We Belong to Each Other

Learning interdependence and centering its importance in our home

Feb 20, 2023

This year, I have tasked myself with a deeper dive into the concept of community. What does it mean to live together? How do we support those we live near? What do friendships based on mutual support look like? I am reading books about community building and mutual assistance and am focusing much of my writing on this topic. If you see me in person, you may notice my conversations tend to land here as well.

When I first moved to Empire, I set out to be independent. I was fresh off a breakup and moving back to Michigan, and I felt that to prove my worth, I needed to prove my independence. Perhaps this type of ideology was due to my age–my late-20s–and the need to assert my adulthood. Or perhaps it is more of a wide-sweeping societal expectation, a belief that the greatest worth belongs to those who are self-made, who don’t ask for help, and who abandon their origins in search of something better.

I quickly learned that moving to a small town was the last place to become independent. Perhaps I knew this before moving. Perhaps my rural roots were calling me home to rediscover something deeper and better: interdependence.

It was at the lakeshore that I began to accept my need for community, that I first felt our collective need for community. This is in part because people were gathering together around me and welcoming me in. It was also because I began to see myself as intimately tied to nature. I began to accept that none of us does anything alone; no one can ever be self-made. Look at how the dunes rely on plant life to remain stable; how the beaches are made more vulnerable when their native grasses and shrubs are removed.

In 2018, I met my now-husband and began to tie myself even further into the fabric of this community. I served on the village council, and I opened a shop. We had a baby here. All of it required help.

The further I have moved into life as a parent, the more I understand how much we all need each other. And not just in some casual, let’s meet up for drinks kind of way, but in a desperate, please help me survive way.

I don’t say that flippantly, and it is this need to survive together that has me fixated on the idea of community more than ever before. In many ways, the world around us has shifted to convince us that we don’t need each other. We can live alone, work remotely, and rely on paid help to meet the ways neighbors used to show up for each other. But doesn’t it feel a little empty?

I think of the small town I was raised in and the stories I hear from my parents about the help they received when they were becoming adults there. As my parents show up endlessly to help us work on our house and to help us care for our child, they tell us the stories of the people who showed up for them. They remind me of the names from a generation nearly gone who cared for us when we were children: Edith, Marleah, and Millie. I remember the modest homes we spent hours playing in, the books we were read, and the backyards we ran in. How loved we were by our Grandparents and the extended community that wrapped their arms around us.

Share Lake Letters

Our sense of community has shifted drastically since my growing up days. Friendships have become more transactional and often exist within a commercialized system. Let’s meet for coffee, grab a drink, go to dinner. We apologize when we struggle or when we need help because it feels like our value to our friends diminishes. We forget how to ask for help. We forget how to offer assistance. We forget that the entire point of being in relationships is to support each other.

As I consider the values I want to instill in my children, a sense of community is at the top of the list. I want my children to know that they don’t have to do everything independently. They can ask for help, and they can also look for opportunities to offer it. Look at how the forest is filled with trees and animals who survive because they are together, whose populations dwindle when another is threatened. Look at how our actions affect the land and water where we live. We are all so dependent on each other.

The other day my son was working on a puzzle he has done a hundred times, and he told me he needed help to complete it. At first, feeling slightly annoyed, I wanted to say, “You know how to do this puzzle; you can do it by yourself.” How often do we force our children into these displays of skill, when maybe their asking for help has nothing to do with their ability and everything to do with a desire for connection? What if we have raised our children to value the wrong things, forcing them to prove their independence, in the process showing them that this was of utmost importance? Perhaps children have been trying to teach us just how beautiful it can be to work together, even on the simplest tasks.

I am now trying to notice these moments, to remind my son when he is frustrated and says, “I can’t do it,” that it’s okay, and “you can ask for help.” And when he does ask for help, I try to show up, in whatever way he is asking, because more important than him proving his ability to complete a puzzle is me modeling to him that working together is valuable and necessary. The beautiful thing is that I am learning to ask him for help now, too, and every time he is thrilled to contribute. This morning I asked him if he could bring me my slippers from the other room, and he jumped up, eager to help. He said upon delivering them, “I can help people do things,” and I smiled and said, “Yes, you can.”

As I consider what it looks like to encourage mutual support in my household, and as I learn from my neighbors and parents who offer it to us, I have felt a beautiful shift in myself. There is a lot more gratitude these days for the ways humans can live and work together, if only we let each other in. I hope that by noticing acts of care, I can extend them more freely, knowing that we all belong to each other.

Swim Club
For those in northern Michigan, I’m bringing back Swim Club this summer. We’ll likely have 1-2 meetups/month from June-September, and the days will vary from a weekend morning to a weeknight. I will release dates in next month’s newsletter!

Speaking of community…
What types of community are you feeling nourished by lately? I am always looking for more in-person opportunities for connection: meet-ups with other young families, hikes with friends, swim dates. I am continuing to consider ways to extend this community forth, to bring us together to read poetry or go for a swim, or share stories of times outdoors. Is there anything you are looking for? Share ideas in the comments, if so!

Lake Letters

We Belong to Each Other

Learning interdependence and centering its importance in our home

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