Are those your spoons?
Sometime during the last year or so, Ezekiel linked me to a website called But you Don't Look Sick, written by and for the disabled and people suffering from 'invisible' illnesses like lupus, Lyme disease, fibromyalgia and similar conditions that have a dramatic impact on the lives of sufferers that isn't always visible to a casual observer. One of the more interesting articles on the site was about something they called the spoon theory.
You can read about The Spoon Theory here, it's a very good way indeed of getting across the idea of what living with an invisible illness like lupus, fibro, chronic pain, ME et al is like to people who've never experienced anything similar and have trouble understanding. If you've not read it before, follow the link and have a look now.
Spoon theory works well. It's a novel, fairly unique way of getting across the real impact of something people live with every day to those who have never experienced it. It makes it apparent that this isn't just had-a-hard-day tiredness, aches and pains or an unwillingness to get on, it is something concrete, permanent and debilitating that impacts on every aspect of peoples lives.
But as Rosemary recently pointed out in this livejournal post, the problem with an attractive metaphor with this kind of power is that people pick it up and use it outside its original scope. When it is used by people who aren't sick, it gradually becomes diluted and loses its impact, eventually becoming as easy to ignore as everything that went before it.
The key test here is this ... am I using spoons to describe living with chronic physical or mental illness, or am I using it to describe the everyday balancing acts we all perform to manage our resources. If the answer is the former, then go for it. If the latter, take a moment and think of a different way to say what you're saying.
Like all language appropriation issues, this one requires a little thought to navigate around it ... so think. I know I will be.
*applauds*
You said it all much more eloquently than I did. hee
Cool if I link?
If you'd not said it, I probably wouldn't have thought to say it this way at all
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Linking is cool, go for it.
I'm Rosemary's mother, so of course I followed the link to your post. Well said, but also, I just had to comment on that wonderful photo at the top of your page. It could just send me into a meditative state.
Thank you Ellie, I can't take credit for the photo though, it's the one Sadish supplies with the theme.
I kept it because I felt the same way about it that you did
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