A caregiver recently told me she "struggles with how heavily Jack's messaging focuses on male caregivers, particularly when many of the challenges being described feel universal to caregivers regardless of gender."
She's right. We do not celebrate the women in our community enough.
The truth is women have carried the lion's share of caregiving since the dawn of time, and probably always will unless something changes.
Jack's focuses on men not because men matter more, but because their invisibility is a specific, fixable problem, and fixing it is how we get somewhere better. My hope isn't a world where the caregiver identity belongs to one gender. I believe that identity belongs to anyone that wants it.
To every female social worker who's handed our brochure to a family facing a health crisis. To the 40% of our board members who are women. To every woman who's reached out asking, "how do I get my caregiver to engage with Jack's?". To every woman who's stood beside this coalition without asking for credit. To every female caregiver who's pulled up a chair in one of our gatherings: We see you. We need you. We appreciate you. You belong here.
Consider the story of Jane Menning. She's been a caregiver to her husband for nearly 9 years. The kind of marathon caregiving journey that's becoming far more common as medicine advances. If you ask me, caregivers like Jane need far more than a few pep talks in a support group. They need to feel like they belong to a community that understands what they're going through. They need to feel like they matter.
We've never turned anyone away from a Klatch for not being a man, and Jane is living proof of why. Over eight years ago, the men in a Klatch decided Jane mattered as much as they did. And she walked away from that experience feeling like she mattered. That's what's possible when a community decides belonging isn't the same as blending in.
As a result Jane keeps coming back. She became a donor who also raises funds for us. She became a Klatch facilitator (that's her facilitating in the photo above). And a few weeks ago she showed up for our first-ever ambassador training.
At Jack's we don't get stronger by hearing what we want to. We get stronger by hearing what we need to. Please keep speaking up. We're listening.