Welcome to GROUP HUG Headquarters
Begin here + get ya bearings
Hiya and welcome!
✹ GROUP HUG explores the feelings, resistance, and joy we’re going to feel when in community with other people.
…and the skills we can build to navigate it all with more ease.
☻ ✹ SOME POPULAR ONES
✍︎ ✹ FOR FACILITATORS, ORGANIZERS, HOSTS
❤︎ ✹ FOR VOLUNTEERS, JOINERS
✌︎ ✹ FOR FRIENDS + RELATIONSHIP FREAKS
✹ MAYBE YOU CAN RELATE?
I began writing here because I love building beautiful things with other people and experience so much stress, pain, and doubt every step of the way.
When I’d struggle, I found myself longing to bail, counting it all as a failure, and avoiding any experience that stoked those feelings in me. But that instinct stood in direct opposition to my dreams of building devoted lifelong relationships, powerful community spaces, and…just generally being a brave and loving person.
Being in community with other people requires me to be a more resilient, loving, tuned-in version of myself. Writing here helps me clarify these feelings and imagine a way forward (or sideward or squiggleward) through the many microdramas that rear up along the way.
✹ ABOUT ELISE GRANATA
My silly little life has been dedicated to bringing people together – in museums, co-ops, DIY basement shows, libraries, amateur dance classes for adults.
Currently I organize with the Bradley Street Bicycle Co-op in New Haven, Connecticut and also work at IDEO’s Play Lab where I was thrilled that “designing rituals and experiences to deepen belonging” would be part of my daily practice. Thank you for indulging me. Always feel free to reach out here.