The Collaboration is live!

The Carer Mentor Collaboration.

Aug 31, 2024

Dear Friends! Thank you for spending some of your precious time with me. I appreciate your presence.

Welcome to all our new Carer Mentor community members! I'm happy you've found you way here.

For those who don't know me, you can read about the Carer Mentor Mission here

My most recent article was my first and the one-hundred and fiftieth article, 'Carer Mentor Walking Its Talk'. A poem about the website's purpose & intent.

A Special Carer Mentor Collaboration !

Please ‘❤️’ LIKE the article

A network of Empathy & Inspiration through collaborations. Let’s connect!

Over August I've shared a countdown article on our Carer Mentor homepage.

Contents

1. The Story behind the collaboration story

From Day 1 of Carer Mentor, I've wanted to find the best ways and approaches to collaborate with other publications, not only caregivers but lots of different people. Why? We could all do with more connection, community, and interpersonal support!

“There are only four kinds of people in the world—those who have been caregivers, those who are currently caregivers, those who will be caregivers, and those who will need caregivers.” -Rosalynn Carter, Former First Lady of the United States

I believe that the more we connect with empathy and inspiration, the more we can start changing the narrative around care and caregiving.

Collaborating could enable us to explore topics with greater depth and breadth beyond our personal experience. Interlinking thoughts and questions can inspire synergies, layering our experiences and reflections.

As a young-looking Chinese woman who climbed the corporate ladder and then decided to resign from the 'big successful job' to care for my parents, I've run the gauntlet of many stereotypes, biases, presumptions and culturally conditioned expectations. I quite like being unexplainable AND connecting empathetically to others by calling upon different aspects of my identity. BUT my heartaches sometimes. I’m fully aware of the quick judgements, divisive comments and assumptions made about myself, other carers, or those marginalised in today’s society.

I'm hopeful that, through our personal experiences, we can learn from each other curiously and open-heartedly discuss diversity, intersectionality, internalised biases, cultural conditioning, and many more difficult topics.

If we can hold open spaces to reflect together, perhaps in our local communities, we can open more doors, build more bridges and place Care and Caregiving at the heart of our communities.

No one needs to feel alone. Whether in a crisis or for a morning coffee, we could be there for each other.

2. The Origins of the Collaboration Spark

An idea was sparked, shared and is now being embraced and explored by thirteen people

What's the collaboration about?

Something inherently human and yet so rarely embraced.

Something we’re conditioned to hide.

Is it a positive or a negative? Let’s see what our writers/creatives say!

A diverse team of individuals with different publication footprints.

An exploration of insights and perspectives beyond a single viewpoint.

Creating synergies. Leaning into teamwork…and some fun!

The Spark

……It started where all good collaborations begin, with a spark of an idea or perhaps a small resonant stab in my heart

The idea was a tiny spark that grew from reading 1, then 2, then 3, and 4 articles1. Comments were exchanged, and

a fire was ignited—maybe others felt the same way and had something to say.

A discussion, or maybe even a collaboration?

The concept, the topic and the idea burned bright into a Google document.

July 18: Kicking off. A Jerry Maguire Moment2 about 'how’ to approach it.

A special invitation was made to 18 authors/writers and library/community founders:

**Special Request, Proposal and Community Call**
TO: XX
An idea I’d like to get your input on. Forgive the informality of this but you know I’ve limited time, and high energy, and now you know I speed-write.
Would you be interested in a bit of community tag teaming and solidarity?
A bit of an experiment in creating more depth on a topic
Synergising our <1000 subscriber bases
Promoting diversity of thinking on a topic and creative diversity
Leveraging Carer Mentor SmallStack, Asian Writers Collective, QStack and Unlocked: BIPOC Reads
Investigating the impact of team collaborations ;-)

Thirteen people a team has been building

Now, we are 13-team members strong.

Behind the curtain, there is a flurry of activity & tag-teaming.

We don’t know what will emerge, but we’ll have fun writing and sharing our thoughts!

There are some serious synergies and link-ups about to happen!

Creating team dynamics to engage and deepen how we treat a topic.

Connecting in empathy and inspiring deeper conversations.

And....we may just have a mystery Guest Writer appearing. What a find!

3. The Journey to the Jerry Maguire moment

a. All the different ways to engage and collaborate

Carer Mentor is housed in Substack. The founders and team have developed some amazing functions to ensure creators, authors, podcasters, filmmakers, and advocates like myself can completely control their content, publish and collaborate with others.

I've always loved to build teams, collaborate and learn from others. So, early in my Carer Mentor journey here on Substack, I started researching the possibilities for collaboration. Here are a few gems for anyone with a similar interest.

On Substack, Resources (November 2, 2022) 'How Substack writers can collaborate to grow' By the Substack team.
- Guest Posts: Invite other writers to contribute to your publication.
- Podcast Guests:: Feature guests on your podcast episodes.
- Cross-posts:: Share posts between different Substack publications.
- Mentions:: Mention other writers in your posts to engage with their audience.
- Notes:: Use Notes to recommend posts, links, images, and quotes, and to leave comments.
- Letter Exchange: Exchange letters with other writers to share insights and content.
Collaborations for Small Publications. Best practices and hidden benefits of Substack collaborations by Karen Cherry at PubStack Success
I learnt a lot about how this platform works from
Claire Venus, Sarah Fay, Kristina God and Karen Cherry. They are generous creators and authors who are experts at how to grow and build a business in Substack. Also, many thanks to Simon K Jones for his video guides(I highly recommend watching them!).

b. Connecting diverse viewpoints, networking and building collaborations while caregiving.

This is the fourth version of the Carer Mentor website, and I think I’ve found its home. Now that I have a little more personal time and energy, I can leverage its functions and tools to connect and build the Carer Mentor community and network.

For the Carer Mentor mission, Breadth and depth of perspectives, diversity, and engagement are essential to connect in empathy and inspire deeper conversations.

In June, my big question was HOW given my highly unpredictable days and energy as a caregiver.

The Carer Mentor journey so far:

Linking to the work of others has been the most straightforward collaboration approach.
1. One of my favourite articles I wrote is 'Music Memory is more powerful than words.' Empathy and human connection via music can overcome the Dementia Disconnect.13 authors offered to share their articles as part of a request at Sarah Fay Writers at Work Friday Party on February 16th. Sarah set up a discussion thread for us to ‘find the topic of your next post and write it knowing someone out there already wants to read it.’ It was a genius idea for us. Thank you Sarah!
Susan Marte (Publication: The Caregiver's Life) contributed to this post: 'How can I feel happier or more grateful?’ Enemies of gratitude and how to cultivate a habit to feel happier and more grateful.
Ollie Redfern (Publication Picos Gêmeos) wrote 'Waiting for a Serenade. The diary of an Alzheimer's carer' as part of a publication-to-publication collaboration the QStack collaboration initiative with Carer Mentor

Feedback is my most important measure of success. This was Ollie’s:

This was a great collaboration Victoria, I’m so glad it worked out, and I’m very pleased with its impact! Thank you.
In terms of the QStack collab, I thought the way you gave me space to write at my own pace was wonderful, because I didn't feel the pressure of a deadline and so could let things naturally develop and a path appear. Because this type of process can take however long, it might be worthwhile for more than one QStack-Carer Mentor be working on their pieces, so there are various pieces in the pipeline.
Aspects of caregiving: I suspect that people will naturally gravitate towards their own personal styles of storytelling and focus on different things. Perhaps future collaborators could be asked to reflect on parts of their story that could resonate with others (for example, does their story resonate with someone who is just embarking on their journey as a carer?) That seemed to connect with my readers.
Best wishes and I look forward to reading future QStack-CarerMentor pieces!

c. Carer Mentor learnings.

Collaborations work really well one-to-one or for small groups by creating space, offering creators/authors autonomy and inspiration and, most importantly, time to create.
This approach has been a huge relief, as my priority is caregiving. I don't have to think or stress about planning or try to respond to a call amidst a fractious day.

d. Two Hypotheses in action.

And then, I had this spark inspired by four authors.

Could a large number of people collaborate across time zones, link insights, and synergise thoughts? For how long? A month, maybe, to spread ideas and build engagement?

Could I orchestrate an initiative to inspire more in-depth discussions while ensuring I stay true to my needs and priorities?

The team's exchanging thoughts and some interesting points are being raised - we're leveraging a cool Substack feature
There are no live Zoom calls or specific meetings. We’re spread globally with a twelve-hour time difference. Plus, of course, we all have busy lives, so we’re online at different times.
Team members are getting to know each other, and we’re working on our pieces for September.
I love that team members have helped me in some communications and the orchestration of things, and everyone is engaging - at their own speed and time.