“Resilience is best understood as a characteristic of communities rather than individuals. Resilience isn’t personal grit; it’s the capacity of a neighborhood or community to respond, mitigate, and adapt to crisis.” (Daniel Aldrich, quoted by Mia Birdsong in her book “How we Show Up”)
I am really, really tired of the answer to everything being, “You should go to therapy.” Mia Birdsong says, “American Dreamism suggests that healing from trauma is a solitary process that survivors have to take charge of and move forward on their own.” Ack!! This is why all the talk of self-care gets under my skin. It just becomes one more thing that we (especially people of marginalized identities) have to add to our list and somehow pay for and find the time for. (See this blog post on the three kinds of care we need.)
There is a better way, and it’s called COMMUNITY.
If it were easy, everyone would be doing it. But it’s hard. It involves vulnerability, risk, discomfort. It involves being wrong, getting it wrong. It involves feeling unlovable, feeling on the outside. It means creating imperfect communities that are sometimes full of conflict, misunderstandings, and annoying people. It means asking for and receiving help, and it means doing things we don’t feel like doing.
In the moment, it seems much easier to stay home with our pets, screens, books, projects, or glass of wine. In the long run? You’ve heard the statistics. Our lack of community is literally killing us.
I’ve had three beautiful examples of being healed in community lately.
I dance in community every Sunday here. This week, our facilitator didn’t say anything about Palestine or Israel. She just played music and invited us to be in our bodies, as she does every week. But it was obvious for the next 90 minutes that we were dancing our grief, prayers, and anger. 70 moving bodies, some yelling, crying, letting all of it move through us, move between us. As we sat together for a few minutes afterward, we remembered the oppressed together, and we reminded ourselves that there is still joy and goodness in the world.
Last week, we had the second gathering of our Whatcom/Skagit Counties Organization Development practitioners group. It’s newly formed, we are trying to get to know one another, we aren’t quite sure what to expect. My friends David Westerlund and Spring Cheng led us in some embodied exercises around what we need to thrive—what it feels like when we get what we need, what it feels like when we don’t. In just an hour, it’s clear there were some big breakthroughs that could not have come from people being alone or one-on-one with a therapist. We needed to look silly in that room together, creating sculptures with our bodies and risking getting out of our heads.
And finally, Laura and I facilitated our first song circle. It was everything I wanted it to be. Singing for its own sake, beautifully imperfect, perfectly beautiful. We have room for one or two more people for our next one on December 6 for any Bellinghamsters that are brave enough to try. Email me for the invite.
Resilience isn’t personal grit. It’s something we build with others. Healing isn’t a solitary journey. It’s something we risk with others. There are some wonderful opportunities below, including the Truthsgiving circle I’m facilitating Thanksgiving morning. We would love to have you. Here’s to healing, friends.