Community Care is Self Care

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Episode artwork for Enthusiastic Encouragement and Dubious Advice Podcast for the Episode titled "Community Care is Self Care”

Show Notes

Patricia and Nicole talk about the quickening descent forcing us further into conservatism in the United States and beyond and some advice on what we can all do right now to feel less hopeless.

This episode is related to EEDA Newsletter Vol 5, Iss 14: Some Ideas on What To Do Now

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Sound editing by Jen Zink

Transcript

Patricia: Hey buddies, welcome to Enthusiastic Encouragement and Dubious Advice, the podcast for folks who would rather curl into the fetal position than lean in. I’m your host, Patricia Elzie-Tuttle. 

Nicole: And I’m tired. I’m Nicole Elzie-Tuttle, and we’re recording this show on July 1st, 2024. And it is no longer pride. 

Patricia: It is no longer gay pride.

What is it? 

Nicole: Gay wrath! 

Patricia: Gay wrath! 

Nicole: It’s the month of wrath. 

Patricia: Just kidding, every month is gay wrath.

Both: [Laughing] 

Patricia: So for the folks who didn’t see it on social media or the newsletter. I had something fun happen, which was my advice was played on The Best Advice Show, which is a podcast I listen to that I like a lot. 

Zach Rosen, I think his name is, he started that in 2020. And it’s a way for people to call in with advice and share advice. And then he just facilitates the ability for everyone to benefit from the advice of other people. So that was played last week. I will link that episode in the show notes. 

Nicole: Was your advice the best? 

Patricia: It was the best. 

Nicole: Ooooh. 

Patricia: I actually had two bits of advice. 

Nicole: The bestest. 

Patricia: The best, the, yeah, sure. 

I also recently made updates to the newsletter homepage, so if any of you subscribe to the newsletter, there is now an about page. And there is now also like a greatest hits section. Because some of the things in my newsletter were hard to find and people may want to revisit them, like certain resource lists, the how to find a therapist post, how to find cheap prescriptions, like that post.

So I kind of put them all together in a greatest hits so that they are more easily accessible. 

Nicole: And we also have a Patreon for those of you who would like to help us out and keep this podcast ad free. Right now we have our main tier, the Helpful Helper tier, and that is $3 a month. And we recently introduced a next level up tier.

Is it named yet? 

Patricia: Uh, is it Enthusiastic Encouragers? Maybe? 

Nicole: Maybe. Sure. You can be an Enthusiastic Encourager at $8 a month. And what that gives you is access to the Enthusiastic Encouragement and Dubious Advice newsletter, as well as supporting us at the podcast. And that is actually a $1 a month savings.

Patricia: Yeah, if you subscribe to the Patreon and then also the newsletter separately, that would be $9. So you’re saving a buck by doing that Patreon tier. And then also you’ll get access to any kind of paid things we have going on on Patreon right now. 

Nicole: Such as? 

Patricia: Such as our weekly accountability thread. 

Nicole: You too can be an accountabilibuddy.

Patricia: [Laughing] 

I don’t know, it’s helping me get things done, just knowing people are seeing what I’m doing. 

Nicole: And what are you all doing on there? 

Patricia: Well, it’s for paid subscribers only. So, I post, this week I’m going to do this thing, and then other people may comment, like, this week I’m going to try to do this thing, and we are encouraging to each other.

And then I check in, in a week, and I’m like, hey, I did the thing, or maybe I didn’t. It’s very low pressure. But just knowing other people are cheering for you, and knowing that other people see that you’re going to do a thing, helps you actually get things done. 

Nicole: That sounds, sounds very encouraging. 

Patricia: That’s the idea.

Nicole: I’ll have to come in and maybe start offering some weakly dubious advice. 

Patricia: Oh no.

Both: [Laughing] 

Patricia: So this week we were planning this whole show about communication skills, but at the last minute we’ve decided to pivot what we are talking about today. 

Nicole: Yeah, there’s some really concerning things going on regarding right wing politics in the U. S. and kind of globally. And there’s been a massive shift to the right, and this has scared a lot of us who are not enthusiastic about far right wing politics.

Patricia: Yeah. 

Like, yes, this show is self help, and one of the ways we are trying to disrupt the self help that is out there is we want to make the scope wider. We’re not just focusing on everyone as individuals, we’re also focusing on us as a collective and how we are in community with each other. As we said in our episode about burnout, we are not going to therapy, girl boss, self care or dissociate our way out of fascism, climate change, you name it.

We’ve, we’ve got to start thinking about ways that we can manage. 

Nicole: Isn’t there a saying out there that is like, community care is self care? 

Patricia: I mean, that’s something I say all the time. 

Nicole: Maybe that’s where I’ve heard it. 

Patricia: Maybe that’s where you’ve heard it. 

Nicole: To quote a great and well known philosopher, Patricia,

Patricia: [Laughing] 

Nicole: community care is self care.

Patricia: Oh my gosh. 

Nicole: For those not up to date on what we’re talking about when it comes to right wing politics, here in the U. S., just this last week, the Supreme Court effectively defanged all regulatory agencies, and this can have a massive impact. Everything from the safety of food and medications, to having clean water and air, to ensuring that buildings and vehicles are safe, like, this potentially has really messed up just about everything. 

Additionally, the Supreme Court, again, stepping in, doing a lot. This is, uh, some of this whole fascism thing we’ve brought up a couple of times now, where unelected officials are making choices that are really not good for everybody. They’ve made being unhoused an arrestable offense.

Like, you, if you are unhoused, can just be arrested for that. And what this does is this forces more people to enter the prison system. This is scary because this will allow more people to fuel the slavery system that is still legal here in the U. S. under the 13th Amendment. 

Patricia: Yeah. And I want to make it clear, not allow people to, because it’s not a privilege.

Like, this is forcing people who we should be helping get roofs over their heads. We should be helping get health care and food. And it is forcing them into prisons to then be under basically the legalized slavery that is the prison industrial complex. 

Nicole: The way we look at this also is, thinking about our unhoused neighbors, a lot of unhoused neighbors are people who are disabled or just having a hard time, and a lot of people don’t know how close they are to potentially being unhoused as well, especially with things like the ongoing COVID pandemic, which each time you get COVID significantly increases your rates of being disabled, which means you may not be able to work, which means you may find yourself in an unhoused situation, which now means that you may find yourself actually in prison and forced into labor. So this is just some of the terrifying things happening here in the United States. And I want you all to know that this is not just something happening here in the U. S., there has been massive swings towards far right politics globally. Most notably, that we’re seeing in the news here in the U. S., in Europe as well. But it is happening elsewhere as well. So this is a global problem that is happening. 

Patricia: Yeah, I think France just did something, uh, zesty. 

Nicole: Yes, they did. 

Patricia: Uhh, so… 

Nicole: Germany’s heading that way too.

Patricia: I want to recognize that it feels really weird right now to be doing anything other than yelling, screaming, crying, burning things down. And the other day I just bought some perfume and I had a moment of like, why does this even matter? Joy matters, and art matters, and these are the things that keep us going.

And we have a sign in our home that says joy is an act of resistance. And while I believe that in my soul, I also believe that resistance is an act of resistance. 

Nicole: Okay, I’m gonna take a moment here to speak to some of my fellow white folks that may be just starting to realize how scary things are getting and thinking, oh, gee, wow, we better do something because now is when things that are happening are starting to potentially affect you.

Please take a step back and realize that queer people have been sounding the alarms for decades. Black and Indigenous people and other people of color have been sounding the alarms for centuries. If there are people in these groups that seem annoyed that you’re just now showing up, please recognize that that is a valid way for them to feel, and you need to get comfortable with being uncomfortable in this movement.

Patricia: At the same time, I also want to say, welcome, it’s nice to finally have you. 

I think about the people who weren’t immediately on board when we came out and who eventually came around, and we are going to need as many people as we can at this time. 

Yeah, some people are painfully late to this party, and I am also sure as heck glad to have them here with us, rather than amongst the folks who would rather we didn’t exist. 

Nicole: Okay, so we talked about this a bit in one of our earlier episodes titled Everyone Deserves Help Except for Me. And that is kind of this, this massive problem that we particularly have in Western European culture of rugged individualism. This idea that you can do everything on your own, and you don’t need anybody else’s help, and you’re just gonna pull your bootstraps up and get on your horse and manage it all on your own.

Patricia: You’re just gonna manifest destiny across. 

Nicole: Whatever needs to be done. 

Patricia: Whatever needs to… oh my gosh, yeah. 

Nicole: The reality is, like we discussed, this isn’t possible, this isn’t how things work, and this isn’t healthy. And I, I want to relate this to kind of what we’re talking about here, bringing it back around to this concept of community, right?

That’s what we’re trying to get around to here. And that is, as things get worse, you’re going to need more and more community. And this is going to be hard because the system we have, particularly here in the United States, is set up to basically oppose that. The idea being, and I saw this, I think I saw this on Instagram somewhere, which was probably a screenshot from Twitter or BlueSky or something.

That really in like a community of people, you only need one or two hammers and you can share that hammer because not everybody is using that hammer every day, but what the capitalist structure we have here in the United States and a lot of Western Europeanized culture. It tells you that, no, everybody needs a hammer.

Each person in each family should have their own hammer in their own home, so that you always have a hammer and you never need to ask for one. 

Patricia: Well, and you never need to share what’s yours, what you earned. 

Nicole: What this also does is mean that the people who are making hammers can make a lot more money, because you all have given your money to each buy a hammer instead of using that money for something that you probably need a lot more. 

This is kind of the important concept around community, especially when we talk about what is happening on the global political landscape with this moving to far right wing ideology and, and creeping fascism is a lot of people are starting to take more and more steps towards this like prepper idea of, I need to hoard five, ten years worth of food and clean water and have a shelter somewhere far away from civilization where nobody can get to it. And I can have a little farm and rugged individualism ourselves through the apocalypse. That’s just not how this works. People need people. We need community. 

Patricia: This is very present in my mind because I also recently read The Parable of the Sower by Octavia E. Butler, which the book starts on July 20th, 2024. So, uh, 

Nicole: About 19 days out. 

Patricia: Well, from when we’re recording this. 

Nicole: Yeah. 

Patricia: Yeah. 

So if you want an absolutely wild reading experience, pick up Parable of the Sower, the Parable of the Talents. But it focuses on basically getting through the horrors of this dystopian society, which is our dystopian present, basically, and the main character, Lauren, is just gathering people, gathering community as she works her way, walking up the state of California. Hopefully to somewhere safer. But yeah, community has been on my mind a lot. 

Nicole: And this is something I want everyone to think about even in the current kind of status quo, or recent pre COVID status quo. I hear a lot of people talk about how tired and exhausted they are, but also how the standard 40 hour work week is incredibly isolating. There’s only so much time in the day, and if you need to also commute and make sure you cook dinner and potentially take care of children or do all the household things that need to be done, where is the time to have your own life and make art and find things that bring you joy?

And the truth is that we aren’t, again, meant to do it all on our own. This, rugged individualism is not the way it’s supposed to work. We need community. If we have community, then maybe different people can help prepare meals and do different things around the community. Maybe one person helps take care of multiple people’s yards while another person helps watch over multiple families’ children.

And having community is what makes these things possible. 

Patricia: I think back a few years ago, Surgeon General Vivek H. Murthy wrote a book called Together: the Healing Power of Human Connection in a Sometimes Lonely World, and he refers to loneliness as an epidemic. And I think about my friends or, or just people I know who might not necessarily be my friends, but they are specifically cisgender, heterosexual, white men.

And they don’t have friend groups in, in the same way that my other friends do or that we do, that I do maybe as a person of color, as a queer person. And I think about loneliness a lot and especially like boomers, the generation before mine, and how so much pressure is put on each other’s family, people’s families, to be the entire community, to be the everything.

Nicole: Yeah, I can speak to some slightly first hand experience of that loneliness. Our culture here in the U.S., again, it’s that, as I’ve said multiple times now, that rugged individualism that is really taught in particular to white men, and I think we talked about this more in previous episodes. The expectation is that you don’t need community, and that there is some, like, underlying messaging of community being weakness, needing to rely on anybody else, is weakness, and this is dangerous. It’s harmful. 

Patricia: Yeah. 

In, in more ways than one. I am grateful because I had parents who could make friends with anyone. I remember visiting my mom in Lahaina and we would be anywhere and she would just know people’s names. Like, people who worked places, people who, like, sometimes even tourists, um, she wouldn’t know their names because they interacted with her at the job she was working at.

Some of the unhoused people that were frequently in areas where she worked, like, she knew everyone’s name. And I’m very fortunate to have learned that from, from my parents. And I think in some ways, Gen X has a bit of an advantage over folks younger than us, because when, when I was a kid, there was no, even screened calls, um, like, I would call my friend, hope they’re home, end up talking to their parent, like, to their mom for ten minutes, so it’s like, you knew your friend’s moms, you knew your friend’s siblings, but you also knew the neighborhood kids, because you were basically told to be outside until the street lights came on, so… 

Nicole: I am not Gen X. 

I am older millennial, but I got some of that too. Yes, it was a different time. But also, I see what you’re saying about like, you had to actually know people and talk to people. 

Patricia: Yeah. 

Nicole: And you knew who your neighbors were, and who your friends’ parents were, and inevitably your friends’ parents talked to your parents.

And there was a bit more community in that. 

Patricia: Yeah, and we’ll have some future shows about friends specifically. But today we really want to focus on this idea of community. In the Venn diagram of friends and community, there can be huge overlap, right? Your friends are your community, your friends might be a community that you’re a part of, but then you’re also part of a variety of communities.

So they may be culture based or identity based, but not always. 

Nicole: Yeah, historically, there were often several communities that people kind of floated in and out of or, or worked through, and these would come sometimes from having really large families that were location based, typically, right? It was less so if you had family on the other side of the country, but if you had a large family in your local area, that would help foster a larger community. But there would also be communities based in your school, often organized religion was, or is still for many people, a source of community, as well as work, particularly if your work is unionized and you’re active in your union, as well as, as we mentioned, your local neighborhood, the people around you.

Patricia: Yeah, I’m very fortunate. I mean, my undergrad definitely brainwashed all of us, but in that, I went to USC. I am a Trojan, and if I see other people from USC, I’m like, oh, that person is my family. Like, it’s, it’s wild. I remember being in my 20s and being in a bar in the suburbs up here in the Bay Area, and there was a man who was 95 years old, and he bought me a drink because he saw me wearing a USC sweatshirt.

And he’s like, I went to USC in the 20s. And then I remember another time I was in Pasadena, where we used to live, and I was, It was around Christmas, uh, because I was in the post office and there was a long line and I was again wearing a USC sweatshirt and there was a woman I did not know and she was a few people away in the line and it was a white woman with her son and he was maybe like seven years old or something like that and she pointed at me. And she said, do you see her sweatshirt? Do you recognize that? And he shook his head. She’s like, you know the football games we go to? And he’s like, yeah. She’s like, she’s from that school. That means she is our family. Go like this. And she showed him how to make the V for victory, the fight on, and watch, she’ll do it back.

And I did. And I’m like, it’s so weird to have that connection with people like I would never have otherwise connected with. And so like, for some people, yeah, school is a big thing and I’m getting misty eyed. I’m very upset with some of the decisions of the administration of that school, but yeah… 

Nicole: Y’all, this is so wild to see in real time.

We’ve run into people from USC everywhere. Do you remember we spotted like a USC flag in Mystery Manor at 

Patricia: at Hong Kong Disneyland. 

Nicole: At Hong Kong Disneyland. And we, cause we got to, we talked to one of the Imagineers and she was like, oh yeah, guy who helped put that room together hid that up there. 

Patricia: Yeah. 

Nicole: Like, you are finding people everywhere and they will 

Patricia: Yeah. 

Nicole: totally, they’re, they’re there for you.

It’s really wild to encounter. 

Patricia: It’s really wild, yeah. 

Nicole: But that is a whole community you have access to that I don’t. I, I have yet to meet anyone who went to Fresno State and like, what are they going to do, bark? Like, they’re bulldogs. Like, I’m not barking back at someone. That’s weird. 

So, ultimately, we want to recognize things are hard right now, and realistically, they’re gonna get harder.

Our advice here is, if you don’t yet have community, we really suggest you start cultivating some. I know, this is scary. It’s gonna take some effort. One, do it scared, but also it’s going to be rewarding. 

Patricia: Yeah. 

One of the hardest things that people might have to overcome is you’re going to have to learn to trust people.

Nicole: [Gasp] 

Patricia: I know. 

And if you need to talk to a therapist to work through your things about that, we have a whole episode and I have a newsletter issue on how to find a therapist, but we need other people. 

Nicole: Okay, Patricia. So, if I am to go out into this big, bright, currently very warm world to find myself some community, where do I start?

Patricia: That’s a great question. First of all, I feel like you’re going to be parts of multiple communities. And I think some of the most obvious is your neighbors. Literally where you live. Do you know who lives next door to you in the apartment building or wherever you live? Introduce yourself. Offer some contact information.

Be like, hey, I’m Patricia. I live next door. I’m just want to introduce myself. I know, you know, we have, we have some neighbors that we haven’t even met yet still. And I just want to say, Hey, I want to be better about knowing my neighbors and just saying, hi, I work from home. I’m home all day. So if you need anything, I’m around.

Nicole: And this has actually been even really cool with the neighbors that we do have. I know I’m going off script here, but this is helpful for little things. Like we know a neighbor that has a lemon tree and I swear at least once we were short like one lemon for something that we were trying to make and you were able to just text them and they’re like, oh yeah, pop into our backyard and just grab one off the tree.

Patricia: Yeah. 

Nicole: And then we didn’t have to take a half an hour round trip to go to the grocery store to buy a single lemon. 

Patricia: To buy a lemon. 

Nicole: Yeah. 

And this is the little things that building community can help with. It’s not always about the big actions. 

Patricia: And I want to fully recognize that this might not be safe for everyone, this might not be accessible for everyone because of, could be anxiety, could just be other things going on that make you really scared to meet other people, and if you’re in an apartment building or a residential neighborhood, you can often find at least a couple people who are decent.

You don’t have to bake cookies or make a big show of it. In person is great, but also if you feel safer just slipping a little note into their mailbox or something, that’s fine too. Facebook and Nextdoor are dumpster fires, especially for neighborhoods, at least here in Oakland. But funny enough, our current neighborhood Facebook group is pretty, pretty good.

And the Buy Nothing groups are also very good. 

Nicole: These are a really great place to actually start finding some community. 

Patricia: I learned that the woman next door to us works at my same university. 

Nicole: But also, it’s a great place if there is something you need, ask. 

Patricia: Yeah. 

There was another guy that was like, hey, did someone lose their goats?

And someone responded, yeah, those are my goats. 

Nicole: Yeah. 

But also, I’ve seen people just be like, hey, does anyone have hangers? 

Patricia: Yeah. 

Nicole: And other people will respond to me like, oh, yeah, I’ve got like 20 hangers I’ve been meaning to get rid of. You want them? Like, it’s a great place to kind of start building that and getting to know some of your neighbors.

Patricia: Sometimes I feel like, as technology has advanced, that knowing your neighbors specifically is something that has been lost, and like I said, we can do a lot better at knowing our own neighbors as well. On top of this though, as we mentioned, you want to start building community in multiple ways. Like I said, neighbors might be the lowest hanging fruit, but you can start volunteering with local nonprofits.

You can go to the library, see what volunteer opportunities they have or recommend. You can start volunteering at the local food bank. You can also go to if there is a cultural center of groups you belong to, you could start showing up there and volunteering there and going to events there. 

Nicole: I think kind of the foundation of a lot of this is in order to reap the benefits of community, to which there are many, you yourself have to start investing in the community and really investing in the people around you.

And that is going to be both foundational and something that’s going to make a huge, huge difference in your life. And it’s going to help you manage when times get harder. 

Patricia: And I want to also point out, like, it’s real obvious if you’re going into this because you want to get. You need to approach community because you want to give.

And yeah, there are definitely benefits of having community and often you do get more than, than you put into it. But we are going to need each other and I also want to recognize that online communities are also incredibly important, and sometimes that’s something, that’s the only thing that a person has access to, and so sure, build that online community. Know people elsewhere who aren’t where you are, and I think we are going to need each other for, uh, like I said, for safety, but also things are really scary right now.

Nicole: And having people around who you know, who you are mutually invested in really helps alleviate a lot of that anxiety. 

Patricia: Yeah. 

So I think that’s my big takeaway right now is things are a mess, things are a mess and we’re going, and we need each other. 

Nicole: Yeah, it is literally impossible to do it on your own. 

We need people.

We need community. As people, we do not do well on our own, despite what capitalism and western masculinity and whatever are going to tell you. You can’t just pull up your bootstraps and get through it. 

Other people are not just important, but necessary.

Patricia: So I do have a resource today. It is something I learned from a woman named Tara, and she writes the Research Buzz blog. And if you have used Google within the past, I don’t know, month and a half, two months, you will notice that when you enter a query, it will give you back an AI overview sometimes of what it kind of thinks the answer is based on whatever it’s, it’s searched on the web and sometimes it’s okay. Sometimes it’s telling you to eat rocks. 

So what I learned is if you enter your query, like what is the best way to eat olives? After that type hyphen, no spaces, nobody asked you and it will not give you that AI overview. I don’t know if this is going to work forever, but if you type, what are the best ways to eat olives, space, hyphen, nobody asked you, it will actually just give you some webpages that have some answers.

Nicole: The top one should hopefully be, on top of pizza. 

Patricia: Oh, I was thinking the top one should be, first you put them on all your fingers. 

Nicole: No, because then you have olive-fingers and then I’m going to have to wash my hands. 

Patricia: But they make them more delicious. 

Nicole: Your fingers? 

Patricia: Don’t be weird. 

Nicole: But that’s kind of my thing.

Okay, Patricia, we’ve mentioned things are scary. What is filling your cup right now? 

Patricia: What is filling my cup right now is I’ve finally gotten back to writing some snail mail. I had a package to mail out that was just kind of, like, being a barrier to my writing any other mail because I was like, oh, I can’t write other mail because I have to get this package out and then I just end up doing nothing. 

But, one of the things was actually last night, we ate a nectarine that after I took a bite, I looked around because I thought, oh, oh, I might, this tastes too good to be legal. This tastes too good to be anything other than sinful. This is, it was like an amazing nectarine. It might have to be the last nectarine I eat this season because I don’t think they’re going to get any better than that.

Nicole: It was really good. I was lucky that you shared it with me. 

Patricia: Nicole, what’s filling your cup right now? 

Nicole: What’s filling my cup is we had some friends over, and we cooked for them. We cooked a lot of food for them. 

Patricia: Our friends are good eaters. 

Nicole: They were. We had so much food here, and it was so wonderful. And really, I’m looking forward to more of that this summer, as we can open up all the windows and have a, I won’t say a fully COVID safe environment, but a more COVID safe environment to have people over and enjoy company and be able to do things like cook for people.

And yeah, it was just really nice. I really enjoyed that. 

Patricia: Well, that’s our show for today. We’d like to thank our awesome audio editor, Jen Zink. You can find her at loopdilou.com. We’ll leave a link to that in our show notes. 

Nicole: And you can find the full show notes and transcript at eedapod.com. That’s E E D A P O D dot com.

There you can also find a link to our Patreon, our Bookshop link, and a link to the ongoing Enthusiastic Encouragement and Dubious Advice newsletter. You can also find us on Instagram and BlueSky at eedapod, and email us at eedapod@gmail.com. 

Patricia: We are nothing if not consistent. 

Nicole: We would also appreciate it so much if you would subscribe and rate us on Apple Podcasts or Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts that allow ratings, it’s going to help other people find us and build community on our Patreon.

Patricia: We would also appreciate anyone who can subscribe to us on that Patreon. Support there is going to help us keep this show going, especially without ads. You can find us at patreon.com/eedapod. In the meantime, we hope you find ways to be kind to yourself, drink some water, and read a book. We’ll be talking to you soon.

Nicole: I feel like we should count down at the end, because we count one, two, three at the beginning. Should we go three, two, one at the end to make it symmetrical?