When I think of a Surgeon General’s warning, graphic anti-smoking commercials from the 2000s come to mind. More recently, I think of quarantining indoors and disinfecting my groceries. When the Surgeon General comes around, you know it’s serious.

Last week, Surgeon General Vivek Murthy came to warn us again — this time about the crushing impacts of our unsustainable care system, particularly for stressed parents. He said in the New York Times that the mental health challenges faced by parents “constitute a serious public health concern for our country.”

A new poll by The Century Foundation and Morning Consult backed this up, revealing that 87 percent of parents that are home with their children without other sources of support are experiencing increased stress and negative impacts on their mental health as a result of care challenges.

We owe much of this sad state to our nearly nonexistent, woefully underfunded care infrastructure — and we owe much of that to our pervasive culture of individualism. In a country where everything is your own fault for not working hard enough, not being financially savvy enough, not being born in the right zip code, not eating less avocado toast — and there’s no blame on the policies that make being successful require nothing short of a miracle — pervasive loneliness and early death from stress are the obvious outcomes.

So, that’s depressing. And probably, you’ve heard a version of that story from whatever media you consume. But you might feel relieved to learn it’s not quite the full story. This is where our fellows come in — to show us that a different way of life is not only possible, but that it’s already being built, in grassroots pockets all across the country. 

This month, we’re publishing a series called the Connectivity of the Care Economy, a solutions-centered package of stories about how caring for each other isn’t just a moral imperative, but also good policy. Our fellows will seek to flip the script on the status-quo narratives and news that tell us it’s the individual’s fault for facing poverty, caregivers need to do it all on their own, and we should mistrust each other and look out only for ourselves. At the heart of each piece, you’ll find grassroots organizing and moving personal perspectives.

Imagine for a moment, if I had started this piece not with a warning, but by telling you about a community in Orlando that is a hub for mutual aid organizing, or how in Georgia there was a network of single moms who offered each other both practical and emotional support, or that deep in the heart of Texas there are restorative practices being built around the concept of releasing your inner child.

Probably, your heart rate would have been a little bit lower. You may have cracked a smile. Felt hope. Maybe even become motivated by the idea that ordinary people are usually the ones who are creating the solutions for the world we’d rather live in.

And our Surgeon General would be breathing a little easier, too.