Collaboration and Care

Living systems thrive through distributed knowledge.
by Alison Bonds Shapiro, M.B.A. in Healing Into Possibility
Originally published online by Psychology Today on 8/29/2010

Collaboration is an art that we value in many contexts - in our work - in our personal partnerships - in our friendships. But we may not think about collaboration when faced with the illness and care of someone we love. We may consider the relationship as a burden of care - one person being dependent on another. Understanding care giving and care receiving as something other than dependency may create surprising results.

Regardless of whether or not the person being cared for will "get well" in the conventional sense, care giving and care receiving carry possibilities of healing and transformation when practiced as a collaboration. "Healing is fundamentally relational.," as Alan Briskin, et. .al., point out in their wonderful book, The Art of Collective Wisdom and the Trap of Collective Folly. How we are with one another matters.

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