🏩 We need to ritualize chronic compassion.
As a society were do ok to pretty well with compassion at key acute moments like funerals after a death. The soups and the casoerols and the offers of "if you need anything" come pouring in. We may even do okay at the time of diagnosis too. Similar efforts get made. But all the time in between? When it's less acute and less understood? There's no societal ritual for that.
A meal train every night for 2 months (yes 2 months!) after my son died was an amazing out pouring of community support.
But how great would it be to have some of that support in the 10 years between his diagnosis and his death. I believe the same people wanted to do something in those years, but lacking a cue from ritual they not only didn't know how but maybe didn't know if they could/should.
Let's imagine together, what might be a welcome ritual across chronic needs and long term medical care? #ritual #caregiversupport #adultpatientsupport
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Daniel DeFabio
Global Genes
Director Community Engagement, Global Genes
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