Deconstructing Value

Robin’s Nest, Linocut and watercolour on Paper, 11 x 14, 2024 by Helen Ries

From an early age much was expected of me. I was put in school programs that were too challenging for me, like enriched French immersion. I found this program hard and it made my school life difficult. I would often ask my parents to change but they would never hear of it. I was going to succeed and that was the end of the discussion. 

I bungled my way through high school but ended up doing fairly well in university, at least my classes were in English so that helped. I even went on to eventually complete a Master’s degree. The expectations didn’t change for life outside of school. The pressure was on to hit all the markers and more.

I shouldn’t really lay all the blame for these expectations at the feet of my parents. The late 80s and early 90s, when I came of age, the messaging was all about female empowerment. The promise was gender equality, equal pay, equal opportunities and limitless choices. Girls could have it all, be it all. There were no excuses anymore, just get it done. 

Like many other women, the message that success on all fronts was the only option landed heavily in my consciousness. Our self worth, our financial worth and our social worth was directly tied to our place in the workforce. And so, like many of my peers, I worked hard, really hard, to find professional success. Eventually it got easier and towards midlife my career was sailing along smoothly. I moved from portfolio to portfolio, learning, growing and moving forward. 

Then in my early 40s, my parents died. 

When my parents died I became responsible for the day-to-day care of my brother Paul, a person with Down syndrome and other disabilities.  

I wondered how this was going to work. How was I going to go to work and take care of my brother? At the time he was working and doing well but the death of my parents left him shredded. He needed a lot of support. I was grieving, I was completely overwhelmed and in uncharted territory.

Eventually, I called my boss and resigned from my job. My job title, my pension, my benefits, my career path, my colleagues, professional accelaids, my focus, all gone in that one phone call. I had a new job title now, I was a caregiver. 

Being a caregiver was not in any part of the stories I had been told about what my life would entail. It was also not anywhere in the 90s empowerment mantra I had embraced. 

When a woman becomes a mother, she is a caregiver too. But mothering is highly valued both culturally and biologically. Mothering is essential to the continuation of human life, central to family and societal structure. For women who choose this path, it is a celebrated passage of life, admired and recognized. Caregiving for someone other than your children, is not viewed in the same way.

When I gave up work and become a caregiver I moved to the bottom of the ladder, I became unrecognized, undervalued, misunderstood and unpaid.

Whether it was conscious of not, having no value was impossible for me to process. So I did what I do best, I started to work really, really hard. I poured my heart and every minute of the day into being a good sister and disability advocacy. I built coalitions of hundreds to change government policy around disability benefits. I took my story to the media. I endured gruelling meetings to fight (unsuccessfully) for additional funding for my brother. I started a national nonprofit that supported other people like me, siblings in caregiving roles. I started a busy consulting practice, I earned a graduate certificate in evaluation, I built another coalition, this time to fight greedy developers in our neighbourhood and I joined different research projects. I worked tirelessly contributing where I could and eking out an income all while caregiving during complex times. Behind this gruelling workload was my search for new ways to demonstrate I had value.

Suddenly 10 years have slipped past. 

Now, in midlife I find myself standing in the rubble of the expectations and promises of my early years. 

I am working on deconstructing those early learnings and rewriting the mantra. 

My value and worth is not awarded by others but is inherently possessed and immeasurable by the standards of others.