Returning to Each Other
Love Notes on Liberation Eleven
When we first got in this mess back in November of 2024, a lot of us reacted in the same way: This is going to be really bad. We need each other. You can see my call to come together in my very first Love Note. Over a year later, I live in a bustling city with people all around me and I spend most of my time with the same two beings. They are great, but I’m a far ways off from feeling I belong in community and miles and miles away from anyone else I really know.
I’m not going to get into the many many reasons I am living an isolated life. There are just so many societal and personal factors at play. I do know that I’m not alone in being alone. Many people are isolated and a lot of us are yearning for community.
I think some of us have spent a long time finding ourselves, and coming home to ourselves, and now the winds are turning back to something ancient and true...
It is time to return to each other.
I now know that I can be alone and I am ready for something more. The truth is, it feels like being together is a skill I need to learn all over again. I have spent so much time “working” on myself—learning how to feel my emotions, direct my thoughts, honor my dreams and heal. What gives me hope is that I know if I can do all that, then I can also learn how to be together. It’s exciting to think of being together as the next work I’m doing—the wisdom I’m seeking, the experience I’m having—it’s less daunting when it is an experiment and I’m allowed to be a beginner, starting over as my authentic self.
I’m glad I took the time to build my relationship with me and came out loving myself. I also feel like pretending I am who I am now because of work that I did all alone is a lie that capitalism sells us. Individualism, as righteous as it might sometimes seem can be a dangerous idea and is not even real—
Everything I am today is because of the relationships I am part of. Everything I think and feel and create is a reflection of the world I am moving through and the living beings I interact with in it. We are all unique and we learn to explore and express our uniqueness in a web with one another. We are social creatures. We need others to survive, and we also need relationships to thrive.
I needed to learn what self-determination feels like: being in my body, having my voice, knowing my needs. I needed to be comfortable enough with myself to be alone. Now my work is to be self-accepting enough to be myself in community (which I can only practice by being with people). I don’t know how to make that journey exactly, but I recently realized that I don’t need to wait to know how to start. I can take a first step and keep going.
In all my years of soul searching I have learned this: freedom is not an escape from community. It is an honoring of one’s place there. It is letting go of control and accepting the beautiful, fragile, miracle mess that getting to come here and love is.
Freedom is together.
∞
In Solidarity,
Emily
Resources & Ideas
△ If finding or creating community feels daunting, pod mapping is a good resource to start where you are. Community gets to be what works for you.
△ I challenge you to look for all the ways people affect you daily and consider how you are also shaping others in everything you do.
△ Small connections can make a big difference ~ what if we treated every interaction no matter how short, as special? All the connections we have with our loved ones and strangers can be a heart warming gift when we are present and kind.
△ The Seattle Public Library’s compilation of books on community.
Do you have great resources for learning how to be in/find/build community? Please share in the comments!
Without community, there is no liberation.
-Audre Lorde
Love notes on Liberation - Spiritual & practical nourishment for loving liberation from Autonomous Muse