Building Community

One signature at a time

Sunrise in my neighborhood on Thanksgiving week

My kids were home for Thanksgiving and we shared many happy moments. They are at an age where we can have meaningful conversations about the world. I feel a sense of wonder as I watch how thoughtful they can be about issues, how we are willing to learn from and challenge each other and the sense of humor we share. I think about the numerous meals we have shared as a family over the years and appreciate how far we have come.

This past week I volunteered to collect signatures to put Tom Malinowski on the ballot in our district to replace Mikie Sherrill’s vacated congressional seat. I reached out to friends and acquaintances and I went to their homes to have them sign the peition. The door-to-door nature of this endeavor felt old school. It made me realize how rarely I go inside people’s homes. It was so fun to see people getting ready for the holidays. Expanding tables from the dining room into the living room, organizing a small kitchen for the unending dishes they are assembling for their Thanksgiving meal. Witnessing sisters home from college on the couch enjoying the Thanksgiving Day Parade together. Seeing beautiful rooms I have not seen before, watching the rituals of the holidays in real time including cleaning every last piece of glass from a crystal chandelier.

While I was so excited to visit people’s homes, I must admit that people were excited to have a visitor. I loved chatting with the young adults who were home from work or college and catching up on their exciting lives. Starting new jobs, picking majors, applying for internships, joining fraternities and sororities and clubs. And little kids were happy to have someone new and different over. It was fun for them to welcome a visitor into their home.

My husband Gideon is a black belt in community building. Just ask his high school friend group or his multiple college friend groups or his law school friend group or his first job out of law school friend group… you get the idea. Every year he plans a potluck Friendsgiving feast at his tennis club. For the first time this year, they added a cranberry sauce contest. I got a kick out of the men preparing their delicate cranberry sauces at home; sending photos to each other trash talking about the superiority of their cranberry sauce. I am proud to say Gideon somehow won 2nd place 🏆🏆.

And I am grateful for all the ways my community supported me during Thanksgiving week:

-our friends Nealy and Dave picking up carrots and milk for me even though they were not shopping -they were simply driving near a supermarket - because I didn’t want to leave the house again…

-people coming over to my house to sign the petition to save me a trip

-my daughter packing up my son’s suitcase because he was out late seeing friends before he returned to college

-my neighbor giving me cranberry bread because she had too much for her meal

-Gideon’s Aunt schlepping the best cheese and bread on subways and trains from NYC to our house in the suburbs

-running into one of my favorite people at a local bakery where our excitement to unexpectedly see each other (and to see my daughter Gabrielle) was palpable.

-My friend Nealy driving an hour away to shop at my sister and brother-in-law’s new store Party Fair in Skillman, NJ to support their business

I realize that I sometimes take my community for granted. But this past week has reminded me that a community is what we make it. Reaching out for support is a foundation of community as well as sharing each others ups and downs and showing up when needed. It is active and participative. There is reciprocity and a deep desire for connection. How do you build community around you? What are some things you want to do this coming year to connect with your community?

Scroll down for:

-Espana! We could learn a thing or two (from the vault)

-Little Santas Everywhere (from the vault)

-Establish Connection (from the vault)

-Never Not Grieving

-The New Old Age

-The Anti-Cosmetic Surgery Essay Every Woman Should Read

Scroll Down to find out What I Am Reading Now

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My blogs about community building:

¡España! We could learn a thing or two

Little Santas Everywhere

Establish Connection

Never Not Grieving: What ketamine taught me about sibling loss and intergenerational trauma

An extraordinary piece of writing by my friend Caren Osten Gerszberg and her story as a daughter of a Holocaust survivor.

The New Old Age: What a new life stage can teach the rest of us about how to find meaning and purpose—before it’s too late

(gift link—The Atlantic)

An inspiring analysis of the ways we can approach our encore years:

We don’t yet have a good name for this life stage. Sara Lawrence-Lightfoot, a notable scholar in this area, calls it the “Third Chapter.” Some call it “Adulthood II” or, the name I prefer, the “Encore Years.” For many, it’s a delightful and rewarding phase, but the transition into it can be rocky.

These folks are in the middle of what the psychologist Erik Erikson called a developmental crisis. People will either achieve generativity—a way of serving others—or sink into stagnation. At an age when you think they’d be old enough to know the answers, they find themselves thrown back into fundamental questions: Who am I? What’s my purpose? What do I really want? Do I matter?

The Anti-Cosmetic Surgery Essay Every Woman Should Read: Long Live the Old Flesh

father_karine

Wow! This is brave, thoughtful and thought provoking. A must read:

Let me clearly state my thesis: I believe one of the biggest existential threats to modern women is the beauty-industrial complex, that is the vast network of corporations that manufactures and sells us an endless slew of products, services, images and ideologies intended to destroy our self-worth for the benefit of shareholders. Its inky tendrils have slithered into all corners of American culture and wrapped themselves around our minds and bodies. One of its strongest arms is elective cosmetic surgery—something I believe is especially corrosive to women’s mental, financial, spiritual, and bodily health.

The Sideways Life of Denny Voss by Holly Kennedy

In this poignant and funny novel, a man who is defined by his limitations sets out to fight a murder charge--and discovers unexpected truths about himself, his family, and the world at large.

On the surface, Denny Voss’s life in rural Minnesota is a quiet one. At thirty years old, he lives at home with his elderly mother and his beloved blind and deaf Saint Bernard, George. He cleans up roadkill to help pay the bills. Though his prospects are limited by a developmental delay--the result of an accident at birth--Denny has always felt that he has “a good life.”

So how did he wind up being charged with the murder of a mayoral candidate--after crashing a sled full of guns into a tree?

As Denny awaits trial, his court-appointed therapist walks him through the events of the past year. Denny’s had other scuffles with the law, the first for kidnapping a neighbor’s cantankerous goose. And then there was the time he accidentally assisted in a bank robbery. It seems like whenever Denny tries to do the right thing, chaos ensues.

Untangling the events around the murder reveals even more painful truths about his family’s past. He’s always been surrounded by people who love him, but now it’s up to Denny to set his life on a new course.

Atmosphere by Taylor Jenkins Reid

Joan Goodwin has been obsessed with the stars for as long as she can remember. Thoughtful and reserved, Joan is content with her life as a professor of physics and astronomy at Rice University and as aunt to her precocious niece, Frances. That is, until she comes across an advertisement seeking the first women scientists to join NASA’s space shuttle program. Suddenly, Joan burns to be one of the few people to go to space.

Selected from a pool of thousands of applicants in the summer of 1980, Joan begins training at Houston’s Johnson Space Center, alongside an exceptional group of fellow candidates: Top Gun pilot Hank Redmond and scientist John Griffin, who are kind and easygoing even when the stakes are highest; mission specialist Lydia Danes, who has worked too hard to play nice; warmhearted Donna Fitzgerald, who is navigating her own secrets; and Vanessa Ford, the magnetic and mysterious aeronautical engineer, who can fix any engine and fly any plane.

As the new astronauts become unlikely friends and prepare for their first flights, Joan finds a passion and a love she never imagined. In this new light, Joan begins to question everything she thinks she knows about her place in the observable universe.

Then, in December of 1984, on mission STS-LR9, it all changes in an instant.

Fast-paced, thrilling, and emotional, Atmosphere is Taylor Jenkins Reid at her best: transporting readers to iconic times and places, creating complex protagonists, and telling a passionate and soaring story about the transformative power of love—this time among the stars.