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Community Imagine a world where collective care was a daily practice—rather than a reaction to cancer, global pandemics and structural oppression. "When I found out my 7-year-old daughter had cancer, in the middle of a pandemic, I did not cry. I sat in shock in the surgical waiting room for five long hours. The crying didn’t come when she had her first dose of radiation or her first infusion of chemo. "The crying came, instead, at the most unexpected of moments: moments of care. Meals started arriving on our doorstep—handmade tikka masala, warm sourdough, fresh flowers. A care pack with personalized capes instantly turning us into a team of superheroes on our journey into treatment. "They all brought me tears. Something about people reaching out, during their busy lives, to care for us, the intimacy of it all, turned me into an emotional puddle. "As our neighbors pushed a 500-pound free piano the three blocks to our house so that we could keep ourselves entertained through a winter of social distancing, I started to wonder why we’d waited so long to be in community like this. Why did it take cancer to create this sort of intimate collective care?" |