In my marriage, my partner and I hold a vow inspired by Rilke’s Letters to a Young Poet : to be guardians of each other’s solitude. It’s this foundation that allows us to write, to create, to build our own projects while raising a child and cultivating community.

This, to me, is a key dimension of villaging. The balance of interdependence and... See more

there is no such thing as total self-sufficiency. There is only interdependence . And when that interdependence is denied or erased, it doesn’t disappear—it just becomes invisible labor, unpaid labor, exhausted labor. The labor of women, of mothers, of the land itself.