No matter how evolved or enlightened someone is, if their basic needs aren’t being well met, it will be harder for them to live from their values. It’s just the way humans are wired. 

If your need for sleep isn’t well met, you’ll have a harder time accessing patience and creativity.

If your kids are starving, you’ll steal to feed them.

If your need for a felt sense of connection and belonging isn’t well met, you’re more likely to spend time scrolling or Netflix binging. 

This is part of the reason we are so susceptible to marketing messages and conditioning by the overculture around the need to do and be even more. Many of our needs are unmet for community, for support, to be seen and known and understood, to be mentored, and to be held during hard times.  

As mothers, we also have a need for these needs to be met for our kids. You can feel it, can’t you? In order for you to thrive, you need them to have their needs well met. 

For this reason, rich, vibrant intergenerational communities are the natural habitat of the mother. With our “village” around us, we wouldn’t be expending our precious little energy creating community, compensating for the absence of the community, and feeling the grief of unbelonging. That energy could then be channeled into being the kinds of parents, partners, community members, and citizens we want to be, and simply enjoying our lives. 

But then we’d be powerful. Well supported, living from our values, and connected to our joy, we’d have no need for the capitalist model. With community care as the norm, we’d break down patriarchy’s lies fast. 

This is why every step we take toward connection and community is a revolutionary act. Healing from hyper-independence is a radical act of resistance. 

Thankfully, the pandemic has opened millions of people’s eyes to the fact that we need one another way more than we’ve been led to believe and that, as Toko-pa Turner describes: 

“The time of the lone wolf is over. Our future depends on us learning how to move as an ecosystem does, in harmony and collaboration. So look for any excuse to practice at being in circle; make every undertaking have some aspect that requires others.” 

What small steps can you take toward creating the connections you crave? 

What might you do today in order to feel a little better supported? 

Even the smallest steps matter,