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

by Mia Birdsong

Without community, there is no liberation. —AUDRE LORDE

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James Baldwin wrote, “The place in which I’ll fit will not exist until I make it.”

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One person does not build family or a community. While I can claim my deliberate effort, everyone who is part of my circles participated in their creation—actively or passively, they built with me.

It takes work on both sides… so you need to be in agreement with this relationship, making it almost like a marriage of sorts.

And what is the American Dream if it is not attaining power?

So good. Money, power, and respect, as Lil’ Kim said.

The more successful we become, the harder it may be for us to connect with others not only because we’ve developed the habits of toxic individualism in order to succeed, but because we have rewired our brain.

“It’s lonely at the top.”— unknown. But is it bc we’ve alienated people on our way there? And as a result, lost our ability to connect?

We need a vision of community that is relevant and future-facing. A vision that brings us closer to one another, allows us to be vulnerable and imperfect, to grieve and stumble, to be held accountable and loved deeply.

We are not the worst things about us, nor are we the best things.

Accountability, as I mean it, is more about ourselves in the context of the collective. It’s seeing the ways we cause hurt or harm as actions that indicate we are not living in alignment with values that recognize our own humanity or the humanity of others. It’s about recognizing when our behavior is out of alignment with our best selves. And as Mia Mingus, who you’ll read about in Chapter 8, explained to me, you can’t hold another person accountable. You can support someone’s accountability, but we hold ourselves accountable.

Accountability is also about recognizing and accepting that we are necessary and wanted. It’s understanding that when we neglect ourselves, don’t care for ourselves, or are not working to live as our best selves, we are devaluing the time, energy, and care that our loved ones offer us.

White supremacy harms people of color, and it also diminishes white people.

But I also agree that what Lama Rod Owens calls “the trauma of whiteness”3 is not going to be wholly healed without white people recognizing that they have work to do on themselves that includes understanding how their own liberation is impeded by white supremacy.

I can be more present for my community when I’m well rested and caring for my body. When I get sloppy about sleep, exercise, nutrition, relaxation, and any number of things that support my physical and emotional well-being, I’m not as kind, patient, or available to my loved ones. That means I have to show up for myself first.

Things like therapy, setting and keeping boundaries, and meditating fall under the heading of “self-care,” which are things that “help you find meaning, and support your growth and groundedness.”

It is expensive to be well.

Your getting in your steps doesn’t make the hardship of experiencing systemic oppression or the energy suck of capitalism go away.

Real listening always brings people closer together. Trust that meaningful conversations can change your world. Rely on human goodness. Stay together.

As writer and activist Shon Faye puts it, “Queer is about removing labels and replacing them with a question. It is a side eye and a challenge back to mainstream society and politics. It says, ‘I don’t know the answer, but why are you asking the question?’”

“Love is abundant, and every relationship is unique.”

“Find your core set of relationship values.” Nordgren helps us figure that out by asking, “How do you wish to be treated by others? What are your basic boundaries and expectations in all relationships? What kind of people would you like to spend your life with, and how would you like your relationships to work?”

So much of our reluctance to ask for help is fear of being too much for others to handle and fear of the subsequent rejection we’d feel if others can’t handle us. I’ve been thinking about the relationships I have where I end up feeling like I’m too much. In them, I retreat when I am feeling vulnerable. That is sometimes a reminder that vulnerability scares me and I may need to lean in and open up. But it is often information for me about what place those relationships can have in my life, and how much, and what kind of, energy I should give to them. I might really like those people, but maybe they are best thought of as what my friend Laurenellen calls “adventure buddies”: people who will go do fun, interesting, enjoyable things with you (which could include watching a movie on the couch; it doesn’t actually have to be an adventure). The people with whom I need to build more are the ones who can stomach my tears and falling apart and don’t think I’m too much.