Publisher’s Talk: How to Build a Village of Collective Health

 

“It is easy for us to recognize the power of tender loving repair

when it comes to material things — that we can transform

an existing structure into something stronger, without simply

tearing it down. It is less easy to remember that people

can be transformed in the same way.

The energy of a small village, or sometimes just a

stranger on a street corner, can apply

tender loving repair to reshape a life.”

 

I gave my 10th summer talk at First Unitarian Society of Minneapolis, complete with a reading and specially curated music. I talked about a particular life I intersected with this year that has taught me more deeply about the struggles of addiction and financial insecurity that impact so many.

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Speech Excerpt

… Since Travis is now a friend of mine, I picked up a book by Sebastian Junger that was recommended to me, “Tribe,” to better understand the mentality of a different kind of village — people in the military who learn to trust each other, despite different backgrounds and beliefs.

Junger wrote: “In combat, soldiers all but ignore differences of race, religion, and politics within their platoon, It is no wonder many of them get so depressed when they come home.”

Junger wrote about a collective time that I experienced up close. I lived in New York City, a few blocks from the World Trade Center, when it was attacked on September 11. I saw the dust clouds as the buildings went down. I saw that giant city stand still, strangers huddled around taxi cabs listening to radios, trying to understand what was happening. My daughter’s babysitter stayed with us several days, since she could not get home on the subway system. I saw memorials go up, pictures of loved ones with notes — “have you seen this person?” The slow motion of collective grief lasted months.

Junger’s research found that New York’s suicide rate dropped by 20 percent in the six months following the attacks. The murder rate dropped by 40 percent. Pharmacists saw no increase in the number of first-time patients filling prescriptions for antianxiety and antidepressant medications.

In other words, the nature of the collective good — banding together — alleviated many of the symptoms we are increasingly experiencing in an unhealthy world.

Junger wrote: “We are not good to each other. Our tribalism is to an extremely narrow group of people: our children, our spouse, maybe our parents. Our society is alienating, technical, cold, and mystifying. Our fundamental desire, as human beings, is to be close to others, and our society does not allow for that.”

Travis is extremely grateful that he has a new steppingstone into the life he wants to provide for his son. He says that someday he will repay me for opening up a door he was so ready to walk through.

But I have told him this. My privilege as a writer is to listen to people’s stories. Sometimes I write about addictions and mental health issues and abusive environments, and the havoc they make on our collective and individual psyches. And I have stood up on this stage, for 10 years, talking about why we need to be concentric circles, not individual lines.

But to be honest, I am a very protective individual. Like many of us introverts, I avoid conflict, I sidestep pain, I move away from people who I don’t understand. I basically avoid intimate relationships when you look someone in the eye to tell your truth. They tell me theirs, I observe, I take notes.

Yet I myself am not a vulnerable person. I raised two kids on my own, on purpose. Now I am an empty nester who misses the day to day of my wonderful children. I own a print magazine business that is struggling, and I haven’t been able to pay myself most of the past few years. Three of my six recent staff members have been dealing with mental health issues in their families; one is about to take a month-long sabbatical that will hurt our bottom line but is a needed break on our small staff. It is hard. I have held it together the best I can. I grew up with supportive parents and have a lovely home that has been transformed in the past few months. So, I smile, am thankful for having resources to help me be resilient, yet I am quietly stressed. I hold my truth to myself.

So, when Travis says I opened a door for him that he wants to repay someday, I tell him he already has. Travis is a 36-year-old former Marine with tattoos who smokes and has had issues with cocaine. He is the person who has shown me how to be vulnerable.

Because we are never only one thing. We transform in connection with others.

When I was agitated a few times lately, he was the one I reached out to. When I was overwhelmed recently with a culmination of tough news, I called him and cried.

It is a profound gift to have someone you can be your ugly self with. Some people build those trusting relationships easily. I do not.

Some people grew up with support and resources and resilience. Many people do not.

Everyone needs to know that, when we let go for a little while, someone will catch us. For people without that tribe, it might need to be strangers in their community who will step up. Who will notice them in distress on a park bench. Who will make a comment at a street corner to offer a needed perspective. Who will invite them to talk to strangers about how to get out of a hole.

We can all be that person. We can discover our talents, and play music at KJ Hideaway, and make someone’s day. We can create a village in a team with others to help one person, one family, get a foothold. We can make visible, village by village, the web of interconnection for everyone to see.

We can all be part of the solution everyone needs: that when we fall, we know someone is there to help us get up again.

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I also talked about how a particular blues jam session in East St. Paul might hold “keys to the universe” about how to create a culture that respects each other’s talents where we are at, regardless of age, experience, skills:

 

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The full talk, preceded by music and a reading from my son is here:

 

 

 

Reading

One of the Minnesota Women’s Press readers recently sent a blog post by a financial planner named Katie Gatti Tassin. The essay resonated. Starting today’s talk with excerpts from, oddly enough, the “Money With Kate” blog post.

When we first moved, our next-door neighbors knocked on our door and invited us over for dinner. In the following weeks, they’d pop over to check in, periodically lending a tool or an extra set of hands. One day while I was stuck in traffic, I texted my neighbor: Hey, can you go over and let Beans out in the backyard? It was no problem. I walked their dog the next time they were out of town. Every time we exchange excess baked goods or text one another to check in, I feel that sparkling little reminder: Someone’s looking out for me, and I, them.

The central promise of so many apps is that they can eradicate the need to maintain relationships, look out for one another, or inconvenience yourself for the sake of a loved one. (For a price.) Need help mounting your TV? TaskRabbit.

Instead of trading your neighbor a six-pack of beer to feed your cat while you’re away, you pay a stranger on Rover $30 a day.

I’m heartened by the emergence of the “little favor” countertrend because it acknowledges that sometimes asking for help or inconveniencing yourself for someone else’s sake strengthens bonds in your community.

The beauty in asking for what you need is not just in the straightforward receiving of it, but in allowing other people to give it to you. We glorify individual ability and self-sufficiency, which are great — but to be human is to need. So, too, is to give.

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Thanks to Jacob Mullis of First Unitarian Society of Minneapolis for the video recording work.