Community is Important but, Difficult to Maintain
The blog title “Community is Important but, Difficult to Maintain” with a globe icon with lines and a group of people icons at the bottom of the globe icon.
Today (July 30th) is Friendship Day and it has inspired me to write about the importance of community and the challenges that people with disabilities face in finding and maintaining community. Community is what provides the connection and support that all of us need for a good quality of life. Let’s explore the positives of community.
Needs for social connection: Human beings are social beings. If you are an introvert like myself where energy is drained from social interaction, it can be difficult to feel the need for social connection and interaction. However, it is still important to have connections to people to live meaningful lives from small interactions of passing by people to deeper connections of shared experiences and support.
Needs for rest and leisure: Community can be opportunities for rest and leisure. Rest from the work and hustle culture of productivity and enjoying activities that bring relaxation and joy. From drop in opportunities to activities and events, doing something that brings you joy and/or relaxation and rest can sometimes be shared with people with similar interests.
Needs for support: Part of community is having people to lean on, connect with, and provide support in different ways. It can be simple as someone to talk to all the way to someone to trust in difficult situations to lean on. Having different levels of support systems from the community is crucial to our well-being but can take effort on both sides to develop and maintain, which can be difficult when individual needs take priority.
Living with a disability can have its own challenges of maintaining and gaining friendship and community. The most common concerns are energy and income.
Energy can be impacted whether it is from living with the disability itself or the energy to accomodate people around you and the inaccessibility of activities. The resource of energy is an extremely important resource for a person with a disability and it is finite and unpredictable depending on the disability with many other factors that impact daily living. If someone only has enough energy for basic needs as with the disability, it takes more energy, it requires more effort. It is understandable why the choice to ensure that basic needs are met to survive is critical compared to doing something to maintain connection to community and friends.
Having a disability can be expensive and many people with disabilities are low income. Even if someone is not low-income based on numbers, the extra cost of living with a disability is not always considered. It is possible to still have community and friendship as not all opportunities for connection of community needs to cost money. But there can be pressure to spend money especially with consideration of food, temperature regulation, and safety. There are extra challenges like the stigma of being low-income or on benefits, especially when your disability is not visible. A local anti-poverty activist Kendall Worth discusses this topic frequently about the stigma that exists and the challenges faced by people on income assistance and living with disabilities with his blog, Journalism for What Matters. His suggestion of a solution for a social prescription program to allow a sense of community and opportunities for social interaction and connection is something to look into when discussing the barriers to maintaining community.
Amanda