What is Independence?
My brother Jeremy and I used to argue a lot about politics. I can never back down from a good debate, and arguing about politics was one of my favorite topics. Jeremy staunchly voted for one political party, and I voted for a different party. Fast forward to the early years of LOV Inc., when Jeremy connected with a friend who loved to talk politics. If he wasn’t sure who to vote for, he would reach out to his friend for input. Many of us have a version of this friend in our lives, someone who pays close attention to politics and can give us helpful information to guide our voting decisions. Some of you reading this might feel a little uncomfortable with the idea that my brother isn’t 100% independently making his own voting decisions. This exemplifies the tension in our culture around the concept of independence, especially when it comes to people with disabilities, like Jeremy. Is complete independence possible for anyone, or is it a myth?
For 250 years, the concept of independence has been a central value of American life. When we declared ourselves independent from Great Britain in 1776, we established a country that believed in having the freedom to make our own decisions. Over the years, independence evolved to include concepts like self-reliance and self-direction. Americans are taught to value not needing help from others and making our own decisions. Needing help is one of the negative stigmas associated with having a disability, and is such an ingrained concept for many of us that we aren’t always aware of its influence on our mindset.
LOV Inc. was founded with a goal of increasing independence for adults with disabilities, and our Bridge Builder Project focuses on building skills for independence. While increasing independence is a worthy goal, we choose not to focus on achieving independence. Skill building does not work like an on-off switch, but rather grows through a slow progression of small steps. There is no technical definition of full independence, as it’s a concept that is very hard to quantify. Skill building towards independence gives people with disabilities more freedom to navigate in their community and creates opportunities for inclusion which impacts their lives positively.
Let’s take a specific example that we address a lot in the Bridge Builder Project: money management. We know that someone is dependent on others to manage their money if they don’t pay their own bills or carry a wallet. When working on building skills for money management, we often support folks to keep track of their wallet, make a budget, interact directly with cashiers and assist with paying their bills. We believe that these are valuable skills, even if someone may never make all their financial decisions completely independently. Needing help with money management isn’t specific to people with disabilities, and the goal of building skills is not to achieve some mythical ideal of complete independence.
This idealized version of independence promotes the stigma that needing help is unusual or bad. It’s perfectly natural to need help. We need to stop romanticizing independence and start celebrating skill building as purposeful and positive progress even if the end result isn’t someone else’s subjective idea of full independence. It’s good to be interdependent while growing, which strengthens both individuals and our communities.
– Stefanie Primm, Executive Director