" Call it a clan, call it a network, call it a tribe, call it a family. Whatever you call it, whoever you are, you need one. " - Jane Howard
Disability or not, families our part of our lives, our happiness, or lack thereof. While much of our earlier workshops focused on having a child with a disability, in our discussion of adulthood we turn to two other roles, parents with disabilities and siblings.
There is a certain level of responsibility that people must face as they grow into adulthood. Paying bills, cleaning house, and going to work are just a few of the mundane, everyday responsibilities. The responsibility that people might not expect is that of facing repressed childhood emotions. Whether we are ready for them or not, these feelings often creep out of our subconscious and place themselves in our minds as we grow older. For an adult who has a sibling with a disability, these feelings might creep up more often than others.
As adults, we expect to be caring for our own children, to be responsible for them financially, for their safety, their health and protecting them from all the dangers that lurk in the world. We don't often expect to assume responsibility for our brother or sister.
When a parent has had a disability such as mental illness throughout one's childhood, there is a sense of loss, of missing out, of growing up a little too soon. Taking care of a parent, especially when one is a young adult, but in middle age and late adulthood as well - it just seems backward somehow. No matter how old we get, there is that image of our parents as the caretaker, and there is a sense of being off-balance, of sadness, when the situation is reversed with the child providing care.
As each Disability Access workshop is limited to two days, it is impossible for us to cover all the issues important to individuals with disabilities and their families. Each workshop, we pick one or two topics to highlight, with a special emphasis on those that are more common in Indian country or the nation in general. The three topics of focus selected for this section of the workshop are having a parent with a disability, relationships with siblings and caregiving for older relatives.
Growing Up with a Parent with Mental Illness