How We Show Up: Reclaiming Family, Friendship, and Community

Even if we intellectually understand the double standards and antiquated values underlying those norms, our heart and gut doesn’…

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reframing our understanding of how we achieve the “good life” and…

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As I wrote, I had the familiar feeling of struggling to reach past the edges of my understanding toward something more aligned with the truth I wanted to grasp and articulate.

The American Dream tells us that freedom is the state of being unburdened and unconstrained by others or systems. It’s about having choices and being able to fully express ourselves. It’s having the power to be who we want, go where we want, and do what we want. But we tend to understand it as an individualistic concept.

Self-care wasn’t enough; we wanted community care.

Having agency doesn’t mean it’s your fault if you’re in a bad situation. It just means you have the ability to recognize what it’s costing you and work toward something that is your yes.

We can create more of what we all need when we are in community.

We often think of needing help as a burden. But that is toxic individualism talking! It’s telling us that we should be able to do it on our own, that if we were strong enough, good enough, and capable enough, we wouldn’t need help.

Creating relationships and connection outside the arrangements that our current culture presents to us can be exciting and liberating. We get to be creative, coming up with new ways to understand our connections to others and new ways of connecting. We get to throw out what we’ve learned to want and discover what we actually want and need. We get t

This is what it looks like to ask for and offer help, to build relationships that can hold us accountable to ourselves, to open up to knowing others and letting ourselves be known.