chosen family: all you have is what you are

NOTE: I had been calling this occasional series ‘adventures in chosen family’ but I think that shortening it to ‘chosen family’ makes more sense. You could substitute ‘community’ for ‘chosen family’ as well, if you wanted to.

I’m starting this piece by being repetitive, because I think there is value in repetition, especially with words, either poetry or prose. Repetition for memorization, or repetition for meditating on the meaning, or just repetition for the enjoyment of saying the words (or writing them, or typing them) — I think these are all valuable ways to engage with words that have deep meaning.

We are all (well, in my bubble of the internet and IRL space) talking about community right now, and how community is the way forward. We’re saying that community will save us, that we have to lean into each other and build this community with each other. But what we aren’t expressing very often is HOW to build community. Or, at least, what it actually feels like to be in community with one another. There’s a really good video I found and shared on social media a few days ago — the link to view it is right here — because it’s a wonderful encapsulation of what’s at the heart of genuine community.

Here’s the part I want to repeat, and if you’ve seen this a few times before already, please read it again. I always feel like I recognize or understand something a little better every time I read it myself. (Emphasis my own)

It is our suffering that brings us together. It is not love. Love does not obey the mind, and turns to hate when forced. The bond that binds us is beyond choice. We are brothers. We are brothers in what we share. In pain, which each of us must suffer alone, in hunger, in poverty, in hope, we know our brotherhood. We know it, because we have had to learn it. We know that there is no help for us but from one another, that no hand will save us if we do not reach out our hand. And the hand that you reach out is empty, as mine is. You have nothing. You possess nothing. You own nothing. You are free. All you have is what you are, and what you give.

excerpt from The Dispossessed: an Ambiguous Utopia by Ursula K. LeGuin

all you have is what you are, and what you give.

One of my beloved people is beginning to sink into the feeling of community with us in our chosen family. And it reminded me of all the things I thought I needed to do at the very beginning of my experience of choosing this family.

I thought I needed to be part of everyone because I needed to offer help. I’m not saying that isn’t true, but what I’ve understood now is that this is not the basis of community or of chosen family. We do not do this because we want to show up and save everyone. We do this because we ourselves need to be saved, and we will be able to save each other when we learn how to receive help.

It is only by recognizing your need, by reflecting on that need in order to realize that you do not need to apologize ahead of time for having a need, and then being vulnerable enough to ask for help, that you can begin to comprehend what kind of love and care a community can bring to everyone in it. It is only by learning how to ask for help, and then being willing to receive that help, that you will begin to learn the lessons of love that come from your vulnerability.

What I said to my beloved person is that what they give is their trust. They do not need to have perfected who they are, or reached a goal of self-actualization, or arrived at a point where they no longer have needs, in order to be in community with us. Who they are right now is enough. What they can give right now is enough.

If your hands are empty, as Ursula says, then the only thing you can give is yourself, and that is vulnerability. Bringing nothing but who you are — with your needs, your weaknesses, your understanding of yourself and the world no matter how simple or complex — is the entirety of what is needed.

when you bring only yourself and what you have, you will begin to see yourself and others in the same compassionate and loving lens.

It is incredibly difficult to unlearn the lessons we were led to internalize as we grew up in America. I am sure this must be true in other places as well, but I can only speak to my own personal experience.

We were raised to be nice rather than kind. We were told to give our affection to people because we owed it to them. We were raised to be individuals, not part of an interconnected whole. We were raised to believe that asking for help was a result of a personal moral failing. We were instructed not to cry, not to need, not to reach out. And so we created a mythos around ourselves that we wore like armor, to protect us from the pain we constantly felt. Some of us even developed the coping mechanism of hiding the pain so well that we no longer believed there was anything that could hurt us. We grew around the pain of being alone like a tree grows around the wires of a fence, taking it into ourselves and making it part of our identity. We believed that this was truth.

rather than give instructions on how to undo this in yourself, instead I will say: remind yourself that it is not a moral failure to ask for your needs to be met.

Each of us has to go on this journey of undoing the damage of our belief system in order to learn a new one, separately, although we can be in community while we do that. Again: we do not need to be perfectly our best self in order to be in community.

What we DO need is a willingness to be wrong. We need a willingness to let the vulnerability encompass not just asking for help, but also learning how to mend relationships and live in good reciprocity with one another. All of this takes time. It is easier to do when some of the people in your community have already been doing this work, so that there is someone to reassure you and hold space when they are able.

all you have is what you are, and what you give.

You are enough. And when we are all able to be in community together, in chosen families or in any other kind of way we describe ourselves, we all learn the ways we are interconnected, and what we can offer to each other, and how and who we are.

The way to know yourself is to know yourself in community, because the edges of yourself that may still be sharp and harmful will become apparent, and then the mending can begin.

There is no existence without harm. We walk on the grass, we swat at the insects, we bump into each other, we accidentally poke one another’s wounds. But where there is harm, there can be acknowledgement of the consequences of one’s choices, and there are ways to knit ourselves back together with love, and reciprocity, and kindness, and trust.

my wish for you, is that you are able to find out for yourself what community feels like.

Whether it’s in group chats, in likeminded social media groups, on Discord chats, or in person, I wish for you the gift of love in community.

xox,
Nix

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epilogue:

I’m walking uphill, both ways it hurts
I bury my heart here in this dirt
I hope it’s a seed, I hope it works

I need to grow, here I could be
Closer to light, closer to me
Don’t have to do this perfectly, yeah

Rain it pours, rain it pours
It’s pouring on me
The rain it falls, rain it falls
Sowing the seeds of love and hope, love and hope
We don’t have to stay, stuck in the weeds

Have I the courage to change?
Have I the courage to change?
Have I the courage to change today?

Have I the courage to change?
Have I the courage to change?
Have I the courage to change today?

I’m walking uphill, both ways it hurts
I bury my heart here in this dirt
I hope it’s a seed, I hope it works

I need to grow, here I could be
Closer to light, closer to me
Don’t have to do this perfectly

See I let the light in the darkest place
Let the sunshine, pain goes away
Nothing is permanent for me, yeah
Flowers they bloom and fade away
The beauty it happened inside me
Even if it’s a memory, yeah

Rain it pours, rain it pours
It’s pouring on me
The rain it falls, rain it falls
Sowing the seeds of love and hope, love and hope
We don’t have to stay, stuck in the weeds

— selection from Courage by P!nk

you are not alone.

featured image is a photo by Ron Smith on Unsplash