I strongly agree with you. I grew up in a family where it was absolutely normal (and still is) to have friends, uncles and cousins to drop by at any time. And I absolutely loved it.
But now im 27 and I find myself getting annoyed when people come over (even if invited). I even feel ashamed to ask a friend to look after my cat for 2 days because I don’t want to bother them.
This made me think of all the times I thought I should give my neighbours a key to my place. I could walk their dog for them if they're going to be out for the day, and they could feed my cat in the morning sometimes when I stay somewhere overnight. But I'm too scared to ask, worried I'll be bothering them.
It isn’t just your generation believe me. It’s a tough balance to strike, especially if you have been raised in a household where people don’t just ‘drop by’. It’s not generational it’s circumstantial - although, yes it’s true people are busier and there often is no one home during the day as everyone works now, so these communities are not grown in the same way. But they can be grown. Different things at different times of life. I was far less community focused where I lived in my 20s as a single girl than I am now in my 40s and with a family. I don’t know so much about the boundaries thing as it’s not something I have given much thought to, but the community thing I have wrestled with for sure. I guess if we see it as effort it’s not really going to work. But when it isn’t effort and it does work - it’s wonderful ❤️
Fleurine 💗 I feel very seen in this. And I too, often feel the need to write about the unforeseen side effects and impacts of losing a parental figure when you’re younger, and how the people around you act when grief is wildly severe and unique to every single person, rather than a text book with ‘advice’. It is warming to read the people who rallied around you and your mum while you were going through this day to day. My family is super small.
The contrast in community for our ‘generation’ (I am similar in age to you, I think), is rather stark and dark. I love my friends dearly too, but the way the world resumed so quickly as normal for them in the immediate aftermath of losing my mum was deeply unsettling and earth shattering to my world. I often talk with my work friends about community, but I never considered it generationally under the lens that you have so aptly and bittersweetly described. Community today is grounded in convenience first for so many. It makes me sad.
I would hazard a guess that if someone close to us were to experience something similar as we have, we would rally in the community style you described earlier in your piece in an effort to make up for this culture of convenience that surrounds us today.
And personally, I wouldn’t change that because I know how much I needed that in the aftermath.
Most people at our age find death and grief inconvenient, awkward, scary, foreign and unrelatable. I think this contributes to the evaporation of community too. People’s platitudes are informed by tv and movies, and those platitudes are not what we want to hear.
I just wanted someone to see me so badly in the aftermath, and whilst my beautiful friends tried, it came from a perspective of what they wanted to do for me, rather than what I truly needed. And I will always be grateful that they tried, it just made the isolation of feeling and experiencing this newly altered world deeper and lonelier.
It’s quite fortuitous I woke up and this was the first thing I read today, I did a somatic therapy session yesterday and the direction it took was related to my grief. What timing.
Thank you for your honesty. Thank you for writing about grief in ways that people are often too shy or concerned to tell. I wish grief was normalised in our culture and community. I feel writing like this is the only way to work towards that.
Thank you again. And if you ever want to become virtual grief club buddies here, my inbox is always open. 🤍
The boundaries thing feels like psychology made Internet palatable and marketable. Yes personal boundaries are important in many ways but we're built to connect with people. Communities are built and I suspect that a lack of third spaces/places and a lack of viable communal spaces combined with a work/commercially organised society strangles opportunities to build that community organically. It can take an awful lot of effort. None of my son's friends live near us.... At all. I don't have friends here... At all. But we have been building a network. I know that if certain families are at an event/park/school my son will be ok because they have his back. And us their kids. I know that the family across the road and my in laws in the next town will come if we need. I know that my MiL's network of friends will help if they can. We won't be having any street parties like my mom and her family used to have but the ground work for a community is there. The neuro spicy flavour of our household makes people difficult so I'd really prefer arranged visits or warning texts first myself 😁. Pls don't show up for a tea but I will totally make you one with snacks if you text me first. 💜
Beautiful essay and I'm very sorry for the loss of your stepfather. I think one thing we need to grapple with is that young people today don't necessarily have the same starting point for building community as past generations. Young people are more likely to be renters, or more likely to not feel secure in their job, or be planning to move abroad etc. All of that, I think, makes it harder to build the same kinds of co-located village-style, suburban communities of old. But maybe it's not impossible, and maybe there are other kinds of communities we can create in big cities, in appartment blocks, in community gardens, in social groups for our hobbies etc.
A while ago a friend called M messaged in a group chat with me and two other friends of mine - I had introduced the three of them to eachother when we went to a concert together. M was at the airport and was really worried he hadn’t locked his front door when he left the house, which he had only just moved into with new housemates who he wasn’t close with yet. It was a really touching moment where I realised that I’ve fostered a group of people who know they can ask each other for this kinds of help. After this, I thought a lot about ‘building the village’ and actions that align with fostering this kind of community. it’s what prompted me to plan and throw a huge birthday party (even though parties do kinda stress me out) because I realised I want to be the kind of person that connects others, that doesn’t just expect to be able to rock up at parties without matching the effort of my friends who normally throw one every year. I also have put myself out there by inviting people outside of my usual circle, particularly people from my gym (who I have to invite in person because I don’t have them on socials!) and even when people say they can’t make it I can tell they’ve been genuinely touched by the invite and that I’m still doing the work of building community.
I lived in a community home in a smaller city for 2 years. It was hard at times (community can be hard and good at the same time), but one of the best experiences of my life. However it was so easy to have community because we were all there (about 20 of us), in fairly close quarters. There was enough time to be alone, but even when you were alone you could hear your housemates down the hall or people hanging out in the common rooms. It was so easy to have community because there was always someone there to commune with. Now that I live in the bigger city (still in community to an extent but it looks much different), I’m realizing how hard it can be to cultivate community. It’s a learning process but now that I’ve experienced the benefit, I hope to find a way (and gumption in me) to really formulate community where I live.
This really made me feel something and is very relatable at the moment, losing someone you love can demonstrate where community exists in your life or lack there of and the people who do not wish to be inconvenienced for you- its tough not having that kind of community and same type of love in the world
exactly. this is what ive been thinking about for days. i have nothing but my own thoughts to back this up, but human beings were made for existing in communities. the way that we live in nowadays its just isolating, and maybe, thats why everyone and everything seems sadder than it used to
Thank you for this! I have a thing where I share my location with all my friends now and ask them to pop by when they’re in my neighborhood. It’s my absolute favorite thing and I miss it from my 90s childhood.
Couldn't agree more. I was raised in a way where it was so normal to be friends with our neighbours and ask those around us for favours (and offer in return). My husband is the opposite and worries of causing even those closest to him the slightest inconvenience. My friends are similar. It has really made me second guess myself about what is appropriate to ask of others
The price for community is inconvenience, and so many people will not allow themselves to be inconvenienced.
“Isolation is the price for a life of convenience”
This!!! To have a village, you have to be a villager.
I strongly agree with you. I grew up in a family where it was absolutely normal (and still is) to have friends, uncles and cousins to drop by at any time. And I absolutely loved it.
But now im 27 and I find myself getting annoyed when people come over (even if invited). I even feel ashamed to ask a friend to look after my cat for 2 days because I don’t want to bother them.
Subscribed! You had me at taylor swift playlists!
This made me think of all the times I thought I should give my neighbours a key to my place. I could walk their dog for them if they're going to be out for the day, and they could feed my cat in the morning sometimes when I stay somewhere overnight. But I'm too scared to ask, worried I'll be bothering them.
It isn’t just your generation believe me. It’s a tough balance to strike, especially if you have been raised in a household where people don’t just ‘drop by’. It’s not generational it’s circumstantial - although, yes it’s true people are busier and there often is no one home during the day as everyone works now, so these communities are not grown in the same way. But they can be grown. Different things at different times of life. I was far less community focused where I lived in my 20s as a single girl than I am now in my 40s and with a family. I don’t know so much about the boundaries thing as it’s not something I have given much thought to, but the community thing I have wrestled with for sure. I guess if we see it as effort it’s not really going to work. But when it isn’t effort and it does work - it’s wonderful ❤️
Fleurine 💗 I feel very seen in this. And I too, often feel the need to write about the unforeseen side effects and impacts of losing a parental figure when you’re younger, and how the people around you act when grief is wildly severe and unique to every single person, rather than a text book with ‘advice’. It is warming to read the people who rallied around you and your mum while you were going through this day to day. My family is super small.
The contrast in community for our ‘generation’ (I am similar in age to you, I think), is rather stark and dark. I love my friends dearly too, but the way the world resumed so quickly as normal for them in the immediate aftermath of losing my mum was deeply unsettling and earth shattering to my world. I often talk with my work friends about community, but I never considered it generationally under the lens that you have so aptly and bittersweetly described. Community today is grounded in convenience first for so many. It makes me sad.
I would hazard a guess that if someone close to us were to experience something similar as we have, we would rally in the community style you described earlier in your piece in an effort to make up for this culture of convenience that surrounds us today.
And personally, I wouldn’t change that because I know how much I needed that in the aftermath.
Most people at our age find death and grief inconvenient, awkward, scary, foreign and unrelatable. I think this contributes to the evaporation of community too. People’s platitudes are informed by tv and movies, and those platitudes are not what we want to hear.
I just wanted someone to see me so badly in the aftermath, and whilst my beautiful friends tried, it came from a perspective of what they wanted to do for me, rather than what I truly needed. And I will always be grateful that they tried, it just made the isolation of feeling and experiencing this newly altered world deeper and lonelier.
It’s quite fortuitous I woke up and this was the first thing I read today, I did a somatic therapy session yesterday and the direction it took was related to my grief. What timing.
Thank you for your honesty. Thank you for writing about grief in ways that people are often too shy or concerned to tell. I wish grief was normalised in our culture and community. I feel writing like this is the only way to work towards that.
Thank you again. And if you ever want to become virtual grief club buddies here, my inbox is always open. 🤍
The boundaries thing feels like psychology made Internet palatable and marketable. Yes personal boundaries are important in many ways but we're built to connect with people. Communities are built and I suspect that a lack of third spaces/places and a lack of viable communal spaces combined with a work/commercially organised society strangles opportunities to build that community organically. It can take an awful lot of effort. None of my son's friends live near us.... At all. I don't have friends here... At all. But we have been building a network. I know that if certain families are at an event/park/school my son will be ok because they have his back. And us their kids. I know that the family across the road and my in laws in the next town will come if we need. I know that my MiL's network of friends will help if they can. We won't be having any street parties like my mom and her family used to have but the ground work for a community is there. The neuro spicy flavour of our household makes people difficult so I'd really prefer arranged visits or warning texts first myself 😁. Pls don't show up for a tea but I will totally make you one with snacks if you text me first. 💜
Beautiful essay and I'm very sorry for the loss of your stepfather. I think one thing we need to grapple with is that young people today don't necessarily have the same starting point for building community as past generations. Young people are more likely to be renters, or more likely to not feel secure in their job, or be planning to move abroad etc. All of that, I think, makes it harder to build the same kinds of co-located village-style, suburban communities of old. But maybe it's not impossible, and maybe there are other kinds of communities we can create in big cities, in appartment blocks, in community gardens, in social groups for our hobbies etc.
A while ago a friend called M messaged in a group chat with me and two other friends of mine - I had introduced the three of them to eachother when we went to a concert together. M was at the airport and was really worried he hadn’t locked his front door when he left the house, which he had only just moved into with new housemates who he wasn’t close with yet. It was a really touching moment where I realised that I’ve fostered a group of people who know they can ask each other for this kinds of help. After this, I thought a lot about ‘building the village’ and actions that align with fostering this kind of community. it’s what prompted me to plan and throw a huge birthday party (even though parties do kinda stress me out) because I realised I want to be the kind of person that connects others, that doesn’t just expect to be able to rock up at parties without matching the effort of my friends who normally throw one every year. I also have put myself out there by inviting people outside of my usual circle, particularly people from my gym (who I have to invite in person because I don’t have them on socials!) and even when people say they can’t make it I can tell they’ve been genuinely touched by the invite and that I’m still doing the work of building community.
I lived in a community home in a smaller city for 2 years. It was hard at times (community can be hard and good at the same time), but one of the best experiences of my life. However it was so easy to have community because we were all there (about 20 of us), in fairly close quarters. There was enough time to be alone, but even when you were alone you could hear your housemates down the hall or people hanging out in the common rooms. It was so easy to have community because there was always someone there to commune with. Now that I live in the bigger city (still in community to an extent but it looks much different), I’m realizing how hard it can be to cultivate community. It’s a learning process but now that I’ve experienced the benefit, I hope to find a way (and gumption in me) to really formulate community where I live.
This really made me feel something and is very relatable at the moment, losing someone you love can demonstrate where community exists in your life or lack there of and the people who do not wish to be inconvenienced for you- its tough not having that kind of community and same type of love in the world
exactly. this is what ive been thinking about for days. i have nothing but my own thoughts to back this up, but human beings were made for existing in communities. the way that we live in nowadays its just isolating, and maybe, thats why everyone and everything seems sadder than it used to
Thank you for this! I have a thing where I share my location with all my friends now and ask them to pop by when they’re in my neighborhood. It’s my absolute favorite thing and I miss it from my 90s childhood.
This piece made me think about this beautiful book by Mia Birdsong: How we show up
Couldn't agree more. I was raised in a way where it was so normal to be friends with our neighbours and ask those around us for favours (and offer in return). My husband is the opposite and worries of causing even those closest to him the slightest inconvenience. My friends are similar. It has really made me second guess myself about what is appropriate to ask of others