My dear friend Christy is a therapist and we talk about how in her work that every week seems to have a theme. She'll talk with someone on Monday about an overarching issue - and by the end of the week, then a dozen other people will have a similar theme in their sessions.
I find the same to be true in the circles in my life, between friends, my social media followers and my SLS community.
And right now, the theme has been friendships and connection. So today I'm stringing together all the pieces - along with how I've overcome the challenge of living in a deep red state and creating a constellation of blue dots to create a deeply magical community in my local life...
New on Substack
The Loneliness of Being a Blue Dot
There is a certain type of exhaustion that comes from living somewhere your values are not always reflected back to you. There is grief in it, too, because most of us do not want to spend our lives fighting with strangers beside the tomatoes at the farmers market. We want neighbors. We want friends. We want to sit on porches and drink something cold while we talk about what we’re planting next year and what we’re scared might happen before then. We want ordinary softness. We want belonging that does not require us to abandon ourselves at the door.
But when the world feels unsafe, and when the stakes feel high, and when the people around us may be diametrically opposed to everything we believe about freedom, justice, bodies, power, religion, fascism, patriarchy, and basic human dignity, it becomes very easy to retreat into the safety of our own little bubbles.
And honestly, I do not blame anyone for doing it.
