Connection and Isolation

I’m thinking a lot about connection and isolation. Most human beings want to feel like they belong. We want community. We want spaces where we feel valued and appreciated. Where we can be ourselves. Where trust and support are present.

How many of us truly have these spaces?

What impacts whether we have connection or not?

And what happens when we don’t have connection?

As practitioners, especially justice-based anti-oppressive practitioners, we know that a number of factors influence people’s ability to feel connected to others with safety, trust, belonging, support, and the freedom to be themselves. We always start with looking at systems of oppression: white supremacy/racism, patriarchy/sexism, classism, heterosexism/homophobia, xenophobia/anti-immigrant racism, ableism, ageism, and more. Each of these systems, backed by dominant cultural beliefs, messages, laws, policies, and practices affect people’s ability to have the connection and support they need.

Of course, this plays out differently for those marginalized by these systems and those advantaged by these systems. Communities do not tend to simply spring up spontaneously. They are created through laws and policies like redlining, bank loans, economics and wages and salaries, all influenced by these systems, and all which determine who can live where. And who can live where influences how people feel who live there. What are the norms of the community? Who stands out for being “different.” To have “different”, there must be “normal.”

The consequences of lacking connection, community, safety, belonging, trust, support, and the freedom to be oneself, are devastating. We see depression, anxiety, poor physical health, suicidality, violence — turned inward and/or outward, trauma, hypervigilance, and a number of other problems at the individual, family, group, and community level.

Through my teaching and podcasting, I know that there are people all over who are doing work every day to increase people’s ability to have community, connection, safety, trust, belonging, support, and the freedom to be themselves. And this work is being done in the face of serious conditions and consequences.

In my own life, I’ve wrestled with this issue of community for a long time. I grew up Jewish in Maine. It was a challenge. I knew I was different. We also had a beautiful, small community. I am also seen as white and have the advantages that come with that. And I am male. In many ways, if I went through life without questioning anything or caring about global humanity, taking the dominant cultural path that was available, maybe I would feel more connected to more people. My beliefs and actions have definitely led to a lot of backlash and isolation. However, I would also not have the connection with others — connection that I would never want to miss out on or give up.