A Pause for PAs

Or, perhaps, the most fundamental practicality of my combined personal and professional positionality

Hullo my lovely readers

A content note for discussion of health and social care and personal assistance

Firstly, my heartfelt thanks for your sincerely supportive (and truly lovely!) responses to last week’s letter, on thirty years of attending Pride. For all its overarching celebratory tone, it was a vulnerable one. Both for Little Me and Big Me. So your kindness means a huge amount.

Secondly, this week’s letter is also vulnerable, albeit for a disability-related reason. (Perhaps appropriate, now that we are twelve days into Disability Pride Month.)

I’m training Personal Assistants this evening, in preparation for a fairly long stretch which is structured by a juggled jigsaw of multiple generous people.

That stretch is due to a family situation occurring alongside my ongoing care assessment.

And, in preparing for today’s preparation, I’m struck once again by how my whole life (the personal and professional parts, and the areas where those boundaries blur) is structured by such a jigsaw.

So I’m allowing myself to pause and focus on that practicality.

But, in several different conversations this week, friends and colleagues have reminded me that it is an important practicality to name – and to point to, and to process.

Essential, even.

Since it is itself essential to my existence.

So, as this newsletter is Wordy and Wheely, I’m honouring my wheels by putting it into words.

Words on which I may expand but which, for now at least, I’ve been convinced are self-evident.

Thank you so much for reading, take care of yourselves and one another, and love and solidarity until next time,

Jx