Loving ourselves back together, on Zoom tomorrow night

Let's get together and feel (slightly more) alright

“I believe what the self-centered have torn down, the other-centered will build up.” – Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. (via Mark Nepo) 

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Like many of you, I felt a great deal of uncertainty in the run up to this election. The two realities represented by the candidates running were so different. It felt impossible to create a long-term vision for the future, any future, much less an editorial strategy for this space. (To be honest, that still feels hard.) 

I also felt uncertainty this morning, after the election. It felt exquisitely tender to put my son on the bus and send him to school, knowing that many of his teachers and fellow students were going to be dysregulated. It also felt tender to recall how many times across my career I have been that teacher, facing my own students, putting on my game face after yet another political cataclysm, and walking to the front of the room to say whatever true words I thought might calm and heal. 

There’s a both/and here for me, though:

After living through so many of these moments as a caregiver to others, I feel clear-headed and galvanized around the next right thing for this community. We have the results, even though they are not the ones that many of us wanted. It is now time to deepen our commitment to the thing I’ve already been talking about for months: building connections with one another, differences (and time zones) be damned.

In the next few weeks, we’ll be offering some times for the smart, kind caregivers who subscribe to In Tending come together synchronously, via Zoom, to build community and receive support. The kind of support we’re likely already serving up to the people around us.

A sign from one of my favorite community gathering places — Overwinter Coffee in Buffalo, NY.

Here’s the scoop: 

• For the rest of 2024, these circles will be offered at no cost, to anyone who fills out this form by Thursday, November 7 at 12pm EST. 

• The first circle will take place on Thursday, November 7 at 7:30pm EST on Zoom. (That’s tomorrow!) I’ll email the link to whomever fills out the form above.

• We’ll plan to spend an hour or so together. 

• I’ll be joined in co-facilitating by my friend Meredith Rodriguez, a talented community organizer, activist, writer, mother and parenting coach who will help to hold the space. 

• We’ll briefly set some norms and create a space for people to be brave together and cool to each other. 

• We’ll offer some guided meditation. 

• We’ll have a circle-style discussion about how we’re feeling, with equitable talk time for all. 

• We’ll offer a prompt to help us channel what we’re collectively feeling into art, activism or both. 

• We’ll make a plan to schedule the next few circles based on who’s in the room.

After that, we will also use the paywall features here to create a private space where folks who wish to can continue to share what we’re doing with one another, between sessions. See: last year’s Potluck for Feelings. (If you’re not already a paid subscriber, you can become one now at little to no cost. I’ll explain more about that below.) 

As an educator, I've found that in moments like this, it can be enormously helpful to have this kind of space.

Otherwise, we caregivers end up trying to doggy-paddle through impossible conditions alone, while carrying our fellow community members on our backs. It doesn’t take long to reach the point where we feel like we’re drowning. This serves no one. 

What we need is to reach out and hold each other up. 

As Mark Nepo writes in The Exquisite Risk:  

My soul tells me

we were all broken from the same nameless heart

and every living thing wakes with a piece of that original heart

aching its way into blossom.

This is why we know each other below our strangeness.

Why when we fall, we lift each other

or when in pain, we hold each other.

Why when sudden with joy, we dance together.

Life is the many pieces of that great heart loving itself back together.

Cheesy? True? Snapped in another favorite community gathering place — Sunbird Provisions, in Orleans, MA.

If you’re reading this and thinking, “Nope, I’m still just going to hide under the covers for the foreseeable future,” that is totally cool. (I may even end up in the fetal position myself later today.) I encourage you to fill out our interest form anyway, so we can keep you in the loop. There will be other invitations, other chances, to come together in community. Because unlike an every-four-years election, the opportunity to reach out and build something tangible and good with other caring people in our everyday lives is always, always there. And I take enormous comfort in that. 

I’m also changing my payment structure for this newsletter through the end of the year, to make it easier for caregivers — who are so often underpaid or unpaid — to come together here. 

• Free subscriptions will continue to be free, obviously, as will most of the written content. 

• Yearly subscriptions will now cost $30, the minimum allowed by Substack. These will allow me to defray the cost of a paid Zoom to pull us together synchronously, and to use the paywall to create a private space where circle members can connect between Zoom sessions. If you cannot afford $28, please let me know and I will comp you. 

• Sustainer memberships will now cost $75. This means you’re covering your own costs plus the costs of someone who can’t afford them, and allowing me to do more outreach to connect with more people.

• If you’d like to work 1:1 with me around something that’s coming up for you related to meditating, writing, care work, or all three, you can also use Buy Me a Coffee to pay me at the prior Sustainer rate of $100. This gets you a subscription to the newsletter as well as an hourlong support session, and my deep gratitude for supporting my work in this way. 

• Finally, If you’re a perinatal loss survivor, I’m not going to lie: the next four years are going to be hard. So I’m also offering a new closed support group especially for you, launching in January 2025. This can be booked separately through RTZ Hope. If you’d like for me to give you a heads-up when signups open, just respond to this newsletter directly and I’ll give you more info, or email me at InTendingNewsletter@gmail.com. 

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Your turn: How are you doing today? Like, really doing? I’d love to know.