To Feel Known in the Place Where You Live
Dear Friends,
As we (finally!) emerge from winter, I’ve been thinking a lot about isolation and community, and trying to unravel why this particular time feels so challenging. I find myself missing people—people I used to be proximity-close with, but who now operate in slightly different orbits. But we live in the same city! Should getting together be this hard?
Maybe this is an element of life that’s unique to living in a major metropolitan area like DC. Or maybe this is just what it feels like to be in your mid 30s. Or to be the parent of a small child. Or is everyone experiencing this, coming out of the second pandemic winter?
It keeps playing out like this:
The stars align. I get in touch with my friend who I haven’t seen in two years. We’re both free for brunch on Saturday. Miraculously, on the morning of our plans, no one is sick. The sun is out. We meet up, and it’s like all the time in the world has passed, and yet no time at all. We have a shimmering afternoon of conversation, good food, and drinks. We laugh. We feel that buzz of connection. I remember how good it felt when I saw this person regularly. The afternoon draws to an end, and I say, “let’s do this again soon!” And then two months go by without so much as a text message exchanged between us.
What is that? And why does it happen?
These moments of connection leave me feeling briefly on top of the world, and then like I’m clawing around in the dark again, wishing not just for the one-off brunch, but for real community.
I think I’ve written before about the Venn diagram of becoming a parent in a pandemic. Like—I’m not sure what shifts in my life are due to which factor. There’s this idea that when you have a baby, you go dark to your friends. This seems particularly true for the first year. And when you get a pandemic on top of that, it becomes even more true. But now there’s this feeling that people are resuming normal social activities, while I’m still playing whack-a-mole against all the things conspiring to keep me isolated.
Toddler cold—whack! Injury—whack! Partner’s work obligation—whack! Miserable weather—whack! New COVID variant—whack!
The problem is, community is a huge component of self-care. Self-care is not just bubble baths and pedicures—caring for ourselves also entails finding a way to feel connected to others or to a larger purpose.
When you’re an adult who doesn’t go to church or school, and who now works from home, how do you maintain friendships and create community? Especially with all the moles digging up your life. Is having friends as an adult really just seeing your favorite people once every six months?
I try to be kind to myself and acknowledge that if I feel like I’m failing at friendship, it’s likely my friends are feeling the same way. But playing text-tag or sitting around thinking about all the people I meant to get in touch with doesn’t really fix the problem of finding community in 2022.
I’m trying a combination of the following—get ready for some cognitive dissonance:
1) Try harder.
2) Lower your standards and stop trying so hard.
For trying harder, I joined a community choir. It’s been amazing. I’m starting to make a few friends, but mostly I think coming together for a common goal is critical to finding a sense of belonging. Trying harder, of course, can look a million different ways. Maybe for you, it’s a sports team, running group, barre class, trivia team, religious study group, support group, or book club. Extra points for activities that can easily go virtual if someone gets sick. (Never did I think I’d go to choir practice on the internet, but hey.)
Lowering our standards might start with accepting that some of our friendships have changed through the pandemic, and that’s okay. Keeping in touch was hard enough in the before times, when the world was made of safe indoor spaces.
For me, lowering my standards also means recognizing that community doesn’t have to look the way I thought it would look to be real.
I grew up with community built around church and school and my parents’ friends from various social clubs. There were set places to be and times to be there. Wednesday night supper. Play rehearsal. The Friday night football game. Every trapping of 90s, small-southern-town America.
What does my community look like? Well, it’s got a lot less structure. After a year and a half of dragging my kid to the park in all varieties of miserable weather, it’s now a near-guarantee that we’ll recognize someone we know when we get there. I’ve made a few deeper mom-friendships, but largely my community is made up of caregivers whose last names I don’t even know.
Is this enough? I don’t know. I feel better after our mornings together. No one bats an eye when we’re MIA for two weeks with some new preschool cold. In this season of life, in this season on Earth, maybe formal institutions of community can’t be the goal. Maybe it’s enough to learn the names of every two year old in a two-mile radius. To buy scones from Parker’s mom at the farmer’s market and scheme with Janie’s nanny over summer music class scheduling. To feel known in the place where you live, even if you’re just there to fill the hours before nap.
Brunch with an old, good friend is a shimmering wonder. But so is the park. Maybe self-care through community, in These Unprecedented Days ™, has to be something that asks very little of us. Come as you are. Share your toys. Don’t forget the snacks.
Take good care,
Dot
News & Updates
Young people have been through a lot in the past few years. Throughout the pandemic, children and teens have experienced so many different types of loss, whether that be the death of a loved one, changes within their family structure, or the loss of their old routines and feelings of safety. Does your child need some extra support? Katie Gaynor has a few remaining after-school openings for new clients ages 6-18 who have been impacted by grief, loss, or trauma, or are experiencing anxiety or depression.
Read more about Katie here, and email info@alexandriaarttherapy.com to tell us more about your family and schedule a free consultation.
Blog Posts
When a child experiences a loss, especially the loss of a loved one, it’s tempting to get stuck in the realm of identifying injustice. How unfair, to experience tragedy so young. But how do we go from “unfair” to things that might actually help? It’s also challenging, if you’re also grieving, to then know how to help your child with their own grief, especially if it presents very differently from your own. In our latest blog, we chat with Associate Art Therapists Katie Gaynor and Matthew Brooks about their approaches to working with children who are grieving.
Links We Like
This article pairs well with Katie’s blog advice–about how longing for home after a move can be a way to grow. (WaPo)
More on how to share hard grief with children in this beautiful essay by Abigail Rasminsky about her parents’ pregnancy loss. “But we were never the whole story and we knew that, too.”
Love this mood meter for answering the all-too-challenging question “how are you feeling?”
Why PTSD is still overlooked. (NYT)
“I’m tired of judging other people’s COVID choices.” (NYT)
These tapestries are both neon and calming at the same time.
After two years of a pandemic, I’m prescribing myself this book.
“...you've got to lean into the cringe. In other words, if some technique or piece of advice makes you squirm with embarrassment, and you'd never be seen dead reading a book on such a corny/emotional/‘New Agey’ topic… well, that's probably a sign that you need it. It has touched something vulnerable in you, and the cringe reaction is your instinctive attempt at defence.”
I’m always a fan of hacks that put more art in front of your eyeballs. This browser extension from MoMA shows you a different piece of art when you open a new tab.
Night Movie, by Julie Blackmon:
