On Capacity for Care

Back when I worked in the animal shelter, I encountered a new concept: sometimes, when someone who frequently fostered animals in their home reached out to see if they could foster another, we’d talk about their “Capacity for Care.” Meaning–did that person have the time, space and energy to properly care for an additional responsibility?

Often, the answer was yes. Animal fosterers have some of the most immense capacity for care that I’ve encountered–they were people juggling full time jobs, children, and their own pets, all while also caring for medically needy foster animals. But sometimes, we’d get the sense that that person was already struggling to keep up–that foster animals weren’t being given medication as needed, or conditions weren’t clean enough, or the person seemed especially stressed. And then we’d look for another person.

Since then, the concept of capacity for care has been a staple in our household. Jordan and I talk about it often, using it as a guide for decision-making about what we can handle.

The thing I like so much about this concept is that it isn’t just referring to whether you can handle something. Yes, maybe those foster families could’ve handled another dog in an emergency. But could they have handled it well?

When you have proper capacity for care, you’re able to handle challenges that pop up in daily life without compounded stress from your responsibilities–e.g. the people, animals, and plants that depend on you get their basic physical and emotional needs met (especially plants, who are known for being extremely emotionally needy)–and you’re able to meet your own goals and needs.

Every person has a different capacity for care, and many different factors feed into what we’re able to handle. Even just in my life, I’ve watched as my capacity grows and shrinks. For example, I’ve found that grief dramatically reduces my capacity. When I’m grieving, I think and act more slowly–making decisions and everything that comes after them take more time.

Similarly, my mental health impacts what I can handle–during periods when I’m feeling anxious or depressed, I’m not able to handle as much, and the idea of taking on more becomes overwhelming (and can exacerbate my anxiety).

Back when I was pregnant with our first kid, I remember having this sense that Jordan and I were like a life raft, and each person and animal that depended on us was sitting inside that raft. At the time, we had two dogs and two cats, and I remember worrying that a human child would be the thing that brought the raft below the waves–that it’d be overwhelmed, and we’d all drown.

We didn’t drown. The raft held, and since then, our responsibilities have only grown. We have three kids, two dogs, two cats, 11 chickens, a big garden, and numerous houseplants. Our capacity also has to encompass both of our full time jobs, my side gig of novel and blog writing, and fixing up the ancient farmhouse we bought (turns out this is the biggest drain). That’s not to mention either of our hobbies–Jordan’s hunting and my knitting, both of which have the potential to suck up a lot of time.

We are very, very carefully juggling all of these items–though not always perfectly. I’m honestly torn about whether I think we’re still within our capacity for care.

In some ways, I want to say that yes, we are. Our pets are all well cared for. I think we’re meeting the loose goals we have as parents (I say think because parenting is hard and part of it is always wanting to do better for your kids. But in my extremely biased perspective, our kids are wonderful: kind, emotionally intelligent, smart, free-thinking and funny. So we must be doing something right). Our garden is thriving. We’re making progress on our house–and even though it feels glacially slow, today marks one year here and we’ve actually accomplished a lot. We both love our jobs. And we both make time for our hobbies.

In some senses, we’re thriving.

But then I think about how often our house is messy, how often I feel anxious as I try to juggle competing responsibilities, how infrequently Jordan and I eat breakfast, and how absolutely exhausted we are all the time. And I think that–while our capacity for care is quite large–we are living outside of it.

We may have the capacity to care for everyone in our lifeboat. But Jordan and I–as the lifeboat–could use care ourselves. We’re at the point where when something stressful pops up, we are not able to handle it with aplomb. Further, we’re not able to be strategic with our decisions. On a day-to-day basis, we are making decisions based on immediate needs instead of future goals.

Jordan will laugh when he reads this, because he has long advocated for slowing down, for simplifying. I’m with him, in ways: when there are fewer moving parts in your life, it’s so much easier to invest in the things that matter most to you.

The issue is that the chaos itself is important to me. When I think about the absolute joy and richness that our many moving parts bring us (I especially think about this after I’ve read James Herriot, or any of the Harry Potter chapters that feature the Weasleys, or watch Klaus), it makes me happy for the color and complication of our life. Yes, there might be a pile of shoes by the door, and the floors don’t get swept every day, and you’re liable to trip on any number of random toys as you cross the floor of the kid’s room at night.

But there’s also Shrimpbone, our little white and gray cat who desperately loves our oldest–and shows it by sleeping on him every night. And the chickens, who run like little raptors at me every time I step out of the house, and who lay beautiful, colorful eggs that we get to turn into our breakfast. And Wren and Chara, who are quiet and faithful and beloved. And our messy, burgeoning garden. And most importantly, laughter and good food and deep joy.

I guess if this post was to have a paragraph that wrapped it neatly up, my conclusion would be this: capacity for care is important. When we take on new responsibilities, we want to be able to do them justice–to devote the time and energy to them that brings us the full amount of joy we can glean from the extra chaos they bring.