Mental Health Mondays: Vulnerability and Ability

We are not mental health professionals. If you are feeling overwhelmed with emotions like anxiety or depression, or they are impacting your daily life, please reach out to professionals who can help you. If you need immediate help, use the National Suicide Hotline, 1-800-273-8255, which offers online chats as well. Jewish Community Services also offer help to people experiencing emotional crises.

This MHM post talks about disability, vulnerability, and mentions Yom Hashoah. Many of the articles linked are from the Disability Visibility Project and are not written by JMM staff. 


This week, for Mental Health Monday, we’re featuring some different voices. While we are all under strain, as we navigate social distancing and isolation, there are people who live entirely homebound, whether for a period of time or for their whole lives. Some people with disabilities have been experiencing the isolation and lack of freedom many able-bodied people feel, long before governors declared Stay-At-Home orders. Today we face the questions of returning to work, the effects of COVID-19 on the body, and the vulnerability of certain groups, considering our own interests and needs. But to answer these questions, we need to listen and learn from the people who are already dealing with a lack of freedom, due to certain conditions and the failure of structural care in our world.

I encourage you to take the time to listen to folks with disabilities, as they write and speak about their experiences, such as being homebound for years at a time, the way they use social media and technology to support each other, and about vulnerability. In a time when experts and leaders weigh reopening businesses, after establishing who is at risk, we need to hear and amplify these voices.

The Disability Visibility Project was created and is led by Alice Wong.

In light of Yom Hashoah, or Holocaust Remembrance Day, this past week, I want to feature a writer, Zipporah Arielle, who wrote about the holiday in Disability Visibility Project. Zipporah is Jewish and disabled, and a direct descendent of Holocaust survivors, their grandparents. For them, Holocaust Remembrance Day is already filled with emotion and memory, but as our world deals with COVID-19, the question of who is expendable has come to the forefront, as we hear stories of older folks giving up ventilators and the possibility of taking ventilators from people who live on them. This topic of expendable people is a common theme in Nazi ideology, back then and today.

A picture of the writer Zipporah Arielle.

Please read Zipporah’s article, and take the time to think about the long-ranging effects of COVID-19 on vulnerable communities. People in the disabled community have a lot to teach and share, and they should be valued as people, no matter what threatens our world.


 

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