By Elizabeth J O’Reilly
Who will tell the stories of mothers, if they do not become knowledge makers?
Dr. May Friedman (M. Friedman, personal communications, February 15, 2023)
Introduction
Upon graduating from high school, I did my first degree in Women’s Studies and Canadian Studies. I made it through my degree with a keen interest, but with the mediocre marks of someone trying to make sense of life in their twenties. Upon graduation, I shared a meal with one of my favorite professors who encouraged me to pursue graduate school. He did not know that many of my marks were not as high as the ones I had received in his class, nor how nervous I was about my accrued student debt. I opted to take an administrative job, which seemed like a big step up from my student wages. Plus, it had benefits and a pension, things that are hard to come by in our economic climate.
This job led to another, and another, but never to one that seemed like the right fit for me. In my spare time, I started taking courses again, mostly in secret, not sure how to balance school and work, and not wanting to admit my academic goals. I also dreamed of birthing little one(s) and knew they might interrupt my plans. Over the course of several years, I completed most of a degree before even being officially admitted into a Bachelor of Social Work (BSW) program. In one of my courses, I waddled in pregnant, only to waddle out with a failed mark because my leaky [Note 1] pregnant body could not get it together to write and submit a final paper—fittingly, on the topic of pregnancy work. Graciously, that professor allowed me to submit the paper four years later, so it could be counted towards my BSW, when I was finally admitted into the program. Upon completion of my BSW, I met my next academic goal of being admitted into the Master of Social Work (MSW) program.
My first official class of my social work degree meant I had to miss bedtimes with my child. I left love notes on his bed, Facetimed with him during class breaks, and ignored the milk swelling in my breasts. Within my advanced standing program (a program for individuals with a previous education and work experience), most people introduced themselves with work credentials that blew me away. I was just an administrator and felt sheepish about the fact that most of my identity was tied to being a mother. What did that even mean in an academic setting? Or anywhere for that matter? I was, and am, fundamentally and profoundly in-relation [Note 2] with my child, yet to succeed academically, or in any area of my life, I need to pretend that I am somehow not in-relation with that child. Our neo-liberal, capitalist, patriarchal society demands that I compartmentalize areas of my life—work, school, and parenting—even as my body, thoughts, and self-leaks and overlaps into all areas of life. Mothering and the pandemic help illustrate that we are all fundamentally in-relation with each other, and that we all depend on each other to function and to be well. Yet our culture asks us to pretend that we are not. Instead, we are asked to prioritize the success of capitalism over the well-being of the individual and community.
Autoethnographic in nature, this paper is divided into three sections. The first will discuss my experiences of being in-relation with my child while I attempt to complete my third degree, a MSW. The second will look at how we are in-relation with each other during the pandemic and explore the topic of disability, including my own. Finally, it will propose how we can re-imagine being in-relation.
In-relation as a Parent
Like many maternal bodies, mine leaked so much milk. I did not take this for granted, as I watched some other mothers [Note 3] ache from not having enough. My child refused to take a bottle, so while he was dependent on my milky body to eat, I too was dependent on my baby to drain my leaking body. He set the demand and I offered the supply. Adding to my list of in-relation chores, I was responsible for the cleaning of digested—or not-quite-digested—milk leaking from either ends of his body. So much of mothering involves pushing the self aside to engage in this type of caring labor. Building on Judith Butler’s (1999) notion that gender is formed through repetitive and incessant actions, Mielle Chandler (2007), author of Emancipated Subjectivities and the Subjugation of Mothering Practices, suggests that the identity of mothering, too, is made from repetitive tasks: feeding, wiping, dressing and changing the baby. It is through this repetition of caring acts that mother and child become so profoundly interconnected, or in-relation. With this, Chandler (2007) describes a mother as not just one, but “simultaneously more and less than one” (p. 531). Chandler (2007) argues it is best to understand mothering as “a verb, as something one does, a practice which creates one’s identity as intertwined, interconnected and in-relation” (p. 532). I produced the milk and my baby drank that milk.
My body alone kept my baby’s body alive, both in utero and for the first chunk of his life until solid foods were enough. I was proud of this, but did not speak about it much, as it adds fuel to the shaming of how mothers feed their babies. And blaming mothers is something we do so well in our culture (Caplan, 2000). When I was the only one who could feed him, I could not stray far. Time away was rare, and usually never longer than an hour. So much of mothering means massive changes in mothers’ lives, impacting how we move through the world (Chandler, 2007, p. 536). More than most things, mothering infiltrates all areas of my life, but still, there is tension in talking about it or admitting it. If my child is sick, capitalism pressures me to pretend that I can take care of him, while somehow also doing my paid job. Paid work might get pushed aside, perhaps then pushing aside school work. When any type of work gets done, it might be produced while dealing with the mounting pressure from my child’s elbows and knees digging into me, as he sits a little too close to me on the couch with a podcast blaring in the background to keep him occupied. But somehow, work mostly gets done if only sometimes in a way that is “good enough.” Doing so much at once, while also being in such a demanding in-relation relationship of mothering, is a lot. When people ask me how I balance it all, the real answer is “not well.” But I make it look easy and keep that to myself, wearing the mask of motherhood. Coined by feminist author Susan Maushart (2021), the “mask” hides the realities of motherhood not only from the world, but from ourselves by suppressing both what we know and what we suspect. This leads to a type of silencing of mothers’ realities (Maushart, 2021). No one wants to admit to, or hear about, a mother losing patience with an undeserving child, or not being able to handle all that comes with mothering. I will never be a perfect parent. No one can. Being a good mother is unattainable, its definition contradictory and constantly shifting. Its very idea leaves us feeling like a constant failure (Thurer, 2021).
My leaking in-relation maternal body and its needs were unwelcome in many spaces. While I happily nursed in public, I cannot pretend that, within our patriarchal culture, everyone around me was comfortable. When returning to paid work, most days I had a private space to pump (at that stage, my child used a sippy cup for milk), except for the odd day of training outside of the office. I had the right to be accommodated, but that involved divulging parts of my in-relation relationship with my child, to people with whom I did not want to discuss it. At work, we might celebrate soon-to-be parents with a shower, but not in tangible ways like allowing parents to work from home pre-pandemic, or reducing paid hours. I need to make up the time if I take my child to a doctor and I am only allotted three paid days for when my child is sick, which is more than many, but still nowhere close to accommodating the illnesses that spread in daycares. Leaky maternal bodies and the issues that go with being in-relation with children are not welcome in workspaces and I knew it was easier to keep it all to myself. My mothering self, my body and its problems were best left at home, while my best working self was welcome at work and beyond (Gatrell, 2008).
To engage in academia, at the same time as paid work, means my child and myself—our in-relation relationship—suffers. Of course, we are not meant to constantly be with our children, but including academia in my life, at the same time as employment to pay for said academia, demands something extra from myself and from my child. There were nights where my child had to transition to bed without my milk and bedtime cuddles. Or I need to disappear for an evening or weekend to write a paper. While he plays at my feet, I will crack open a book rather than get on the floor to play in his imaginary worlds. If I do escape his presence, there is the constant threat of interruption. He will burst through the door with a drawing or a bumped knee. Or my mind will wander with worry of how to get him into a recreational program that fits our schedule. The tension of being a mother while engaging in academia is perfectly summarized by Chandler (2007):
“To write a paper is to leave mothering, or rather to leave the type of subjectivity I engage in while mothering. A clean break is neither possible nor desirable, mothering being my topic and so integral to my identity. Indeed, to leave it would be to become someone completely different. As I write, a child asleep in the next room, part of me is still on duty to battle dream monsters or change wet sheets, making a mental note to tell the babysitter (that is the stand-in mother whose labour affords me, temporarily, a paperwriting subjectivity) that the child can’t go swimming tomorrow (I’m worried the cold will turn into an ear infection), adding granola bars to the shopping list. The process is one of traveling between an individuated and separated subjectivity (if it can be called a subjectivity) which is born of mothering. It is an existence fraught with tension, for while each site demands my attention, the former requiring quiet sustained concentration, the latter the alertness of a catcher behind home plate, neither allows me to inhabit the other adequately.” (p. 530)
The tension is that I need to produce like I do not have a kid, and my kid has to pretend that my absence or distraction is not a sacrifice. That is a lot to ask of a precious in-relation relationship.
Within our capitalist society, the tension of balancing paid work, schooling, and mothering, not to mention the caring and organizational labor that falls to women in heterosexual couples, is—a lot. Feminist philosopher and theorist Nancy Fraser (2016) explains that women’s caring labor is intrinsic to the operation of our current neoliberal capitalist state, yet it is fundamentally undervalued. Certainly, women are dealing with a crisis of care, often termed as “time poverty” and I am no exception to that. Our current brand of capitalism, a global neoliberal regime, allows for the continual lowering of wages, increasing the need for paid work hours and increasing personal and government debt. While government-funded social safety nets are reduced, privatization flourishes. For a family to survive financially, ideally two parents (if applicable) work outside of the home. In turn, caring labor has become either commodified or unpaid. By separating economics from reproductive labor, our capitalist society allows caring labor to be viewed as something women do virtuously and remuneration is not needed. Should paid caring labor be compensated, its wage is notoriously underpaid. Families who are wealthy enough to afford it can outsource caring labor, often at a low wage to working class women of color, often at the expense of their own families (Fraser, 2016). Liberal feminists have argued that caring labor should be divided more evenly within heterosexual couples; however Chandler (2007) argues the sharing of caring labor does nothing to give it value, but rather just spreads it around. The devaluation of women’s caring labor does much to support and uphold capitalism, but not much for women and mothers.
I am to pretend I can succeed in all environments in a way that best supports capitalism. As a mother, I am tasked with doing it all, with acute concentration, while being pulled in so many directions and ideally looking good while doing it, even though conforming to the notions of being capable of doing it all is nothing but impossible. Admittedly, in many ways, it was also undesirable. To show up to work, or class, I have to separate myself from my child in ways or at times when we didn’t want to, causing so much ache for both of us. Chandler (2007) captures this separation so well with the quote:
I speak as a mother forced to put her child in daycare at too early an age. The cries of the child, clinging, torn limb by limb from my body, still reverberate in my ear. I speak as a mother forced by emancipation to wrench my child from me, to, day after day, compartmentalize my child away, so that I can pretend for eight hours that I am an individual. That is the price, for many mothers, of autonomy, of freedom of movement, of speech.; that is the price of this text (and now that I have finished it, I’m going to pick up my child), and that is a price which is too high to pay. (pp. 536-537)
Of course, being in-relation means there are ruptures, goodbyes, repairs and reunions, but sometimes the demands of school and work feel all too high.
Pregnancy and nursing were the beginning of being in-relation with my child. Still at a young age, my child continues to need me to take care of him. I like to think it is more than his dependence on me that drives him to leave love notes for me all over the house. Myself, I am so deeply and wildly engrossed in love with my child, that there are not enough love notes to capture it. Upon my child’s first birthday, I scrolled through the tens of thousands of photos on my phone, looking back on our year together, only to realize there was no single picture of me without him. I was struck by this. In a way, it felt like there was no me without him. No me, without him. The truth is, I am okay with that, like in Chandler’s (2007) notion of “simultaneously more and less than one” (p. 532). As Chandler (2007) points out, the problems that come with mothering should not mean the solution is not to mother. We cannot pretend that we are only individuals, but need to recognize the deep connection of relation we are in.
In-relation during a pandemic
As parenting has highlighted just how much we are in-relation beings, so too has the pandemic. Moving further in-relation with the COVID-19 virus means we have learned how to prevent its spread. Indeed, masks and ventilation work to prevent airborne illnesses, the former being an easy and somewhat affordable method. But for masks to work, we are dependent on the buy-in from those with whom we are in-relation. On the first day of class in my Master’s of Social Work program, I shared with the class that as someone who carries multiple disabilities, masking would make a difference for my comfort and ability to attend class safely. With the dropping of public health measures, including by the university, the preference seemed to be that those most at risk could just stay home. Alternatively, people most at risk could beg those with whom they are in-relation to consider increasing safety measures. Needing to disclose part of one’s identity for accessibility is what disability activist Mia Mingus (2017b) calls “forced intimacy.” Mingus describes it as the “daily experiences of disabled people being expected to share personal parts of ourselves to survive in an ableist world” (p. 41). Upon my request, a class discussion ensued which illustrated the pandemic had been difficult for so many, for so many reasons. Most were willing to mask and one by one all but three did. Fast forward to the end of the semester, and I was but one of three who remained masked. This was hard for me to comprehend; I had expected more from those who were committed to an anti-oppressive practice. My professor, gently comforting me, reminded me that social work is just a microcosm of our world. Indeed, social work was birthed within the systems of power and oppression from which our world operates, and this leaks into our practices and classrooms. These systems of power and oppression allow for, and rely upon, the subjugation and relegation of oppressed bodies that are in-relation with less oppressed bodies, while continually prioritizing the success of capitalism. And during the pandemic, much of our world was quick to sacrifice lives.
COVID-19 has highlighted how entrenched our society is with the notion and principles of necropolitics (Grunawalt, 2021). Originally coined by Achille Mbembe (2003), the term and concept necropolitics is the social and political use of power to create the notion that some may live, but for this, some must die. In the pandemic, it is the bodies of Black People, Indigenous Peoples, people of color, the working class, women (who are often in front line caring roles), the elderly and the disabled who are thought of as worth sacrificing, so our society could regain free movement and maintain the priorities of capitalism. Necropolitics has been at the core of our governments’ response to the pandemic. It is easy to believe that COVID-19 is no longer a problem when we stop testing for it, or make the reported numbers of deaths from it harder and harder to find. Knowing this information is not important, when it is acceptable that some must die, for others to live freely. Public Health policies became more about government popularity. An anti-mask conservative rhetoric flourished, creating a stage for the permissible death and disability of those viewed worthy of disposal (Grunawalt, 2021). The elderly and those requiring constant care were allowed to die alone in their rooms from illness or dehydration, sitting in the fluids that leaked from their bodies. Our Ontario public health care system, which has been so starved to pave the way for privatization, meant elderly and disabled people were denied care, or patients were sent all over the province, far from their loved ones, to access emergency or ongoing care. Protective measures like masks were made optional and the prevention of COVID-19 became an individual problem, rather than communal responsibility, ignoring just how in-relation we are—as if air is something an individual can control alone.
In conversation with Social Work professor Dr. May Friedman (M. Friedman, personal communication, February 15, 2023), she points out that as babies are in-relation with others and dependent on repetitive caring acts, often, so too are the bodies of disabled people. Much like maternal bodies, the bodies of the disabled are known to leak in ways that are outside of what is considered acceptable. This is illustrated when disability activist Alice Wong (2022) began to have difficulty swallowing without an impact on her breathing. In response, she begins to carry around a cup to spit in. Wong (2022) explains that the idea of spit outside the body is seen as gross and messy, evoking shame and internalized ableism. Through the lens of our ableist culture, the interdependence of disabled people is framed as burdensome and disability as inferior (Mingus, 2017a). For myself, when one disability entered my life, I needed to take a leave of absence from work. At that time, I naively believed the social safety net that I fell into would catch me. The net did not, even though it had been paid into on my behalf for years. There was more interest in me being an active participant in capitalism than in me being well. Furthermore, my dependence on the system made those around me suspicious, as there was no physical marker of my disability. I suspect that doubting my newly disabled body was easier than recognizing we are all—and therefore they too—inherently vulnerable, at risk of being disabled, and needing to rely on others for help with daily acts of living.
We are all inherently interdependent and in-relation with one another. Building on gender theorist Judith Butler’s (1990) concept that we need not divide people into sexed categories, Chandler (2007) argues we need not divide people at all. To do so is to uphold the individualistic nature of capitalism. Mingus (2017a) reminds us that the capitalist notion of individuality allows us to believe our accomplishments are ours alone. She however points to the fact that we did not make our own clothes, shoes, cars, or public transit. We likely did not grow our own food and spices. Even within her keynote speeches, she begins by thanking not only the organizers of the events, but the people who clean and maintain the building and grounds (Mingus, 2017a). We are all always in-relation, including in a pandemic. When I drop my child off at school, because of the infiltrated anti-mask rhetoric within our culture (Grunawalt, 2021), I cannot rely on others to mask, or for the government to report COVID-19 cases in schools. Therefore, I am dependent on my child’s teachers to turn on the air purifier with the hope that less illnesses will spread. My work is reliant on me showing up and I am reliant on them paying me—capitalism keeps on running. The unfortunate reality with interdependence is that while some individuals need others to survive during a pandemic, others carry on without impact. Indeed, in a pandemic we cannot reduce the spread of a virus without government action or the buy-in from its people. When we act as if we are only individuals, we leave some behind.
Reimagining In-Relation
In her book Braiding Sweetgrass, Indigenous Science Professor Dr. Robin Wall Kimmerer (2013) explains that all living things are connected. She teaches us that humans can and should engage in a reciprocal relationship with the earth and all living things (Kimmerer, 2013). This involves a significant shift for my white settler colonized mind to comprehend or remember, even though I water my plants and the plants in my home clean our air. I leak the milk and my baby drinks my milk. We are in-relation beings. And yet, we continue to pretend we are not, and the negative consequences are significant. Since the industrial revolution, so much of our lives is about making more, having more—even if it is at the expense of peoples’ lives and our planet. Our current relationship with capitalism means our planet will become inhospitable and people will die—mostly the least privileged and least culpable first. Necropolitics lets us believe that indeed, yes, some should die, but they are likely less important anyway. And neoliberal rhetoric allows us to believe it was likely their fault for not surviving—they probably just needed to work harder. We move along, ignoring how in-relation we are, prioritizing the needs and wants of the individual rather than acknowledging our interdependence.
But what if we imagined something else? Wong (2022) often states that it was her disability that made her an accidental activist. For myself, it was becoming a mother that propelled me further into activism and community work.[Note 4] I find myself asking: How can we embody the importance of being in-relation with others? How do we create communities where everyone is safe and well? What do we need to do to address the climate crisis that is barreling towards us? Anishinaabe activist, artist and mother Sarain Fox (2022) explains that being in-relation with a child means understanding that they are completely reliant on us, that we can never just think of ourselves. She suggests we need to believe that we are doing enough work as activists, and to believe it will work. This helps us shift from feeling as though we are living in a disaster, to living in a way that strives for a future (Fox, 2022). My child is my motivator and the person who propels my dreaming and actions towards what could be.
The industrial revolution brought forth the divided notion of public and private sphere, where men’s labor was viewed as valuable and existed outside the home. Contrarily and at the same time, women became “angels of the house” responsible for the domestic and caring labor within the private home and family (Gatrell 2008). The second wave of feminism pushed for women to join the workforce and I find myself mothering in a time period when I need to—somehow—do it all. And yet, it is too much. In her chapter, “Mothering as Human Interdependence,” author Angela Garbes (2022) states “In the current whirl of life, when professional work, domestic work and childcare are all happening simultaneously under the same roof, it is easy to feel defeated by the duties of mothering” (p. 98). Garbes goes on to clarify that these feelings are not the failings of an individual, but rather the fallout from settler colonialism (Garbes, 2022).
Garbes (2022), a second-generation immigrant from the Philippines, found that while her parents pushed to meet the American dream, she found herself questioning if what was taking place in siloed nuclear family homes was really working. While the pandemic highlighted just how difficult it was for mothers to work while caring for children, Garbes (2022) began to carve out a community where things like childcare and cooking were shared. Garbes (2022) questions what there is to learn from her own culture, had it not been subjected to colonialism, as well as other non-Western or Indigenous ways of parenting. Could the recognition of interdependence, the sharing of labor and living in multigenerational homes, be a solution? Garbes (2022) points out, so much of the “American dream” is tied to the notion of freedom: to move, to want, and have freely, and to be free from others. However, she (2022) notes “freedom” and “friend” are both derived from the Indo-European word “friya,” which means beloved (2022, 94). Indeed, activist Mia Birdson (2020) teaches us that freedom originally meant “the idea that together we can ensure that we have all the things we need—love, food, shelter, safety” (pp. 17-18). This type of freedom cannot be achieved in isolation, but rather through community and togetherness–a commitment to recognizing we are all in-relation.
In a culture that centers the myth of independence, the bodies of children and disabled people are viewed as burdens. To accommodate or center the needs of these populations is contrary to the nature of capitalism. Individuals who are viewed as a “burden” are less likely to bring value in our capitalist society, beyond the fact that a child can grow up to be a future capitalist worker. Of course, the tension is that we were all once children, and may all experience disability, and therefore require the care of others. Even more, dependence and our in-relation status exist in all relationships, yet we pretend that we are not bound together. Mingus (2017a) states “We can’t pretend that what happens in this country doesn’t affect others, or that things like clean air and water don’t bound us all together. We are dependent on each other, period” (p. 50). Mingus (2017a) likens our agreement to the myth of independence to the story of the emperor with no clothes. We are as independent as the emperor is dressed. Knowing we are all in-relation and that one day we may be the “burden,”we need to shift from the notion of individual responsibility to one of collective responsibility. (Mingus, 2017a)
Mingus (2017a; 2017b; 2018; 2019) contributes much to the dialogue on shifting the discourse of interdependence from negative to positive to build more inclusive and just societies. The antidote to the embodied shame and discomfort of forced intimacy is what Mingus has termed access intimacy (2017a; 2017b). While illusive to define, access intimacy is where one embodies comfort and relaxation upon being understood, including the understanding of one’s accessibility needs. This kind of understanding can be transformative. not just to build inclusion or equality, but rather to push for systemic changes which dismantle systems of power. It involves a deepening of relationships and the embodiment of interdependence. Mingus (2017a) suggests the way forward is through what she terms “liberatory access” which builds upon the work of access intimacy. Mingus (2017a) argues it is a transformative tool not just with the goal of making our world more accessible, but rather to transform oppressive cultures and what makes our world inaccessible in the first place. She states, “Access for the sake of access is not necessarily liberatory, but access for the sake of connection, justice, community, love and liberation is” (p. 49). This has the power to change our current realities and build a brighter future in an interdependent way. Indeed, Mingus (2018) states, “I don’t just want us to get a seat at someone’s table, I want us to be able to build something more magnificent than a table, together with our accomplices. I want us to be able to be understood and to be able to take part in the principled struggle together-to be able to be human together” (p. 27). These notions of access intimacy and liberatory access are transferable to a deeper understanding of all oppressions and have the power to reimagine our in-relation relationships (Mingus 2017a; 2017b; 2018; 2019).
Children, when well rested and fed (because we are all at our best when we are well rested and fed), seem to approach life with such joy, curiosity and optimism. Children are often viewed as unsophisticated, but it has never been hard for my child to comprehend that wearing a mask isn’t just for ourselves [Note 5] and that we should take care of our planet and the people on it. It is this simplicity of caring that children engage in so easily from which adults could stand to learn. Indeed, it was a child that pointed out that the emperor was not dressed. My child easily understands that every human deserves food and shelter, while the adult mayor of my city continues to enact policies that make the city unaffordable, and allows the unhoused to freeze to death. Shortages of monies are always cited when wondering why there are not enough resources for the social safety net, but plenty remain for the police budget or company bailouts. It is crushing to have to explain some of the ugliness in our world to my child. To comfort both him and myself, I often refer to a lesson from the iconic children’s television show host Mr. Rogers. As a young child, Mr Rogers was encouraged by his mother to “look for the helpers” when witnessing scary news on television, teaching him that even during difficult moments, there are always people to help. In one of Mr. Rogers’ last public appearances, he put out a call to those who grew up in the neighborhood—those of us who are now adults—to recognize now we are the helpers (Wallace, 2019). I do not pretend to know all the solutions, or even what is needed to make the world more equitable and just. But I do know that it will not come if we do not acknowledge that we are in-relation with one another, and all living things, and act accordingly.
Acknowledgements
This paper would not be possible had I not been in-relation with May Friedman, who planted seeds of maternal theory, Lauren Cullen and Rachel Torrie who read and edited my words, Chris, my beloved co-parent who whisked our child away so I could write, and of course my Orson, my muse, my love, my reason for writing.
Notes
[1] Much has been written on the leakiness of pregnant maternal bodies (Gatrell, 2008, Longhurst, 2004, Martin 2001). I borrow this term from their work.
[2] I borrow the term in-relation from Chandler (2007) who describes being so in-relation to their child, that it impedes their ability to be in-relation to their studies, a theme that I build on in this paper
[3] I use the term mother without connection to sex, gender, sexuality, birthing or nursing status. While the term mother is not always inclusive, I use this term as an umbrella term to capture anyone who identifies with it or some aspect of it, whether they call themselves a mother or not. Mothers are not monolithic and I do not assume my experience as a mother is universal.
[4] Some of the volunteer and community work I do fills in for the voids left by our neoliberal government. With lessening support of public services, social programs are reliant on volunteers or donations to keep programs running. There is tension in this for me and I believe a real solution would be to properly fund social services.
[5] My child also understands that not all bodies are capable of masking for countless reasons. We frame conversations around masking as taking care of ourselves and the bodies of those around us. Actions need not be perfect, but the more we engage in masking, the safer it is, which includes helping support those who cannot mask.
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