The cover of the zine says Careceiver in bold text with a collage of a person in a pink bed below it. They are surrounded by cartoony blue flowers, a crescent moon, and swallow birds in flight, as well as one strawberry on a vine. It is dark in the room and there is a pink sawtooth star in the window near their bed. They appear to be tired. Below the collage it says Casper Elliot.
A two page spread. The first page says: Why don’t caregiver and caretaker have opposite meanings? It's because caretaker is the older word. It was used in reference to maintenance of objects as well as people. The word "caregiver" became popular much later in the context of taking care of other people, possibly as a way to acknowledge their personhood. The word caregiver is flexible and can describe the work done to take care of elders, children, and disabled people, and can refer to paid or unpaid arrangements. In spite of this, there remains a lack of language surrounding the very ordinary human experience of taking care others.
Page two has a list that says: That's my... Parent/Child, Partner/Spouse, Brother/Sister/Sibling, Teacher/Student, Doctor/Patient, Caregiver/?????(Five Question Marks) Something is missing here… (There is an arrow pointing to the question marks line, which is circled.)
Another two page spread. Page three has an ornate floral border and says: We have the word "patient," but many disabled people don't have professional caregivers. The vast majority of care work is unpaid and done by a family member or other loved one. Despite the variety of relationships through which disabled folks get their needs met, there's still not a highly flexible counterpart to caregiver.
Page four says: Why does this language gap matter? Beside the heading is a colorful painting of a person in bed looking tired. There is another person beside them holding their hand. The second person’s head is hanging low as if in sorrow. There is a bulleted list. The first bullet says: Disabled people and their caregivers are often lonely. This is not helped by a lack of recognition of their important relationships by society
Second bullet: While caregiver support groups of all kinds are common, disabled people are often partitioned off into patient support groups where members share an illness. This undermines cross-disability solidarity and movement building
Careceiver, a disability zine (1/2)
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