community is all we have

Independence is a fairy tale that late capitalism tells us in order to shift the responsibility for care and support from community and state to individuals and families. But not everyone has the personal capacity, and not everyone has the family support. And the stories we tell about bootstraps tell su that it’s the fault of an individual if they

The myth of independence also shapes what literature looks like and what kind of writing is valued. We see a novel as better than a short story anthology. We rarely see collaborations in fiction or in poetry. Our literary praxis is that of the lone author typing away by themselves. Our poetics come from solitary brilliant minds. We still cling as a

It is in collectivities that we find reservoirs of hope and optimism.

My contribution to the advice canon for making friends follows a similar vein: Think of friendship as a tapestry. It starts with its first seams—a meeting at a party, an introduction, a spark at a concert. Sometimes you’re knitting it together, sometimes one person is working overtime, and sometimes you stop and look at what you’ve made and know th

Loneliness has been referred to as a global health epidemic by several world governments and found to decrease life expectancy more than anxiety, depression, or smoking fifteen cigarettes a day.9 Leading researchers have also shown that chronic loneliness both increases the body’s inflammatory response and decreases the immune system’s ability to f

Without community, there is no liberation...but community must not mean a shedding of our differences, nor the pathetic pretense that these differences do not exist.

By radical friendship, I mean the kind of friendship that has the potential to heal us at the very ground of our being.

The quality of our closest relationships, more than any other factor, determines our physical health, resistance to disease, and longevity.

Restorative justice is focused on the importance of relationships. It is focused on the importance of repair when those relationships are broken, when violations occur in our relationships. It is very much interested in community, because it asks whose responsibility is it to actually meet the obligations and needs that are created through violatio

Friendship as an inner fulcrum upon which all our actions can reliably hinge, a compass to offer us direction when we’re lost, and a shield to protect us.