Contribution Guidelines

We believe in the power of story telling and the transformative power of speaking in our own voices. We are a community that believes in the wisdom of lived experience. This community exists so we can support and learn from each other.

We do not have the funding to pay contributors. We do not have funding for the overhead costs of running this nonprofit. We understand that this is a barrier for many of you and regret not being able to pay you for your work.

Guidelines for people with lived experience of care work

If you would like to write about your personal care work experience, we probably want to share it.

We welcome submissions from people of all backgrounds, regardless of previous writing experience. We’re a community and care about your story, not your grammar. If you want to share your story and your writing skills are holding you back, consider expressing yourself in a different medium.

We are particularly interested in sharing the care work experiences of people who don’t consider themselves “typical caregivers” and who are not included in the mainstream conversation.

This includes lived experiences of care work that intersects with:

• Polyamory
• LGBTQIA+ issues
• BIPOC issues
• Class issues
• Immigrant experiences
• Sex work and other criminalized/oppressed careers
• People providing care to victims of state-sanctioned violence
• Non-Christian faith backgrounds and atheism

We also seek to share stories of care provided outside of “traditional” family ties, including people providing care for friends, neighbors, distant kin, and exes.

Guidelines for people writing as subject matter experts

If you’re looking to promote yourself as a thought leader, please read the guidelines carefully.

We expect pieces from subject matter experts to conform to journalistic writing standards.

We do not publish marketing fluff or basic overviews of caregiving topics. If you send ‘X tips for self care!’ your pitch will be rejected.

If your main concern is whether or not ‘do follow’ links are included in our posts, please do not submit your piece to us.

We do not accept paid submissions.

Our audience appreciates

• Real people – Imagine that you’re writing to a friend. Regardless of your resume, we’re all peers here.
• Relevance – Does your post address the caregiver’s needs? We share articles that go beyond-the-basics and are immediately useful for caregivers.
• Practical information – We don’t need someone to tell us how stressed out, isolated, or broke we are. We appreciate clear, actionable steps to unlock the support we deserve.
• Immediately engaging content and/or visuals – Do your introductory sentences grab the reader? We’re busy, so be direct.
• Honesty – Can we relate to the feelings, experiences and/or circumstances? Chances are, if you’re honest, they can.
• Examples – We don’t want advice from a book, they want real tips from people with care work experience. Not every example has to be from your own experience, but people love hearing about people who’ve been in their shoes.
• Easy-to-read writing – Does your diction exclude readers who may be unfamiliar with the vocabulary? Are your sentences easy to follow? We encourage the use of bullets, sections, and lists to make articles easy to skim, when appropriate.
• Empathy and understanding – Is your response understanding, compassionate and thoughtful?
• Reliable sources – If your information isn’t coming from your own experience, where is it coming from? Cite your sources, include statistics, and quote other experts.
• Where to find more information – It’s rare that any article can cover every aspect of a topic. Include links to reputable sites for readers to find more information.

Our audience does not appreciate

• Being lectured on self-care – An important subject that should be approached with compassion and understanding. Any self-care suggestions should be something accessible for caregivers who might not have time or money to spare.
• Being lectured at all – We don’t need you to rescue us. Speak from your lived experience and identity. Recognize that we are each experts in our own life.
• Post stubs – We do not publish posts shorter than 600 words unless it is visual art, poetry, or a similar media-based exception.
• Being sold to – Please reserve promotional language for your author bio. We’re happy to include links to your website, social media, and books in your bio. Links in the text must be relevant, appropriate, and read naturally.
• Listicles and intro topics – We already know what our lives are like, thanks. Tell us something insightful or helpful.
• Inspiration porn – We don’t require that every post employ an intersectional, disability justice framework, but we don’t share content that conflicts with them.
• Fundraisers – We don’t hit up our community for money and we don’t allow others to, either.
• Breaking news – We focus on building an evergreen library on care work, not things that will be instantly dated. We’re a community, not a news site.
• Geographically specific information – Our community is based on language, not location. Things that are only relevant for a specific town aren’t relevant to us. If something is specific to a country, that should be clearly indicated in the title.

Key Details

We do not review pitches.

We do not accept pieces that require significant editing. If you want professional editing services, you need to enlist your own outside editor. We retain the right to make minor edits and to remove your post at any point.

We do not provide compensation for authors.

You must own the copyright to any works you submit for publication on The Caregiver Space, including any images. If you do not own the copyright, let us know and we may share the piece as a link.

You retain the copyright to your work. If you would like to cross-post or reprint your post elsewhere, please include the line “This piece originally appeared at TheCaregiverSpace.org,” with a link back to the original post on The Caregiver Space.

By submitting a guest post to be published on The Caregiver Space, you confirm that you have read this agreement and agree to be bound by it.

If you believe someone has submitted your copyrighted work to our publication without your express permission, please contact us and we will remove it.

Getting Published

You must own the copyright to any works you submit for publication on The Caregiver Space, including any images. By submitting a guest post to be published on The Caregiver Space, you confirm that you have read this agreement and agree to be bound by it.

You can submit posts through the contact form on our website. We do not review pitches. People associated with facilitating the community do not respond to submissions sent to our personal accounts. Contacting us every day and other forms of harassment are not tolerated.

All posts are published with at least one graphic. Please supply a graphic, if you have a relevant graphic you have permission to publish it on our site, or let us know if you have a particular graphic in mind.

Your bio will be included at the end of the post. It can include links to your website and social media accounts. You can include a headshot or an image of your latest book.

If you would like your piece to be published anonymously or using a pseudonym, please let us know.