Gather
come together as caregivers — to be seen, to be known, and to begin weaving something stronger
Memphis, Tennessee
Gather brings caregivers together to tell the truth about our lives and to recognize one another in it.
Together, we share stories, make things, and practice deep listening: the discipline of staying with another person’s experience long enough to understand it on its own terms.
Like meditation, the practice is not perfection or emptying ourselves of thought, but noticing when our attention drifts toward interpretation, advice, reassurance, or urgency, and choosing to return.
Because stories are more than catharsis. They carry knowledge. They reveal patterns, preserve memory, and help us understand ourselves and one another more fully.
Our gatherings often include hands-on creative practice using the fragments, remnants, and artifacts that accumulate in lives of care. We work with found materials, paperwork, objects, and other traces of daily life, allowing them to become visual and physical stories.
Some pieces become collaborative. Some remain our own. Sometimes people simply leave something behind.
We do not begin with a prescribed outcome.
We begin with the belief that what caregivers know, make, and carry deserves witness.
Caregivers are often separated by diagnosis.
Medical.
Behavioral health.
Disability.
Addiction.
Aging.
Mental illness.
But our lives rarely fit those categories.
The systems that serve us, and sometimes fail us, often have more in common than they acknowledge.
So we gather.
To recognize that the knowledge we carry is not isolated.
To notice where our stories overlap.
To understand what those overlaps reveal.
Because stories are more than catharsis.
They carry knowledge.
They preserve memory.
They make visible what otherwise remains private.
And when brought into relationship with one another, they sometimes become something new.
Each gathering is different, but rooted in the same practice:
Guided conversation
Deep listening as a discipline of attention and return
Story-sharing that treats lived experience as knowledge
Reflection, witness, and recognition
Opportunities to explore, respond, and make in different ways
Some gatherings include hands-on creative practice. Others center conversation, movement, learning, or simply being together.
We do not gather to solve one another’s lives.
We gather to make meaning. To create witness. To explore what becomes possible when experience is shared rather than carried alone.
Sometimes what we make is art.
Sometimes it is language.
Sometimes it is connection.
Sometimes it is change.
Healing may emerge.
But making is the practice.
Gather With Us.
We will continue to Gather for the Scroll of Medical Entanglements project over the summer at ShapeShifter Gallery & Art School. Additionally, we’ll be hosting more community conversations on various subjects related to healthcare, health justice, mutual aid, advocacy, and more! Please sign up to request invitations (make sure to “accept marketing” in your submission, please).