when i speak of care i mean care as interdependence. interdependence is used a lot in disability justice. interdependence is a recognition of shared stakes. rather than i care for you, or you take care of me, we take care together. we are both cared for, and care with.

i think a lot about the way that lovers and friends with disabilities and illnesses care together. we might notice each others tremors, the aches that shift us slightly so that we hold ourselves more rigidly. we might remember what causes pain, and what brings pleasure.

we do small things. we bring a chair, arrange a pillow, send a video, we attune to what is needed. it is a dance between us that is a reading of a bodies weather. we tend to one another with the knowledge that the weather always changes.

not all care is this kind of tending to. care is not interdependence when we do not see our lives as always in relation. when we do not see that we are always implicated in each other. when we do not give each others lives the value we do our own.