Community Tuesdays: Mutual Aid
What's one thing that's giving you hope -- and how can we help?
“Hope is definitely not the same thing as optimism. It is not the conviction that something will turn out well but the certainty that something makes sense, regardless of how it turns out.”
– Václav Havel
Last week, we set intentions for the summer, which for many caregivers of young children starts this week, as some daycares close their doors. (There’s still time to jump into that thread here; paid subscribers also received a downloadable/printable journaling page to support their process.)
For this week’s Mutual Aid thread, we’d like to invite our community members to support one another in noticing what is already here.
In particular, we’d like to invite you to share one thing that’s giving you wise hope.
Setting intentions for the future and finding wise hope in the moment are two sides of the same coin, in our world. With both, the invitation is to allow ourselves to relate to ourselves and others with integrity and a sense of agency, while meeting reality with equanimity.
The invitation is to accept, on the one hand, that we alone are responsible for our actions, and for the ways in which those actions support or don’t support our practices, while also accepting, on the other hand, that we did not create the external conditions in which we make our choices, nor can we alone influence the outcome of our shared human predicament.
The invitation is to remember that in addition to the harms of the world and the challenges we face as caregivers, there is also resilience, and beauty, and beings who are willing to put their time and energy on the line to ease others’ suffering. (Like you, the caregivers in our community, who give us wise hope every day.)
Photos of the things that are giving you hope are especially welcome! Show us the birds’ nest outside your window, the protest signs you spotted last weekend, or anything else that offers us a glimpse of the glimmers that are keeping you going, or the things you are savoring in spite of ::: gestures widely to everything :::. Because we could all use more of that.
To read more about wise hope, a term that comes from the work of Zen chaplain Roshi Joan Halifax, click here. I also appreciated reading this lovely take on the relationship between rebellion and hope this week from
, another great Zen thinker and writer based in New Mexico.If you’re a caregiver for kids aged 0-5, we’ve got an additional invitation and poll for you below. If you’re ready to jump into the chat now, however, here’s the portal:
Our first gathering for caregivers of children aged five and below on June 10 at 10:30am EST. If you haven’t signed up to receive Zoom invites for our gatherings, please click here.
If you are in this category of caregivers or have been in the past, we’d love your feedback on which topic feels most relevant for us to discuss.
This poll below contains some of the topics we’ve been considering, drawn from our post and discussion about this here.
You can vote on a topic for our meet-up below with a click; if your topic of interest is not on the list, please post it in a comment below!
In case you missed it:
Meredith Rodriguez, my fearless In Tending co-pilot, recently sat down with me to talk about her wealth of experiences in caregiving, from running a classroom to becoming a mom before most of her friends to juggling the needs of four kids aged five to fifteen. I hope you’ll read on, and find yourself loving her perspective as much as I do. We’ll both be in attendance on June 10; we look forward to continuing the conversation with you!
