The following post is a reflection I had following Friendsgiving 2023.
The COVID Pandemic, and the nationwide protests of 2020 following the cop killing of George Floyd, felt like a period of collective undoing. While some folks were anxious to “get back to normal,” the rest of us were reconciling that our previous “normal” is what brought about the conditions that left 1 million folks dead, and millions more sick, jobless, homeless, food insecure, and vulnerable to surveillance and violence at the hands of those sworn to "protect and serve us." Stillness granted us the clarity to see that we were never meant to go back. The directive to “keep pushing ahead” in the face of trauma—be it COVID, or police violence, or genocide—only seeks to serve white supremacist colonialism/capitalism and it creates a deep dissonance within us. In the face of tragedy, we are meant to pause. We are meant to grieve. We are meant to honor our losses by allowing ourselves to be transformed by them.
Nothing about me is the same after 1 million of my neighbors die from disease because they were forced to return to school and work too soon or could not afford PPE, or were encumbered by misinformation about the vaccine.
Nothing about me is the same after 15,000 of my neighbors are carpet bombed after being displaced, occupied and subjected to daily acts of dehumanization for 75 years.
Nothing about me is the same after losing both my maternal grandparents in the span of 3 years and not having enough PTO to take the time away I truly needed to mourn.
Loss changes our capacity—what we can give and do may no longer be what it once was.
Loss gives us perspective on our principles and values—what actually matters to us becomes more palpable.
Loss allows us to realize what our boundaries are—what we want/need/expect from others to feel safe and whole in our bodies. Under capitalism, even tremendous, collective loss is treated like a mere inconvenience that momentarily hinders our ability to produce under a system designed only to extract from us our time and energy and resources.
But if 2020 was our collective undoing, the years that followed have been a period of collective reconstruction. If we are not meant to return to what was, then we have to use this time to be intentional about where we are going next.
We have to ask ourselves the following questions: -“What do we need to build so that we not just fill ourselves up when we are empty, but so that we are less drained in the first place?” -“How can we build meaningful relationships and accessible care networks so that we are better equipped to respond to the next crisis when it comes and our government abandons us again?” In the words of Ruha Benjamin we are, “Composing new ways of relating to one another and organizing our world that are life affirming, sustaining and soul stirring.” Integral to this process of figuring out where we are headed is radically changing how we do community. We must rethink and practice healthier ways of relating to ourselves, relating to one another, and relating to the systems that we live under.
In the words of Mia Birdsong, we restructure community by “Taking what is positive and powerful, and dump the garbage (e.g., gendered expectations), and fending off external expectations (e.g., ‘if I do something for you, I get to judge you’) and assumptions about what family is or is supposed to be (e.g., the ‘no matter what, you have to do for family’ code).” Family and community are what you make of it. And together, with the right intention, we can build the world that we hope for. I can say wholeheartedly that I am here writing this today because of my community, and they way we have held each other to the sun through these last 3 years.
There is a part of me that only wishes I had known my friend group sooner. That I had felt this sweetness sooner. But this period of collective reconstruction has positioned to do friendship now in a way that I was not before, which is to say: radically. My arms can stretch as far and as wide as needed to hold them in their fullness, to hold our hopes for the world; and theirs, me and mine.
And every time we stretch our arms wide we are training our muscles for the world we hope to one day live so that we are ready when we build it—a world characterized by interdependence, disability justice, deep reciprocity, joy and grief and ritual. A world different than before.
I am so grateful for my friends, and for our commitment to one another and to this world. In the words of Ruha Benjamin, “We owe it to ourselves to name and build the world we cannot live without, even as we diagnose and dismantle the world we cannot live within. Let us excavate, name, and water all the forms of justice and solidarity blooming in the rubble of pandemics and policing.”
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