Disability Culture” to describe the
medical industrial complex and the system network that defines Disability as
something to be fixed or "normalized". It made me cringe a bit,
reminding how much work needs to still be done to connect parents and disabled
folks themselves to how the Disability Community defines Disability Culture, as
a cultural, political and social understanding of the experience of
Disability. My reaction reminds me as
with anything where people are gathered to share honestly, it brings up all of
our own stuff. However, it does connect for me on the foundation of longing we
all have for a life and society that has an understanding of human dignity.
I’m looking
forward to reading more and discussing this book with other people. As a
community we sit in the confusion of what we are told will make us successful,
contributing members of society and yet the reality we know in our guts is a sinking feeling about the
price that path takes (on so many levels). It’s great to see folks starting to
explore a different way and share their experiences.
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