I’m working on a Barbenheimer piece that will end up in your inboxes in the next few days, because I wanted my thoughts to marinate more than 24 hours.
My existing community is great, a wonderful mix of in-person and remote friends, so I don't want to write about that. I am going to write about the community I wish existed instead ... and what I wish is, the men would show up. Frequently would be nice, I'd settle for occasionally, but as it is, I see men partcipating in community pretty much not at all.
Not because I miss men, not because we need them either. But because they are half of the population with the most money and resources, and I wish they would do even the barest minimum in participating in this basic element of humaning.
I feel like I'm going nuts reading this. My husband is friends with a core group of like 6 HS friends. He has college and grad friends. He makes time for them all. He volunteers at church. He is our family's kinkeeper. I meanwhile struggle to show up to most things because I am an introvert. It's weird to see your own experience cast in such highly gendered terms. None of what you wrote reflects the men in my life. Is it regional? Generational? Cultural?
Well, obviously we are all speaking from our personal and subjective experiences. I'd say, you are very very lucky. I am also an introvert, and showing up for community is not my natural impulse, but it's the right thing to do, and I do it as much as I can. Because my community shows up for me.
I didn't say "for community" I said "for things." Like parties. Every new mom in my life gets a meal and a visit and help with chores. Don't get the two confused!
Many men volunteer countless hours for little league and school sports leagues. Our local Rotary Club is mainly men. Volunteer fire departments. I see many men volunteers at our hospital. There is the Knights of Columbus, Masons, etc.
Do women outnumber men in many volunteer situations? Maybe yes, maybe no. It’s wiser not to generalize.
Yes. I think it depends on where you're volunteering. There was something going around the internet a while back that said "if people don't work if they're not getting paid then what about the people doing this" and it listed off things like volunteer firefighting and Wikipedia editing. I cant remember the others, but it was all things that have mostly men doing that specific volunteer work.
I agree. The majority of volunteers at the food bank I volunteer at are men. There are fewer men doing clinic escorting but they are there and more join all the time. I think it depends on the community and the actions you are taking.
Thank you for sharing Liz. I agree, my husband sounds very similar to yours. He shows up - he cooks most of our meals. He volunteers as a mental health counsellor in our community every Thursday night. There are men out there doing the work, it's sad to see such negative comments about the bad ones reflecting them all.
In my experience, it’s a rarity when men show up unless they are promised money or a title. Volunteering and community seems difficult or not worthwhile to most.
If you are having an event, contacting local sponsors to provide free goodies is a great way to encourage turnout from otherwise disaffected/disconnected individuals
In all kindness, I think you are missing the point.
I want men to literally show up and do the work, wash the dishes,clean the space before and after, make the calls, do the driving, do the organizing, spend the time ... not send in their CC number and pat themselves on the back for a good deed.
As an organizer, trust me, I know how to meet people where they are at and “make the ask.” I don’t mind it exactly, but it is almost *never* men who do this work. Women are doing most of the strategizing and building and a heck of a lot of men have no awareness that they are being organized. Then all the sudden they are doing some work and think it was their idea all along. It makes them often very bad organizers but instead insufferable lecturers, because they often don’t realize who did the work to engage them, and *how* that work was done.
I think the previous poster’s point is that it is ridiculous that men need a grab bag or title to show up, or that it is women’s job to provide that for them. We all live in community. We owe it to ourselves and others to show up and do the work of sustaining it.
Interesting. I live in a small town in Hawaiʻi and the men contribute fully as mainstays of our community. They cook for almost every community event, literally "man" food banks, participate in equal numbers to the women in various organizations, often as facilitators. It would be a rare day that at least one of my male friends did not show up in my texts or on my phone about one of our shared projects. Very rare. I wonder if this is partly a cultural thing in a very diverse, mostly brown community? And the haole (white) men and women who thrive here just share those same values naturally.
This this this! And I will add that it's primarily straight cis men who don't show up. I've been doing a weekly mutual aid project for three years and I can think of maybe two such dudes who have contributed, ever. Sometimes the contribution comes from a couple, but guess who initiates and sends it.
Gotta follow what the Elks lodge org does, have a space to hang out as a member, where more senior members who the other members look up to can encourage positive action and expectations to be able to remain an active member
That's really easy to say; "having a space" costs money.
I have to say: all of your suggestions revolve around making things more comfortable for men than requiring men to do any changing at all, and I kind of think you're making everyone's point for them.
I'd love to see more men volunteering, and I hope to positively contribute to that effort, I'm sorry that in the us we don't see more men being involved in community building now, but I do think it is possible to get them engaged, especially among millennials and gen z
I've put together my thoughts on this in my substack if you are interested, but I understand if you're not
I grew up with a dad who was a VERY active volunteer. He was a mentor in Junior Achievement and served for decades in Rotary, including being a Group Study Exchange leader and District Governor. He was also a bank vice president—this was back in the days when banks were local institutions, not huge national conglomerates. His bosses considered it important that people were active in their communities and gave him time off to do these things. I feel like that would be almost unheard-of today! Rotary had to axe its Group Study Exchange program in 2013 because nowadays, no businessperson could get the time off to travel abroad for the entire four-week cultural and vocational exchange program.
In every volunteer group I've worked with, men are in charge, and the women do the work. When a woman is in charge, the men step back because they won't do the work. They're there for the fun stuff.
So funny. My 74 yr old ex-husband, at some point after we divorced, became involved in animal rescue shelters in Mississippi. He is the point man to drive dogs from overloaded 'kill sheltres' in Mississippi to 'no kill' shelters in ILLINOIS, a ten hour roundtrip. He does this ALL the time, plus he and his wife foster all sorts of strays. We couldn't have a dog because he didn't like them, 40 years ago. Go figure.
I volunteered at the second largest humane society in the US for years and definitely saw this firsthand. I believe they had over 1000 volunteers and I am fairly certain could name at least 95% of the men who volunteered because there were so few.
I'm from Cajun country in Louisiana, and men tend to cook for most large community events. Also there is the semi informal Cajun Navy that do a lot of rescue work. Now I live in Kentucky. After catastrophic flooding, all kinds of men and women showed up with machinery, trucks, trailers, etc. And spent lots of long, dirty, stinky hours tearing out flooring, etc. . In our community, many men volunteer along with their women to coach our thriving sport leagues. I think if a man has a family he will often prioritize a volunteer event that benefits/includes his family.
This is my experience also. I've served on several nonprofit boards and while we've had one or two men involved over the year it has always been female dominated. Staff of organizations are also all or majority female. While I sit on 3 nonprofit boards and volunteer for several other organizations, my husband does nothing. I am also the primary parent. I should also add that the nonprofits I'm involved in are mostly legal services orgs in an industry that is male dominated and yet so few men volunteer. I do think there is a social or cultural component however, because my grandfather, who lived in a very small and tight-knit community, was an avid volunteer and instilled that value in his children. I think it makes a difference if you feel a personal connection to a cause or community, and I feel like many men do not feel that.
True! Also a lot of middle class and upper class women Are privileged to have a few more available hours free for volunteer pursuits not pertaining to their families, but just because they personally care about the cause.
I am deeply craving and hoping for community that is spontaneous and supportive. Lockdown has taught me how much seeing people in person means to me, so I’m trying to figure out how to make that happen more often (whether that’s connecting more deeply with my neighbors or taking more trips to see faraway friends). I find myself longing for a life where friends drop in for dinner, or stop by on their way home from work for a hug and to share a quick bit of news. I want intergenerational relationships. I want a frequency and a casualness of contact that leads to real intimacy and vulnerability, in the hopes that at some point it would become something that can exist and move forward without me having to take every step myself.
YES YES YES to all of this, especially to the frequency and casualness bit. I wrote above about how planning get togethers with friends weeks in advance makes part difficult. If I know someone is coming weeks ahead, my house will
be super picked up and everything will be well planned. The control freak in me loves that, but also -- that’s not reality. The absence of vulnerability makes it tough to deepen relationships
Yes! Not only the lack of vulnerability / reality, but I also find myself getting more anxious the longer I have to think about an upcoming event - part of why I'm so drawn to the idea of spontaneous get-togethers is that I won't have time to overthink things, and get more comfortable with people seeing me as I am!
I relate so much to this. Your last sentence absolutely nails it. I go in and out of states of yearning because, as an introvert, sometimes I feel highly possessive of my energy and time, but as a person who loves to connect deeply and enjoy others’ company, I crave the community. I cannot for the life of me figure out how to make it all happen with any semblance of consistency. Our neighborhood is chock full of families but I still find myself feeling so lonely. Everyone is so busy. This element of adulthood is honestly not what I expected, and I am so disappointed.
I feel you so much on: “Our neighborhood is chock full of families but I still find myself feeling so lonely. Everyone is so busy” I wonder frequently if I’m the only one that wants to sit outside having a beer or seltzer, while the kids run around and entertain themselves. It’s so rare that we find a time when we can get together with another family, and when we do it frequently, feels like an information gathering session. Like the purpose of getting together to find out what the other kids are doing to make sure that we didn’t miss out on some activity or opportunity that we didn’t know about. I want so badly to just BE with others. Also, I realize that so many of my comments are about wanting to hang out with fellow parents. I guess I have assumed that only parents would want to hang out with other kids, or understand the shitshow that can sometimes but that is a big assumption
Yep, I was sitting at a 4yo’s birthday party last weekend having this realization. Surrounded by families, none of whom I feel close to, only acquainted with. Some I knew better than others and I kept up the conversation, but it never felt like hanging out with friends. I also learned that 2 families/neighbors my daughter attended PreK with this year are switching schools (which I have many thoughts about, but this isn’t the thread for), further enhancing my feeling of isolation. It just felt like I had started down a path of possible new community and I could feel it crumbling as I sat there.
I'm late to this party, but FWIW I wanted to share something I did that worked, if you have capacity. Inspired by a (not very culinarily exciting, actually) cookbook called Soup Nights, I started a Soup Night on our block. Only 2 simple rules: 1. You have to invite everybody in whatever parameter makes sense (our list is everyone with our specific street name). 2. Keep it short (defined 2 hour period, like first Sunday of the month from 5-7 or whatever) and simple for everyone--host makes 2 pots of soup; no need for anyone to bring potluck contributions (though some people always do); bring your own bowl and spoon so host is not left with a ton of dishes. Host rotates to whoever wants to do it. We started with paper invitations at everyone's doors, then graduated to an electronic list, but the few people who we don't have info for (the ones who haven't been yet) still get a paper invite each time. It has hugely increased the feeling of community on our street. We didn't hold any during summers and stopped during the pandemic but everyone has been saying, "Maybe it's time to start soup nights again."
I'm also an introvert, and married to an even MORE introverted person, which I think is part of the process that I struggle with - I'm often very anxious about overextending myself, and spend a lot of time thinking about how to (as you say) consistently create a rhythm of connecting in a way that doesn't require me to turtle up and recover after. It's definitely a difficult thing for me to balance.
OMG, yes. ‘I want a frequency and a casualness of contact that leads to real intimacy and vulnerability. . . that can exist and move forward without me having to take every step myself.’
💯 I lived in a shared house for most of my 20s and I miss the little conversations and space sharing that happens naturally with that. I love the concept of unplanned visits, but growing up with a reserved family means I’m often hesitant to make the first move.
intergenerational friends are so great. in our building we have an older couple who are grandparents and theyre like the grandparents to our entire building. they are also elder queers and weve heard so many of their stories and hardships and its so reassuring theyve made it!
YES! So well said. The piece AHP shared about errand friends also made me go THAT is what I'm missing in my life. All the best roommates I've had were that kind of relationship, but I don't have roommates anymore (and don't want them) - I just want to live near all my friends! And I don't want to plan everything weeks in advance.
Another option is to just befriend your neighbors. Then you get the privacy of living alone with the casualness of dropping by to say hello while on an evening walk.
I feel this and have been on the lookout for how people like me (early 30s, no kids no partner) build connections like that. For my roommates (similar profiles) it very much seems to be through their shared workplace — and I guess that makes everyone’s schedules/locations line up a little more easily — but those are areas of my own life I reaaaally prefer to keep distinct, so… what else?
I'm also someone that keeps my work life separate from the rest of my life! One of the things that opened some doors for me in this regard was joining a roller derby league - it was good way to meet other people and do an activity that necessitated some vulnerability. It obviously didn't result in the instant community that I was hoping for, but it gave me a lot of people to build more relationships with.
Yes yes.. I used to live within walking/biking distance of my friends... so miss that. (Moved to help with aging parents)
Does anyone have suggestions for modern fiction that features this kind of community? I am especially wondering about women in more suburban environments. Anyone?
I just finished reading Other Birds, by Sarah Addison. The main characters all live in the same apartment complex, but none of them ever talk to each other. Then a new person moves in, breaks the ice, and shows them how lovely it is to need and feel needed.
I am writing a novel about this right now! (Unfortunately I don’t have any recs for existing novels on this burning topic.) My novel is more about the pernicious loneliness and isolation that drives people to desperately crave this kind of community, and their (imperfect) attempts to create it. If you’d like to be an early reader (no pressure!) I can be found at clairecoxwrites.com. :-)
Absolute YES to all of this. What you describe is exactly what I crave but I’ve been so conditioned to cultivate the exact opposite, and as an introvert I feel lost in even attempting to build this type of community.
Your point about having been conditioned to the opposite of community - a big focus on each family in its own house, doing its own thing, buying its own stuff, driving its own car - is so spot-on. I drove towards those goals for so long and then once I got there, I realized that it wasn't what I wanted (or what was best for me) at all!
The frequency and casualness of contact is something that I had a lot of in college and took for granted that it would continue into adulthood. At the time, I sometimes found it challenging.. I would want alone time but there would almost always be a roommate, friends, or friends of friends in our four-person apartment. But now, having gone through a pandemic living solo, I would sometimes kill to have a knock on the door and reveal some friend looking to hang out for 20min or a few hours. No herculean effort to align schedules, just casual presence. If you are someone that happens to live close to friends/family, I get why people don't do it. Everyone is so busy and wants to be considerate of others' schedules. But I'd love to build a community where this was an accepted and thoughtful practice.
I used to have this in the SF East Bay with a few friends who welcomed dropping by as I and my then partner welcomed it. For those of us who value it, this kind of thing is a rare and precious experience. I miss it so much.
I don’t really consider my family to be my community. Community is so important to me, and I have little in common with my family in terms of values, including the value of community. So that’s out. Friends are very important. Strangely, I talk to a lot of strangers both for my job and because I bike and take public transit (in a city where that’s not a predominant mode) and I consider most other people doing the same to be my community. I’ve been cared for and have learned a lot and helped others just by sitting at a bus shelter or talking with a few kids when I’m on the bike. I was raised in a very not-social upper middle class white family, and moving to a city that is not majority white has been so important in my development of the concept of community. What I’m missing? Family, yes. Neighbors. I live in a racially segregated city and as a white person....I think a lot of white (middle/upper class) people aren’t great at building the community I value. Not just planned events and block parties, but spontaneous conversations and asking for help from strangers. I got mugged and the people who made me feel safe were not the cops but the multiple strangers who checked on me and gave me their numbers of I needed help, which was a short insight that such a thing is possible.
I’m missing, though, a revolutionary community of others who are educated and interested in fighting the property-obsessed way of being. I am missing a community of other organizers. They exist, but finding them in white spaces (again, segregation) is difficult and I sometimes feel alone, especially when the people who I most connect with have kids, so I have such limited time with them. I have been thinking about how to find them on the internet (NOT social media).
It’s a good question and forgive my meandering answer or any sweeping generalizations. It’s the question I think about all the time.
I do get a thrill when I see someone even mention private property. Like “hey friend!” But your comment about the radical part — yeah. I do follow some very radical people (like Last Born in the Wilderness podcast), but making connection between that vision and people willing to take action is still … elusive? Maybe the thread is just really, really, really thin and fragile yet.
Omg this! I’ve had so many delightful conversations with random people on bicycles, or about the bicycle I’m riding. This never happened to me driving on highways.
I recently was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. My community is my friends and family in real time...but I found a support group online that helped me immensely.
Everyone pulled together and made sure I was clean and comfortable. But the online community was I able to cry and laugh and vent. I went through surgery and lo and behold the tumor was benign! I have no complaints of the community in which I am involved in, we pulled together.
That’s great news, Michael. I joined an online support group maybe 15 or more years ago in a time of crisis, and the members that i really connected with mean the world to me still. No one else knows your situation as well as they do
There are 2 pieces of community that are missing for me, and their absence relates (I think) to living in a high income, career driven, upper middle class community. First - friends who we can see regularly, spontaneously. It seems like everyone here is SO BUSY. They have work stuff, and kids have lots of enrichment activities after school and anytime we get together it needs to be planned weeks in advance, which then feels like a work update meeting. I have tried to organize a get together at the same time each week so people could stop by if they were available and there was so much enthusiasm about the idea but most didn’t make it. I am so thankful to the family that came consistently. I walk my kids around the neighborhood and most people are not playing outside -- people just stick to themselves.
The other is brown and black folks. I joke that sometimes I want to stick a sign on my chest saying I am looking for brown mom friends. We are a racially mixed family (I’m a person of color, partner isn’t) and I crave the shorthand that could come from being friends with other people that have the shared experience living in this largely white area.
If anyone has suggestions to help either of these I’m all ears
“Which makes it feel like a work update meeting” - exactly. I was telling my husband that this is how I characterize many of my hangouts now. I want more than just chit chat and updates. I want to be in a space where humor and silliness can emerge, where fun can be central to the experience and we can have an exchange that feels more than an update.
I love the way you put this! That is the kind of community I have been missing lately too. For a long time in 2020 and 2021 and even 2022, my suddenly-long-distance friends and I were able to build digital space for silliness and fun and the kind of just hanging out we had in person. But as we’ve all been dealing with a number of life shifts/events, it feels like the focus has shifted to giving each other updates instead of keeping that space, and I really feel the absence of it deeply.
I resonate with both of these. I lived in the dorms my first year of college, and everyone in my hall knew each other. We didn’t always get along, but we did go through life together. There would be spontaneous movie nights, and we watched a lot of TV together. We studied together and complained about studying together. We were all really busy, but that was rarely a barrier to spending time together because we could be busy together. It felt like a great example of friends being family that I got to come home to every day. I never had to put extra effort into building relationships, because they were always there. And the community was racially diverse too. I’ve often wished I could live in a similar kind of community with a bunch of people all at a similar life stage and engaged in similar activities.
I’ve thought about doing that: organizing a casual get-together ‘drop-in’ kind of thing, but then I never push through it to invite anyone. I feel like I’m trying too hard. And as an introvert, I kind of am.
My partner and I recently started "open dinners" - we gather at a beer garden/food cart garden for two hours once a week and let all our friends know they're welcome if they want to come for however long they want. So far we've done it twice and have had one couple drop by. We wound up staying late and having a blast! The best part though was that I was barely a casual friend with one of them. But we wound up having a great night with lots of laughs and got to know an awesome couple much better. All that to say, not only is it worth inviting folks, it's worth inviting even the ones you might feel hesitant inviting because you "don't know them well enough." You'll probably be surprised! Also, keep going if the first few times you invite folks they seem excited but don't come. Sometimes it takes people time to adjust to new hang out ideas, and sometimes schedules are hard to remember when being told about something awesome.
This is such a nice idea! Sometimes people just need an excuse to get out and be social and knowing that there's a low pressure option available if they're feeling up to it is such a nice thing. Plus, I like the idea of being able to try different places in your neighborhood that way.
Yup - fellow introvert here. The summer get together was meeting up at a park. Low stakes. My partner and I have for years talked about doing the Friday night meatball dinner thing but we have never followed through because it seems so intimidating
I started a new thing this summer, which was that 3 families agreed to meet one night a week in the local park for a potluck/playdate, and invite everyone else we could think of to join us. The nice part of having 3 "key" families is that there's always someone else there, even if one family is busy and nobody else shows up. Also, the 3 families invite different people. It can be a potluck meal, or just a playdate (for kids and parents alike). Some weeks we have a ton of people, some weeks it's only a few others. But I never have to schedule it, and it just lives on my weekly calendar. My extroverted kid lives for it. My introverted kid brings a book. I get to chat with a bunch of people. (And no one has to clean their house.) I recommend it as a pretty low-stakes way to spend time with people.
I maintain that the true fiction of sitcoms that aren't family-based is people dropping in to see each other all the time or meeting up regularly just for random conversations about all the things.
In the past couple years I've worked really hard to build community around where I live. I have two young kids so "going places" is super hard and un-fun for me. We've had success bringing people close--we basically built a family compound, and now my mom and my son's early childhood nanny both live next door, and the kids can run over to their houses whenever they want. We've also made friends with people who live in our neighborhood, so now whenever we go to the nearby park or take a walk, we see friends.
Our culture is so into promoting individual maximization -- focus on YOUR family, YOUR job, etc -- we so quickly throw community under the bus in pursuit of individual gains. I don't blame people for this, as it's an easy message to fall into (and I did for many years). But for me, forsaking some individual gains in order to gain community has been so worthwhile. I feel so satisfied and at home where I live now, when I've only been in this area for 3 years.
Going through the isolation of COVID where we couldn't see grandparents and didn't feel like we could approach neighbors to build relationships, made me swear to never live that kind of isolated life again. I dorkily bought a book about how to build community in your neighborhood and then just forced myself to do what she said, and and it worked!
Individual maximization is a great term — I first read it as "Individual Maximalism" which also works to describe how we've been taught to think in American capitalism. And I love, love, love that you bought the damn book!
Can you share what that book was? I live in what seems like a nice neighborhood and we are all on ‘hi there’ terms but I’d like it to be more--but I’m such an introvert!!
Oh, sure! I'm a major introvert too, so needed a push.
The book is "Start with Hello" by Shannan Martin. The main thing that I took away was to just impulsively invite people over and do not try to be perfect -- keep it humble and people will still be thrilled. As a heads up she comes at it from a Christian perspective (I'm Jewish so that part didn't resonate), but the core message works for anyone.
I'm just here to say that it can actually work! 18 months ago I decided I wanted to invest in my neighbors/neighborhood and it has been amazing. We started a neighborhood party (another neighbor started a second one) then started a book club and have developed wonderful friendships (and it's a mix of parents/non parents and folks 25-55). The book "How We Show Up" by Mia Birdsong is really good on this topic.
I’m so glad you shared! It really does work and takes surprisingly little effort. The thing is, (almost) EVERYONE wants community so it just takes someone to get it going.
Hi Rebecca - I had to come back to this post to say THANK YOU. I'd been feeling an internal pull towards wanting to build more community with my immediate neighbors, but wasn't sure how to start, if people would think I was weird for inviting them over, etc. Your comment (and the book rec) gave me the last bit of courage I needed. In August, I printed up little invitations and put them in the doors of 7 of my closest neighbors. A simple ask: hangout on my deck for one hour on an upcoming weeknight if you're interested and your schedule allows. The first time, only one neighbor could join, but two others knocked on my door, said they weren't going to be able to join, but gave me their phone numbers and said "thanks so much for doing this, please ask again!" The second time, three neighbors showed up. Last night, 7 of us companionably passed a little over an hour together on a cool fall evening. There were a lot of, "I've lived here x-amount of years, and I'm so glad I finally know your name!" comments :). They're eager to keep it going and I'm utterly delighted that I now have all these connections steps from my front door!
Oh my gosh, what a joy to read your comment! I'm so so happy you took the plunge and that it's paying off. A deck/porch hang is such a great, low-pressure way to start. I might need to copy your idea :)
I have the community I want: friends and family, online and IRL, loose ties and strong.
What I don’t have—and what none of us have, really—is the time and energy to show up for one another as much as we’d like. Some of that’s chronic illness, and a lot of it’s capitalism. But the way to improve my community wouldn’t be more people; it would be fewer working hours (and universal healthcare).
As an immigrant from a trust based culture, it has taken me a long time to build a trust based network in a culture based on coercion and incentives. I have a descent network now that consists of my children and immediate family, neighbors, church friends and a handful of local friends along with an international network of friends. However, I really wish that the physical layout of American communities would be less antisocial. Everything involves a damn car! People should live in multigenerational and multisocioeconomic communities that are walkable. Stores, businesses, homes...all mixed up. Instead we have these ridiculous artificial environments where people and activities are segregated. It's an elitist country by design and we need to change that.
Years ago, a new friend visiting from Brazil would go for walks with me--we were living outside Philly/main line area. She used to say that every time that we’d never see anyone else. If a jogger would go by, she’d whisper ‘a miracle!’. She’d also read off the alarm company names (from those little stakes on the lawn) like a litany.
Yes, Kristian! Having moved from the US to Berlin, Germany, I've noticed the same thing but in reverse. It wasn't until I lived here in Berlin that I truly realized how the (vast majority of) urban planning in the US is not set up for community building.
Coming out of a high control religion like white evangelicalism I’ve had to grapple with the threat of losing community that has been looming over me since birth. And it’s true--being honest about who I am/what I believe in the past few years have caused family and friends to reject me. So, so many of them.
Right now community is hard because of all of that baggage but knowing my kids need awesome, joyful, queer, neurodivergent and diverse community to flourish helps me know where to put my limited energies. And honestly substack really helps me find community with thoughtful and curious reader-types (my favorite kind of human!).
I feel this so much! There’s nothing harder than realizing that people who said they loved you in fact only loved you as long as you remained within the bounds of their belief system. I felt very secure in the community I grew up in, but when I grew up and realized that the white evangelical worldview I’d been given doesn’t accurately describe the world, I found that those people couldn’t handle me when I believed different things than they do.
Growing up with conditional love like that really sucks, huh? I’m sorry you experienced that too! But it’s nice to not have that hanging over my head anymore in a way. Now I can just be a human who tries to build messy community with other complicated humans.
My existing community is great, a wonderful mix of in-person and remote friends, so I don't want to write about that. I am going to write about the community I wish existed instead ... and what I wish is, the men would show up. Frequently would be nice, I'd settle for occasionally, but as it is, I see men partcipating in community pretty much not at all.
Not because I miss men, not because we need them either. But because they are half of the population with the most money and resources, and I wish they would do even the barest minimum in participating in this basic element of humaning.
Thank you for saying this, Birdsong
I feel like I'm going nuts reading this. My husband is friends with a core group of like 6 HS friends. He has college and grad friends. He makes time for them all. He volunteers at church. He is our family's kinkeeper. I meanwhile struggle to show up to most things because I am an introvert. It's weird to see your own experience cast in such highly gendered terms. None of what you wrote reflects the men in my life. Is it regional? Generational? Cultural?
Well, obviously we are all speaking from our personal and subjective experiences. I'd say, you are very very lucky. I am also an introvert, and showing up for community is not my natural impulse, but it's the right thing to do, and I do it as much as I can. Because my community shows up for me.
I didn't say "for community" I said "for things." Like parties. Every new mom in my life gets a meal and a visit and help with chores. Don't get the two confused!
What I think is it’s anecdotal.
Many men volunteer countless hours for little league and school sports leagues. Our local Rotary Club is mainly men. Volunteer fire departments. I see many men volunteers at our hospital. There is the Knights of Columbus, Masons, etc.
Do women outnumber men in many volunteer situations? Maybe yes, maybe no. It’s wiser not to generalize.
Yes. I think it depends on where you're volunteering. There was something going around the internet a while back that said "if people don't work if they're not getting paid then what about the people doing this" and it listed off things like volunteer firefighting and Wikipedia editing. I cant remember the others, but it was all things that have mostly men doing that specific volunteer work.
I agree. The majority of volunteers at the food bank I volunteer at are men. There are fewer men doing clinic escorting but they are there and more join all the time. I think it depends on the community and the actions you are taking.
Thank you for sharing Liz. I agree, my husband sounds very similar to yours. He shows up - he cooks most of our meals. He volunteers as a mental health counsellor in our community every Thursday night. There are men out there doing the work, it's sad to see such negative comments about the bad ones reflecting them all.
In my experience, it’s a rarity when men show up unless they are promised money or a title. Volunteering and community seems difficult or not worthwhile to most.
Yup! And I am SO over it. I am calling out their absence every chance I get.
Dudes, show up for someone besides yourself for once.
If you are having an event, contacting local sponsors to provide free goodies is a great way to encourage turnout from otherwise disaffected/disconnected individuals
In all kindness, I think you are missing the point.
I want men to literally show up and do the work, wash the dishes,clean the space before and after, make the calls, do the driving, do the organizing, spend the time ... not send in their CC number and pat themselves on the back for a good deed.
I understabd your frustration, guys are stubborn and unfortunately have to interact on their own terms
There is a great book on how to get guys to show up for community, We Need to Hang Out by Bill Baker
Also a trick I've seen some organizations take is to give everyone a title no matter how small a role so they feel that they are making a difference
As an organizer, trust me, I know how to meet people where they are at and “make the ask.” I don’t mind it exactly, but it is almost *never* men who do this work. Women are doing most of the strategizing and building and a heck of a lot of men have no awareness that they are being organized. Then all the sudden they are doing some work and think it was their idea all along. It makes them often very bad organizers but instead insufferable lecturers, because they often don’t realize who did the work to engage them, and *how* that work was done.
I think the previous poster’s point is that it is ridiculous that men need a grab bag or title to show up, or that it is women’s job to provide that for them. We all live in community. We owe it to ourselves and others to show up and do the work of sustaining it.
Giving everyone a title seems kind of silly. For adults, I mean.
Interesting. I live in a small town in Hawaiʻi and the men contribute fully as mainstays of our community. They cook for almost every community event, literally "man" food banks, participate in equal numbers to the women in various organizations, often as facilitators. It would be a rare day that at least one of my male friends did not show up in my texts or on my phone about one of our shared projects. Very rare. I wonder if this is partly a cultural thing in a very diverse, mostly brown community? And the haole (white) men and women who thrive here just share those same values naturally.
This this this! And I will add that it's primarily straight cis men who don't show up. I've been doing a weekly mutual aid project for three years and I can think of maybe two such dudes who have contributed, ever. Sometimes the contribution comes from a couple, but guess who initiates and sends it.
Gotta follow what the Elks lodge org does, have a space to hang out as a member, where more senior members who the other members look up to can encourage positive action and expectations to be able to remain an active member
That's really easy to say; "having a space" costs money.
I have to say: all of your suggestions revolve around making things more comfortable for men than requiring men to do any changing at all, and I kind of think you're making everyone's point for them.
I'd love to see more men volunteering, and I hope to positively contribute to that effort, I'm sorry that in the us we don't see more men being involved in community building now, but I do think it is possible to get them engaged, especially among millennials and gen z
I've put together my thoughts on this in my substack if you are interested, but I understand if you're not
I grew up with a dad who was a VERY active volunteer. He was a mentor in Junior Achievement and served for decades in Rotary, including being a Group Study Exchange leader and District Governor. He was also a bank vice president—this was back in the days when banks were local institutions, not huge national conglomerates. His bosses considered it important that people were active in their communities and gave him time off to do these things. I feel like that would be almost unheard-of today! Rotary had to axe its Group Study Exchange program in 2013 because nowadays, no businessperson could get the time off to travel abroad for the entire four-week cultural and vocational exchange program.
In every volunteer group I've worked with, men are in charge, and the women do the work. When a woman is in charge, the men step back because they won't do the work. They're there for the fun stuff.
Just anecdotal.
Your comment has reminded me of something I've heard repeatedly over the years, about the majority of animal rescue workers/volunteers being women.
Yes, and now substitute animal rescue for just about any charity work you can think of.
YES.
So funny. My 74 yr old ex-husband, at some point after we divorced, became involved in animal rescue shelters in Mississippi. He is the point man to drive dogs from overloaded 'kill sheltres' in Mississippi to 'no kill' shelters in ILLINOIS, a ten hour roundtrip. He does this ALL the time, plus he and his wife foster all sorts of strays. We couldn't have a dog because he didn't like them, 40 years ago. Go figure.
it's wonderful to hear when people change ... I used to do a lot of dog rescue myself. it's hard and heartbreaking.
Noble work, for sure.
I volunteered at the second largest humane society in the US for years and definitely saw this firsthand. I believe they had over 1000 volunteers and I am fairly certain could name at least 95% of the men who volunteered because there were so few.
I'm from Cajun country in Louisiana, and men tend to cook for most large community events. Also there is the semi informal Cajun Navy that do a lot of rescue work. Now I live in Kentucky. After catastrophic flooding, all kinds of men and women showed up with machinery, trucks, trailers, etc. And spent lots of long, dirty, stinky hours tearing out flooring, etc. . In our community, many men volunteer along with their women to coach our thriving sport leagues. I think if a man has a family he will often prioritize a volunteer event that benefits/includes his family.
This is my experience also. I've served on several nonprofit boards and while we've had one or two men involved over the year it has always been female dominated. Staff of organizations are also all or majority female. While I sit on 3 nonprofit boards and volunteer for several other organizations, my husband does nothing. I am also the primary parent. I should also add that the nonprofits I'm involved in are mostly legal services orgs in an industry that is male dominated and yet so few men volunteer. I do think there is a social or cultural component however, because my grandfather, who lived in a very small and tight-knit community, was an avid volunteer and instilled that value in his children. I think it makes a difference if you feel a personal connection to a cause or community, and I feel like many men do not feel that.
True! Also a lot of middle class and upper class women Are privileged to have a few more available hours free for volunteer pursuits not pertaining to their families, but just because they personally care about the cause.
I am deeply craving and hoping for community that is spontaneous and supportive. Lockdown has taught me how much seeing people in person means to me, so I’m trying to figure out how to make that happen more often (whether that’s connecting more deeply with my neighbors or taking more trips to see faraway friends). I find myself longing for a life where friends drop in for dinner, or stop by on their way home from work for a hug and to share a quick bit of news. I want intergenerational relationships. I want a frequency and a casualness of contact that leads to real intimacy and vulnerability, in the hopes that at some point it would become something that can exist and move forward without me having to take every step myself.
YES YES YES to all of this, especially to the frequency and casualness bit. I wrote above about how planning get togethers with friends weeks in advance makes part difficult. If I know someone is coming weeks ahead, my house will
be super picked up and everything will be well planned. The control freak in me loves that, but also -- that’s not reality. The absence of vulnerability makes it tough to deepen relationships
Yes! Not only the lack of vulnerability / reality, but I also find myself getting more anxious the longer I have to think about an upcoming event - part of why I'm so drawn to the idea of spontaneous get-togethers is that I won't have time to overthink things, and get more comfortable with people seeing me as I am!
I relate so much to this. Your last sentence absolutely nails it. I go in and out of states of yearning because, as an introvert, sometimes I feel highly possessive of my energy and time, but as a person who loves to connect deeply and enjoy others’ company, I crave the community. I cannot for the life of me figure out how to make it all happen with any semblance of consistency. Our neighborhood is chock full of families but I still find myself feeling so lonely. Everyone is so busy. This element of adulthood is honestly not what I expected, and I am so disappointed.
I feel you so much on: “Our neighborhood is chock full of families but I still find myself feeling so lonely. Everyone is so busy” I wonder frequently if I’m the only one that wants to sit outside having a beer or seltzer, while the kids run around and entertain themselves. It’s so rare that we find a time when we can get together with another family, and when we do it frequently, feels like an information gathering session. Like the purpose of getting together to find out what the other kids are doing to make sure that we didn’t miss out on some activity or opportunity that we didn’t know about. I want so badly to just BE with others. Also, I realize that so many of my comments are about wanting to hang out with fellow parents. I guess I have assumed that only parents would want to hang out with other kids, or understand the shitshow that can sometimes but that is a big assumption
Yep, I was sitting at a 4yo’s birthday party last weekend having this realization. Surrounded by families, none of whom I feel close to, only acquainted with. Some I knew better than others and I kept up the conversation, but it never felt like hanging out with friends. I also learned that 2 families/neighbors my daughter attended PreK with this year are switching schools (which I have many thoughts about, but this isn’t the thread for), further enhancing my feeling of isolation. It just felt like I had started down a path of possible new community and I could feel it crumbling as I sat there.
I'm late to this party, but FWIW I wanted to share something I did that worked, if you have capacity. Inspired by a (not very culinarily exciting, actually) cookbook called Soup Nights, I started a Soup Night on our block. Only 2 simple rules: 1. You have to invite everybody in whatever parameter makes sense (our list is everyone with our specific street name). 2. Keep it short (defined 2 hour period, like first Sunday of the month from 5-7 or whatever) and simple for everyone--host makes 2 pots of soup; no need for anyone to bring potluck contributions (though some people always do); bring your own bowl and spoon so host is not left with a ton of dishes. Host rotates to whoever wants to do it. We started with paper invitations at everyone's doors, then graduated to an electronic list, but the few people who we don't have info for (the ones who haven't been yet) still get a paper invite each time. It has hugely increased the feeling of community on our street. We didn't hold any during summers and stopped during the pandemic but everyone has been saying, "Maybe it's time to start soup nights again."
It was a bit of work initially, but I shared it with a neighbor and there was a lot of payoff for the amount of work it was.
I'm also an introvert, and married to an even MORE introverted person, which I think is part of the process that I struggle with - I'm often very anxious about overextending myself, and spend a lot of time thinking about how to (as you say) consistently create a rhythm of connecting in a way that doesn't require me to turtle up and recover after. It's definitely a difficult thing for me to balance.
OMG, yes. ‘I want a frequency and a casualness of contact that leads to real intimacy and vulnerability. . . that can exist and move forward without me having to take every step myself.’
1000 times yes! 10,000 times!!
💯 I lived in a shared house for most of my 20s and I miss the little conversations and space sharing that happens naturally with that. I love the concept of unplanned visits, but growing up with a reserved family means I’m often hesitant to make the first move.
I missed the close-proximity living situation I had in college OFTEN, and how easy it was to find people to do things or talk to.
intergenerational friends are so great. in our building we have an older couple who are grandparents and theyre like the grandparents to our entire building. they are also elder queers and weve heard so many of their stories and hardships and its so reassuring theyve made it!
As someone who didn't grow up with nearby grandparents, this sounds wonderful!
YES! So well said. The piece AHP shared about errand friends also made me go THAT is what I'm missing in my life. All the best roommates I've had were that kind of relationship, but I don't have roommates anymore (and don't want them) - I just want to live near all my friends! And I don't want to plan everything weeks in advance.
Another option is to just befriend your neighbors. Then you get the privacy of living alone with the casualness of dropping by to say hello while on an evening walk.
I feel this and have been on the lookout for how people like me (early 30s, no kids no partner) build connections like that. For my roommates (similar profiles) it very much seems to be through their shared workplace — and I guess that makes everyone’s schedules/locations line up a little more easily — but those are areas of my own life I reaaaally prefer to keep distinct, so… what else?
I'm also someone that keeps my work life separate from the rest of my life! One of the things that opened some doors for me in this regard was joining a roller derby league - it was good way to meet other people and do an activity that necessitated some vulnerability. It obviously didn't result in the instant community that I was hoping for, but it gave me a lot of people to build more relationships with.
All of that, with an especial emphasis on people I can trust, emotionally more than physically. I’m so tired of being the one doing all the work.
"I'm so tired of being the one doing all the work" is a thought I have had often over the years, for sure!
Ugh. Same to feeling like I do all the work. It's exhausting sometimes, especially when other forms of reciprocity seem non-existent.
Yes yes.. I used to live within walking/biking distance of my friends... so miss that. (Moved to help with aging parents)
Does anyone have suggestions for modern fiction that features this kind of community? I am especially wondering about women in more suburban environments. Anyone?
I just finished reading Other Birds, by Sarah Addison. The main characters all live in the same apartment complex, but none of them ever talk to each other. Then a new person moves in, breaks the ice, and shows them how lovely it is to need and feel needed.
I am writing a novel about this right now! (Unfortunately I don’t have any recs for existing novels on this burning topic.) My novel is more about the pernicious loneliness and isolation that drives people to desperately crave this kind of community, and their (imperfect) attempts to create it. If you’d like to be an early reader (no pressure!) I can be found at clairecoxwrites.com. :-)
Absolute YES to all of this. What you describe is exactly what I crave but I’ve been so conditioned to cultivate the exact opposite, and as an introvert I feel lost in even attempting to build this type of community.
Your point about having been conditioned to the opposite of community - a big focus on each family in its own house, doing its own thing, buying its own stuff, driving its own car - is so spot-on. I drove towards those goals for so long and then once I got there, I realized that it wasn't what I wanted (or what was best for me) at all!
The frequency and casualness of contact is something that I had a lot of in college and took for granted that it would continue into adulthood. At the time, I sometimes found it challenging.. I would want alone time but there would almost always be a roommate, friends, or friends of friends in our four-person apartment. But now, having gone through a pandemic living solo, I would sometimes kill to have a knock on the door and reveal some friend looking to hang out for 20min or a few hours. No herculean effort to align schedules, just casual presence. If you are someone that happens to live close to friends/family, I get why people don't do it. Everyone is so busy and wants to be considerate of others' schedules. But I'd love to build a community where this was an accepted and thoughtful practice.
Yes! I love the way that you said it: "accepted and thoughtful practice"
I used to have this in the SF East Bay with a few friends who welcomed dropping by as I and my then partner welcomed it. For those of us who value it, this kind of thing is a rare and precious experience. I miss it so much.
I second all of this!
I don’t really consider my family to be my community. Community is so important to me, and I have little in common with my family in terms of values, including the value of community. So that’s out. Friends are very important. Strangely, I talk to a lot of strangers both for my job and because I bike and take public transit (in a city where that’s not a predominant mode) and I consider most other people doing the same to be my community. I’ve been cared for and have learned a lot and helped others just by sitting at a bus shelter or talking with a few kids when I’m on the bike. I was raised in a very not-social upper middle class white family, and moving to a city that is not majority white has been so important in my development of the concept of community. What I’m missing? Family, yes. Neighbors. I live in a racially segregated city and as a white person....I think a lot of white (middle/upper class) people aren’t great at building the community I value. Not just planned events and block parties, but spontaneous conversations and asking for help from strangers. I got mugged and the people who made me feel safe were not the cops but the multiple strangers who checked on me and gave me their numbers of I needed help, which was a short insight that such a thing is possible.
I’m missing, though, a revolutionary community of others who are educated and interested in fighting the property-obsessed way of being. I am missing a community of other organizers. They exist, but finding them in white spaces (again, segregation) is difficult and I sometimes feel alone, especially when the people who I most connect with have kids, so I have such limited time with them. I have been thinking about how to find them on the internet (NOT social media).
It’s a good question and forgive my meandering answer or any sweeping generalizations. It’s the question I think about all the time.
I am fighting the property-obsessed way of being! Solidarity. It always gives me an uplift to see others shining a light on that.
And YES to bus riders being a community. Buses buses everywhere, please.
Yes, I read your writing and it is very important!!
🙏💖
I do get a thrill when I see someone even mention private property. Like “hey friend!” But your comment about the radical part — yeah. I do follow some very radical people (like Last Born in the Wilderness podcast), but making connection between that vision and people willing to take action is still … elusive? Maybe the thread is just really, really, really thin and fragile yet.
Thank you... am checking the book out now.
I really appreciate the thoughtfulness of this answer, Marybeth!
oh yesss! yes to bike riders - i feel so connected when i park my bike next to someone or just ride with them along a street :)
Omg this! I’ve had so many delightful conversations with random people on bicycles, or about the bicycle I’m riding. This never happened to me driving on highways.
I recently was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. My community is my friends and family in real time...but I found a support group online that helped me immensely.
Everyone pulled together and made sure I was clean and comfortable. But the online community was I able to cry and laugh and vent. I went through surgery and lo and behold the tumor was benign! I have no complaints of the community in which I am involved in, we pulled together.
That’s great news, Michael. I joined an online support group maybe 15 or more years ago in a time of crisis, and the members that i really connected with mean the world to me still. No one else knows your situation as well as they do
There are 2 pieces of community that are missing for me, and their absence relates (I think) to living in a high income, career driven, upper middle class community. First - friends who we can see regularly, spontaneously. It seems like everyone here is SO BUSY. They have work stuff, and kids have lots of enrichment activities after school and anytime we get together it needs to be planned weeks in advance, which then feels like a work update meeting. I have tried to organize a get together at the same time each week so people could stop by if they were available and there was so much enthusiasm about the idea but most didn’t make it. I am so thankful to the family that came consistently. I walk my kids around the neighborhood and most people are not playing outside -- people just stick to themselves.
The other is brown and black folks. I joke that sometimes I want to stick a sign on my chest saying I am looking for brown mom friends. We are a racially mixed family (I’m a person of color, partner isn’t) and I crave the shorthand that could come from being friends with other people that have the shared experience living in this largely white area.
If anyone has suggestions to help either of these I’m all ears
“Which makes it feel like a work update meeting” - exactly. I was telling my husband that this is how I characterize many of my hangouts now. I want more than just chit chat and updates. I want to be in a space where humor and silliness can emerge, where fun can be central to the experience and we can have an exchange that feels more than an update.
I love the way you put this! That is the kind of community I have been missing lately too. For a long time in 2020 and 2021 and even 2022, my suddenly-long-distance friends and I were able to build digital space for silliness and fun and the kind of just hanging out we had in person. But as we’ve all been dealing with a number of life shifts/events, it feels like the focus has shifted to giving each other updates instead of keeping that space, and I really feel the absence of it deeply.
I resonate with both of these. I lived in the dorms my first year of college, and everyone in my hall knew each other. We didn’t always get along, but we did go through life together. There would be spontaneous movie nights, and we watched a lot of TV together. We studied together and complained about studying together. We were all really busy, but that was rarely a barrier to spending time together because we could be busy together. It felt like a great example of friends being family that I got to come home to every day. I never had to put extra effort into building relationships, because they were always there. And the community was racially diverse too. I’ve often wished I could live in a similar kind of community with a bunch of people all at a similar life stage and engaged in similar activities.
I’ve thought about doing that: organizing a casual get-together ‘drop-in’ kind of thing, but then I never push through it to invite anyone. I feel like I’m trying too hard. And as an introvert, I kind of am.
My partner and I recently started "open dinners" - we gather at a beer garden/food cart garden for two hours once a week and let all our friends know they're welcome if they want to come for however long they want. So far we've done it twice and have had one couple drop by. We wound up staying late and having a blast! The best part though was that I was barely a casual friend with one of them. But we wound up having a great night with lots of laughs and got to know an awesome couple much better. All that to say, not only is it worth inviting folks, it's worth inviting even the ones you might feel hesitant inviting because you "don't know them well enough." You'll probably be surprised! Also, keep going if the first few times you invite folks they seem excited but don't come. Sometimes it takes people time to adjust to new hang out ideas, and sometimes schedules are hard to remember when being told about something awesome.
This is such a nice idea! Sometimes people just need an excuse to get out and be social and knowing that there's a low pressure option available if they're feeling up to it is such a nice thing. Plus, I like the idea of being able to try different places in your neighborhood that way.
Yup - fellow introvert here. The summer get together was meeting up at a park. Low stakes. My partner and I have for years talked about doing the Friday night meatball dinner thing but we have never followed through because it seems so intimidating
https://www.seriouseats.com/simpler-entertaining-friday-night-dinners-end-loneliness-how-to-build-community-after-having-kids
Great article! I wish my house were laid out better to support this!
Thank you for sharing that article! It sounds so dreamy #goals
I started a new thing this summer, which was that 3 families agreed to meet one night a week in the local park for a potluck/playdate, and invite everyone else we could think of to join us. The nice part of having 3 "key" families is that there's always someone else there, even if one family is busy and nobody else shows up. Also, the 3 families invite different people. It can be a potluck meal, or just a playdate (for kids and parents alike). Some weeks we have a ton of people, some weeks it's only a few others. But I never have to schedule it, and it just lives on my weekly calendar. My extroverted kid lives for it. My introverted kid brings a book. I get to chat with a bunch of people. (And no one has to clean their house.) I recommend it as a pretty low-stakes way to spend time with people.
I maintain that the true fiction of sitcoms that aren't family-based is people dropping in to see each other all the time or meeting up regularly just for random conversations about all the things.
In the past couple years I've worked really hard to build community around where I live. I have two young kids so "going places" is super hard and un-fun for me. We've had success bringing people close--we basically built a family compound, and now my mom and my son's early childhood nanny both live next door, and the kids can run over to their houses whenever they want. We've also made friends with people who live in our neighborhood, so now whenever we go to the nearby park or take a walk, we see friends.
Our culture is so into promoting individual maximization -- focus on YOUR family, YOUR job, etc -- we so quickly throw community under the bus in pursuit of individual gains. I don't blame people for this, as it's an easy message to fall into (and I did for many years). But for me, forsaking some individual gains in order to gain community has been so worthwhile. I feel so satisfied and at home where I live now, when I've only been in this area for 3 years.
Going through the isolation of COVID where we couldn't see grandparents and didn't feel like we could approach neighbors to build relationships, made me swear to never live that kind of isolated life again. I dorkily bought a book about how to build community in your neighborhood and then just forced myself to do what she said, and and it worked!
Individual maximization is a great term — I first read it as "Individual Maximalism" which also works to describe how we've been taught to think in American capitalism. And I love, love, love that you bought the damn book!
Can you share what that book was? I live in what seems like a nice neighborhood and we are all on ‘hi there’ terms but I’d like it to be more--but I’m such an introvert!!
Oh, sure! I'm a major introvert too, so needed a push.
The book is "Start with Hello" by Shannan Martin. The main thing that I took away was to just impulsively invite people over and do not try to be perfect -- keep it humble and people will still be thrilled. As a heads up she comes at it from a Christian perspective (I'm Jewish so that part didn't resonate), but the core message works for anyone.
I'm just here to say that it can actually work! 18 months ago I decided I wanted to invest in my neighbors/neighborhood and it has been amazing. We started a neighborhood party (another neighbor started a second one) then started a book club and have developed wonderful friendships (and it's a mix of parents/non parents and folks 25-55). The book "How We Show Up" by Mia Birdsong is really good on this topic.
I’m so glad you shared! It really does work and takes surprisingly little effort. The thing is, (almost) EVERYONE wants community so it just takes someone to get it going.
Thank you for sharing this! I’m an introvert too and get socially anxious about having people in our (messy) space.
I should try this with my neighbors. Thank you!!
Hi Rebecca - I had to come back to this post to say THANK YOU. I'd been feeling an internal pull towards wanting to build more community with my immediate neighbors, but wasn't sure how to start, if people would think I was weird for inviting them over, etc. Your comment (and the book rec) gave me the last bit of courage I needed. In August, I printed up little invitations and put them in the doors of 7 of my closest neighbors. A simple ask: hangout on my deck for one hour on an upcoming weeknight if you're interested and your schedule allows. The first time, only one neighbor could join, but two others knocked on my door, said they weren't going to be able to join, but gave me their phone numbers and said "thanks so much for doing this, please ask again!" The second time, three neighbors showed up. Last night, 7 of us companionably passed a little over an hour together on a cool fall evening. There were a lot of, "I've lived here x-amount of years, and I'm so glad I finally know your name!" comments :). They're eager to keep it going and I'm utterly delighted that I now have all these connections steps from my front door!
Oh my gosh, what a joy to read your comment! I'm so so happy you took the plunge and that it's paying off. A deck/porch hang is such a great, low-pressure way to start. I might need to copy your idea :)
I have the community I want: friends and family, online and IRL, loose ties and strong.
What I don’t have—and what none of us have, really—is the time and energy to show up for one another as much as we’d like. Some of that’s chronic illness, and a lot of it’s capitalism. But the way to improve my community wouldn’t be more people; it would be fewer working hours (and universal healthcare).
Amen!!! The structures that conspire against basic community and care…honestly it’s a chronic violence.
💯
preach!
As an immigrant from a trust based culture, it has taken me a long time to build a trust based network in a culture based on coercion and incentives. I have a descent network now that consists of my children and immediate family, neighbors, church friends and a handful of local friends along with an international network of friends. However, I really wish that the physical layout of American communities would be less antisocial. Everything involves a damn car! People should live in multigenerational and multisocioeconomic communities that are walkable. Stores, businesses, homes...all mixed up. Instead we have these ridiculous artificial environments where people and activities are segregated. It's an elitist country by design and we need to change that.
Years ago, a new friend visiting from Brazil would go for walks with me--we were living outside Philly/main line area. She used to say that every time that we’d never see anyone else. If a jogger would go by, she’d whisper ‘a miracle!’. She’d also read off the alarm company names (from those little stakes on the lawn) like a litany.
Yes, Kristian! Having moved from the US to Berlin, Germany, I've noticed the same thing but in reverse. It wasn't until I lived here in Berlin that I truly realized how the (vast majority of) urban planning in the US is not set up for community building.
So true what you said about the physical layout of American communities! Walkable cities are so rare and you need a car to go everywhere!
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Coming out of a high control religion like white evangelicalism I’ve had to grapple with the threat of losing community that has been looming over me since birth. And it’s true--being honest about who I am/what I believe in the past few years have caused family and friends to reject me. So, so many of them.
Right now community is hard because of all of that baggage but knowing my kids need awesome, joyful, queer, neurodivergent and diverse community to flourish helps me know where to put my limited energies. And honestly substack really helps me find community with thoughtful and curious reader-types (my favorite kind of human!).
I feel this so much! There’s nothing harder than realizing that people who said they loved you in fact only loved you as long as you remained within the bounds of their belief system. I felt very secure in the community I grew up in, but when I grew up and realized that the white evangelical worldview I’d been given doesn’t accurately describe the world, I found that those people couldn’t handle me when I believed different things than they do.
Growing up with conditional love like that really sucks, huh? I’m sorry you experienced that too! But it’s nice to not have that hanging over my head anymore in a way. Now I can just be a human who tries to build messy community with other complicated humans.