A colleague and I are currently driving around the “Thumb” region of Michigan, doing an outreach tour for the Epilepsy Foundation of Michigan. During our time, we stopped by the Caro Center in Caro, Michigan. Right now, this place isn’t being used at all, though most recently it was a psychiatric hospital. There are plans now to rebuild it for that type of care once more, but in a caring, up-to-date way.
But this is not how this place originated. In 1914, this location opened as the Farm Colony for Epileptics and later was renamed the Caro State Home for Epileptics. Here, people, including children, lived apart from their families, and in the early days, without any of the forms of treatment we now know. But much worse, in an era when the eugenics movement was underway in the United States, people with epilepsy were forcibly sterilized here under Michigan’s laws, and those laws existed from 1914 through the 1960s.
As we made our stop, we honored these members of our community, pondered their lives, and found ourselves grateful to live in a time when much as changed.
But with this history in our country, taking place not only in Michigan but many places, marginalization and isolation still remains for many people who are living with epilepsy. We work still to make those changes.
— Renee Roederer
Smuggling Grace 