09/18/2025
I do not live in your workplace. You work in my home.
I can tell within moments.
A house where people with intellectual and developmental disabilities live that is called a home, but isn't one.
Sofas pressed against walls. Notices tacked up like reminders that this place is managed, not lived in. Files and folders left on tables, evidence of systems, not people.
Staff coats and bags scattered about. Their presence heavy, louder than the lives of the people who actually live here.
And then the silence of the walls, bare, or dressed only in rules. No photographs to catch my eye. No colours that whisper who loves what, who dreams of where. No hint of someone’s favourite band, or the trip they still talk about. A strange kind of emptiness, a place inhabited but not claimed.
And yet people live here. People with names, with histories, with laughter that deserves a frame on the wall. People with favourite chairs, favourite shows, favourite mugs of their own. People whose presence should fill the space, but instead feels erased by the weight of “program,” or worse "placement."
A home should not be anonymous. A home should tell me, before I even meet you: this is who I am, this is what I love, this is my life.
When we push the sofas back, let the wall stay bare, when we let staff belongings crowd the corners, we send a message, even if we don’t mean to. The message is: this is not really yours.
But a home should speak differently. It should speak of belonging. It should speak of identity. It should say, without hesitation, I live here. This is me.
..
ID: Photo shows a baron home lounge with chair pushed against the wall. Text reads: This home could be anyone's. Which means it's no one's.
