The Carework Project: Reckoning with Love, Labor, and the Living World

“Care work is climate work.” Jennifer Case first encountered this message during the pandemic, while monitoring her daughter’s attempts at virtual learning and trying to keep her toddler from running naked into faculty Zoom meetings.The phrase appeared online beside photos of backyard gardens and essential workers in masks, offering an unexpected validation: caring for others-whether children, the ill, or the earth-is vital work.Intrigued, Case began exploring the connections between personal, domestic, and ecological care.What started as research through the lenses of feminism and economics grew into a larger investigation that touched on environmental thought, Indigenous teachings, disability studies, and the psychology of empathy.Along the way, Case developed a broader spiritual and ecological awareness that changed how she viewed the act of caring itself. Part memoir and part cultural reflection, The Carework Project combines intimate storytelling with research, interviews, and vis