NeonNatalia Feb 25, 2026

I meet with a therapist once a week via a telehealth website, indistinguishable from the many other telehealth, medtech platforms that characterize 2020s healthcare. Being in therapy helps me to put myself in a mindset of vulnerability and truthfulness and gives me the space to offload and dissect my more suffocating emotions so I can have more bandwith for what makes life worthwhile. With my burden lessened, I return to the contentedness of witnessing small marvels, of feeling present in the sunlight, of enjoying a deep breath.

These appointments have the added benefit of resulting in letters from my insurance company. They start with about 5 pages essentially repeating the same thing, that I saw this therapist on this day, and without insurance the session would have cost this much money, but thanks to my hero insurance I only owe the therapist a small fraction of the original cost. This is junk to me. But after that is my poor, overlooked beloved: the Notice of Nondiscrimination and Availability of Language Assistance Services.

I wonder why they chose the languages that they did. Are these languages based on a specific locality? Perhaps these are the most notable languages spoken in the insurance company’s home city or state. Maybe these are the languages that their clients most commonly self-select as their primary language.

There is an element of trust that makes a document like that work. In the same way the director of a public transportation system trusts that the operators under them will take approved routes and treat the buses and trains with care, those in charge of these notices trust that the translations are accurate and that the interpreters have sufficient knowledge of medical terminology to help clients. One person cannot know this many languages, let alone check all translations for accuracy. Trust and respect among the translators make the document possible.

I know that they are probably mandated to include all of these translations even though they take up three pages of an already-long document. It might even eat into their postage costs. But a part of me likes to think that all of these languages are included because of love. It says to so many minority language speakers, from Spanish to Samoan, that you are valued. Your language is respected and you will still be cared for. I know this is a healthcare company we’re talking about. I know this is the American healthcare system we’re talking about. But I can’t help but feel like the document itself feels love for its readers.

Appreciate how rare and special it is for so many such unrelated languages to stand beside each other. For their speakers to be in community with each other. This is a miracle that puts the Rosetta Stone to shame ten times over, and yet is regarded as bulk, as boring, as trash. She is reflective of our society yet so sterile, when we are anything but. Behind the sterility is a modern wonder, is us.