Interdependence is a Survival Skill, But Shouldn’t Feel Like Building a Bunker
Channeling urgency into commitment, not panic
✨ Thank you for reading GROUP HUG! I am so glad you are here. It truly feels like a gift (not hyperbole) to share this space with you. ✨
If there’s been one primary call-to-action on my feeds in the last week, it’s been: Find your people. We are all we’ve got now; let’s build unshakeable networks of survival to support each other. It feels different from eight years ago, when running for something and better organizing voters next time and changing the composition of who governs seemed to dominate everywhere. Obviously this checks out as trust in governance feels like it’s snapping in half and the incoming administration has promised to come for many of us. There is also an undeniable aftertaste of panic, urgency, and bunker-adjacent-cautioning that comes along with it. Find your community or die alone.
It has a new years resolution vibe of grit; all I need to do is lock in and then it will happen. And if that style works for you, great! For me, it stirs up a sense of emergency and dread akin to researching what needs to be in a go bag. My chest feels tight, I google volunteer opportunities and existing mutual aid with fear in my throat, I feel an irrepressible urge to get it done.
And the stakes really might be that dire. It absolutely is a matter of survival to find your people, to build connections with organizations and organizers, to know who has your back. As one example of the many, understanding implications around gender-affirming hormone therapy and birth control with others also navigating the next few months and successive years is an essential source of comfort and clarity in a landscape that will offer anything but this.
But if the emotional quality to any of this makes you feel worse on top of everything else you’re feeling, like it’s a personal failure if you personally can’t find a third space and community and getting inextricably involved in mutual aid and living in walking distance from friends, like this all needs to be locked in TODAY in order to survive, I hope you can invite some ease and love and curiosity into what comes next.
Because we need to be ready to commit for the long haul. Because we need to transform ourselves to build something transformational. Because if this were easy to do, wouldn’t we already be doing it? Our loneliness and decaying social infrastructure is just as real as it was yesterday. And while the urgency of this moment should absolutely inspire us to “get serious” about finding our people, it also requires nothing less than building a range of relational skillsets, investing in social infrastructure, and shifting our very hearts in order to access the durable, loving ecosystems of our dreams.
Community isn’t just about trying hard enough; it’s about what we are willing to feel. I can’t stop banging on about this because I worry if we do this too quickly, we will fail and bail on all of it. We’ll go to an organizing meeting, get in one argument, and never go back. We’ll struggle to show up to the potluck because the information wasn’t posted enough on social media so we forgot or just didn’t find it relevant enough. We’ll buy books about making friends and third spaces but not say hello to our neighbors on the street. We’ll get confirmation that it makes sense we’re alone, that it is so hard to make friends these days, where we live “just sucks”, that isolation is the safest place to be.
It’s as if we are being asked to plant a thriving garden in an hour; something worse off when frantic, difficult alone, and near impossible without developing the skills and context to know why that one plant keeps dying again and again no matter how many times you plunge your hands into the dirt.
May we ask ourselves: what needs to change in my life in order to point my entire existence towards other people?
This reflection shouldn’t take too much more time or prevent us from attending mass calls or new member meetings tomorrow; but it will inspire the sort of philosophical shift this moment demands. As I grapple with this myself, here are some questions I’m exploring that might resonate with you too:
What feelings come up in me when I think about finding community for the upcoming years? Excitement and longing? Urgency and desperation? Doubt or insecurity? Pausing here, even for a moment, even if it doesn’t need changing, helps us understand the emotional quality fueling everything in us as we begin to build new relationships. I’m personally noticing my urgency and fear, and wanting to transform it even a little into generosity and curiosity and spongey-ness. This shift in headspace eases my anxiety even as it gets at the same outcomes of connecting with others. Which makes me wonder…
What can I offer? Something as meaningful as sending loving texts to your friends feeling stress right now or an hour of time volunteering, as tangible as a bed or couch for folks to crash on, as generous as money, as nuanced as finding how your relational skillsets can help, as essential as rides or meals or space for conversation – anything we can bring is a prerequisite to building with others. Treat it like showing up to a potluck. Even if you just grabbed a bag of chips on the way over instead of baking cookies from scratch, it might go perfectly with someone else’s salsa. We all have something to offer to each other!
How do other people challenge me? We come into every space with our own lived experiences and trauma, horror stories and past rejections and regular old self-consciousness; it is guaranteed to shape our interactions with others in community. Like it is literally inevitable. When we build personal awareness around our hard-wired reactions, it builds resilience in us to keep showing up even after we are hurt or annoyed or in conflict.
How can I keep myself accountable to going back? Whether you’re more likely to struggle to simply return a second time or classically overcommit and burn yourself out, we need to figure out how to develop long term commitments to each other.
Where are people already doing the work and building community around me? How can I expand my criteria beyond what might just appear “cool” and relevant? They are there! They are waiting for you! I promise!
How will I invite others in? The urgency of this moment might lead to a desire to “bunker” – aka find your thing and not pave the way for others to find it too. Every one of us can be a connector, a buddy, and a helper. Bring a friend along with you to your first gathering. Share feedback with organizers about how it felt to be a newbie. Tell stories about your experience and share with others to show that it’s possible to join something new.
Earlier, I mentioned the “new year’s resolution vibe” of grit this moment has. Resolutions, dieting, monthly challenges – these are the templates we have for changing our lives. We know how they fail us. I can’t stop thinking about new patterns of change and better metaphors for what we need right now to build collectivism and true interdependence; it’s closer to a spiritual transformation, something that alchemizes your values, beliefs, and interactions with every person you meet. Something that changes you so that you go on to change others.
What we are hungry for is a shift; one where we can count on each other more than politicians. If it were easy, if our systems were set up to bring this within our reach, we would have it today. Let us channel this urgency into grit, not panic. Building the durable, loving networks we need requires nothing less.
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A few other essays from the vault that might speak to this moment:
How Much Discomfort Is the Whole World Worth? Returning to this piece by Kelly Hayes and Mariame Kaba as a reminder of building endurance in collective space
To Transform Our Trauma, We Must Nurture Movements for Change – “And so I know from my own experience and from what I’ve seen, when we are dysregulated, we default naturally to what is comfortable, what is familiar. And as so many of us have grown up in the soup of white supremacy culture, that’s what comes out. And so it manifests as toxic individualism, power hoarding, really rooting decisions and actions on fear and so on.”
Now We Fight For The Future – “Voting has taken a disproportionate place in the collective understanding of politics, largely because of the absence of other forms of engagement. It has filled a vacuum.”
How to Start a Really Really Free Market – how sick is it that how-to guides like this from the early 2010s exist on the internet?? Can we do more of this??
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Wow I needed this so badly! I didn't realize the way I was treating building community like an emergency. And while it is certainly an urgent task for survival, it cannot be done without patience and care. Thank you!
This is GOLD for me right now. I’m in the process of considering creating a mutual aid organization for my Ward. And I find myself continually feeling urgency and then reminding myself to take it slow - really investigate, learn, find support. I DO want my involvement to be for the long haul. Thank you!