Building societal structures to hold the messiness of our relationships

But these activities are all separate from the feelings needed to fully and sustainably participate: the courage, optimism, trust, love, intimacy, curiosity. The resilience to push through the inevitable feelings of fear, overwhelm, frustration, and hurt. The stamina to go through cycles of all of these feelings and more, again and again, and conti... See more

1. You need shared contexts and shared interests. The reason why it’s difficult to make friends as an adult is because where there's shared context (seeing the same people over many months daily i.e. workplaces), there's a lack of shared interests. Where there's shared interest (hobby groups, bookclubs, etc), there's a lack of shared context. A place

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TL;DR: The first step must be to calm our nervous systems; to return to center. From that grounded place, we can take longer-term actions. Second, we can cultivate resilience practices to support us amid turbulent times: taking a rest. Gardening. Spending time with nature, art, music, reading. Third: we have to build community, to invest in relatio... See more