To Work? Or Not Work?
Today, there are a ton of books you can find about women in the work place or about entering the work place. Ivanka Trump, Sheryl Sandberg, Susan Pinker. I have read some of these books but it feels like It’s no longer a women’s movement that we tackle together, but a fierce competition with winners and losers. And the fight might not be over. It must be even harder for disabled men in traditional and conservative environments to not be working. They are supposed to be the ‘bread winners’. But here’s the deal; we as a society today have a very real discrimination towards the sick and disabled or even marginalized communities. It’s not in every Country that it’s like this I hear, but here in North America, we are trying our best to point it out. And as a schizophrenic, we are not sick all the time. We have medicine nowadays that gives us the ability to cope and stand on our two feet and it actually works. Lawyer, Author, Speaker and Professor Elyn Saks is a person who lives with Schizoaffective Disorder. But she has persevered at Yale, Oxford and Vanderbilt University with the incredible support from colleagues and friends. She has written over 60 Academic Journals about the mentally ill and their rights in The United States. But it’s true, sometimes you require some help and that’s the reality. So, I ask this question to my fellow schizoaffectives; to work? Or not to work?
I’ve actually been scouted for work by some of my husband’s colleagues. It is not part of their culture at the school that women stay home and do something like knit. And I don’t think they know about my illness. So, I am with a very small subgroup of people in the world who don’t have salaries. I’ve been asked to be an Educational Assistant and work with children who have disabilities at the local Elementary School. And it would be a great match if someone like me with limitations could be a part of the working world and be a guide for the kids. People living with disabilities want to have a purpose and be a part of their communities and have futures too. I’ve also been asked about working at the local Children’s Aid Office for Foster Care, Payukotayno. That happened this week when a colleague saw me out on a walk.
I loathe the question: what do you do? Because I’m opting out of teaching yoga nowadays due to the conversations around cultural appropriation and the idea that it’s a spiritual practice and not an exercise. In short, I’ll probably write another Journal about this but I don’t want to practice a religion when I am exercising. And the first yoga I ever did was Hot Yoga in Kingston, Ontario. I absolutely adored the training and saw great benefits in my fitness level. But activists are yelling that we are oppressing the practice and calling us white supremacists if we don’t fit their ideas of how to do the pose.
It’s hard for people with Schizophrenia to be part of the living truth that people with disabilities have been segregated in North America by the same evil that we fought over with the Nazis. Eugenics was something that Hitler enforced. Forced sterilization and genocide could find someone like me and with things like MAID in Canada, I don’t think the fight is over. MAID stands for Medical Assistance in Dying. A lot of people with pain are opting for assisted death because “Things will never get any better”. It’s an extremist viewpoint that I see as wrong and stupid. We as the disabled don’t want to be helped to die, we want to be HELPED TO LIVE. That’s a world of a difference in philosophy for the sick.
My purpose isn’t to pressure anybody who is living with a brain disease to leave their comfort zone. I just feel like there needs to be more to life than just medicine and conversations with doctors. A lot of mentally ill people are isolated and can’t do simple tasks like cook for themselves. I once heard in the Yoga Community; "yelling self care at a person who needs community care is a problem of this generation.”
I just want to say that to be left out of the working world feels like a robbing. Feminism has done something very ignorant for people who stay at home. It’s no longer a woman’s right to chose, but a social status just like the hoes before them. You no longer have respect from society staying at home, children or no children. There’s a different expectation for women today.
And I would like to think that your friends, your family, your pets, your excursions paint a picture of who you really are not just your career because some of us are busy with other things. It’s not a bad thing to just look after yourself and your loved ones and find peace of mind, is it? To do the important things and dance in the rain. And set sail for a better tomorrow.
