Beginnings

A traditional Jewish saying cautions "all beginnings are difficult." It's an apt reminder for my first blog post. I've written a book,  published essays and articles. I've thought for years about a blog. Now I begin, grateful for the support of my friend Gillian.

It's fitting I start with a Jewish reference, since much of how I think about and interpret the world comes from living as a Jew. It's been central to my identity. But that Jewish identity has shifted over the years. I'm far less comfortable defining myself through that lens. It's like casting off clothing which has become too tight. Shucking the garment has been a long, gradual process. I'm still groping with the loss of a central identifying anchor point: Jew.

Other transitions in the way I order my universe are also in play. I moved from northern California to London just over fifteen months ago.  Uprooting from the place I lived for thirty-five years, I question my assumptions: how can I have  been so wrong when I was sure I knew what was true? how does discarding previous lives make me both stronger and more vulnerable? by what compass do I navigate now?

These knotty questions entwine with the reality of being in my mid-seventies. Age is indeed a different country. Examining the arc of my life. I consider accomplishments, failures, loss, blank spaces. I recognize the arc is finite, stretching itself towards completing the circle.  I see things now through the looming presence of eternity. Not a comforting notion but less frightening than when the days seemed endless and delay was of little consequence.

Words have always been my saviours as I continually struggle to make some kind of sense of things. Now I share these precious objects. T.S. Eliot, whose poetry is brilliant on notions of time and death wrote in The Waste Land: "These fragments I have shored against my ruins”. These blog posts are my fragments, a bulwark I erect to offset the ruins which are to come.

- Rose Levinson, Spring 2018

The ties that bind? Blood thicker than water?

Platitudes and proverbs about ‘the family’ are strewn along literary pathways across the

world. Mostly they are warm and uncritical. It’s easy to see the family as a haven shielding us from the harsh world that lurks outside the door. It underwrites much of our social policy; it is the basis of many religions; and the notion of ‘family,’ with its attendant ascriptions of warmth and mutual support, runs through much of our civil law.

But the family is often found wanting. The women’s movement in the 60s and 70s spotted some of its flaws – identifying the patriarchal family, the nuclear family, with associations of male dominance and women’s confinement to the domestic domain, as deeply threatening to women. Child psychologists have long been suspicious of the effects of family life on the growing child. Revelations of child abuse within families in the last thirty or forty years have made their suspicions all the more well-founded.

And yet, the family is called upon to care, to provide support for its members as they age. Indeed it is seen as a moral virtue, to be prized beyond measure. But in reality this doesn’t always happen. We find that families may be reluctant – or, often, that individuals don’t want to rely on their adult children, not wanting to be a burden. Sometimes, we find that families exploit and take advantage of their dependent relatives. This comes as a shock to those who have bought into the ‘blood thicker than water’ proposition.

I’ve been interested in this conundrum ever since my formative years in the women’s

movement. And recently I’ve become more directly aware of it through research I’ve

conducted into financial abuse occurring within the family – particular relating to family

members who lack mental capacity. Part of this research involved analysing a number of

cases of financial misbehaviour that came to the Court of Protection, involving people who held Lasting Powers of Attorney for their (usually) older relatives. It revealed vividly the sort of bad feelings that can be harboured deep within the bosom of the family and showed just how far such antipathy can sometimes extend: thousands of pounds taken from bank accounts, houses sold, businesses established on the proceeds of such wrongdoing; and failure to care – sometimes to the point of neglect.

READ MORE

- Gillian Dalley, Spring 2018