Patrice Strahan, Personal Care Attendant

Monique: We support one another. We also do community work together as friends. Patrice has supported my health and safety in many ways. In terms of my personal care, she is very thorough and takes a lot of care.

For example, she keeps my home clean and makes sure to brush my teeth well. She also protected my entire family’s health during a crisis. In 2022, my son had a stroke that sent him to the hospital at the same time that our apartment was flooded by a busted pipe.

Because of my Cerebral Palsy, I live on our apartment floor and would have had to sit, crawl, and sleep on the moldy carpet. Together with the support of an organization we are both members of, the Disability Justice League- Bay Area, Patrice was able to use a van and help me move to a hotel while the apartment was cleaned.

Patrice: I feel truly fortunate to have connected with Monique when I did. I love being an attendant, and I love getting to work with someone who I now consider truly a friend. I’m deeply drawn to attendant work and am grateful that I am able to do work that has such a supportive impact on someone’s life. It can be extremely challenging work. Maintaining boundaries and asserting my own wants and needs can be difficult. Working through our issues has helped me learn and build my skills in how to show up in community, and I’m really so glad that we work together and that we met