The Importance of Finding Your People

This week was probably the hardest week for me of the pandemic. Harder than some of the earlier weeks when I was working 18 hour days. Harder than when I was processing my grief over losing my grandmother. This week reinforced the importance of finding your people and what happens when you realize don't have people, or that you have spent so much time in your life trying to take up as small a space as humanly possible that even when you reach out for support, you find, people just can't support you for whatever reason, or that your pool of people you could contact is just really small.  

Finding your people is so important. It is important for instructors, for staff, for learners. The way courses are designed can help support those connection pieces and allow learners to find their people - folk that they share interests with, folk who have similar positionalities, folk who are in the same field or discipline. Yes some of those connection pieces can be organic, chance encounters, but meaningfully having opportunities for connection in classes (regardless of modality of delivery) supports the learning community and can extend beyond that one course.

For instructors and staff, finding those people is equally important. The ability to have a conversation with someone who shares experiences is crucial for navigating many of the systems that are put in front of us on the daily. Just being able to talk things through or to frame an idea with a colleague for feedback, can support specifying research questions, and can lead to resources that you may not have thought of or heard of before. 

Sometimes you will find yourself in a place where you know exactly who or which group of people would be the best to talk to about a certain thing because they have the background and experience to assess and give feedback on what you are thinking through, but those people just can't support at that time for whatever reason. That feeling I really believe is the worst kind of feeling. When you know what you need to support you, in whatever way, and you just can't access that support when you need it. No matter how small the ask, it just has a way of digging a deeper hole, when you can't be supported at a time of need. And what you end up with instead is a patchwork sort of "make due" system of "close enough" support to tide you over. 

This happens to students all the time. They need support on something, support framing ideas for an assignment, support for housing or food, mental health support, and there's a lag, a wait time, or a barrier that leads to no. Students learn to "make due" and but that changes how they see themselves as a part of their institutions, or they may completely disengage, and sometimes even drop out because the supports they need are simply not there when they need them. 

I had a good talk with a friend today. We used to teach in the same program. We share the same feminist anti-oppressive trauma-informed pedagogical beliefs. We both have histories of supporting folk through stuff with a capital S. She was exactly the person I needed to talk to about a thing this week, but I didn't think to reach out to her, because I had decided that she already had too much on her plate to add one more thing. Of course as she rightfully reminded me, that was not my decision to make, and that she is fully capable of telling me how many spoons she has to devote to support if any. We talked for over an hour about a lot of things, including possible activities in the disability discourse course she teaches. She is my people, and it was nice to have a Zoom coffee chat with my people on a Saturday morning. But it was also a reminder that the last time we talked was on the phone in September when she called me for support on a thing. 

It was a reminder of how much connection we have lost because bandwidth is at an all time low. It was a reminder that folk with built-in systems of support within their own households can also come with built-in systems of responsibilities that may decrease the ability to do other support. It was a reminder that the pandemic has taken away a lot of societies' ability to look outward instead of always inward (it wasn't great even before the pandemic, but now it's even worse).  An important call, that we need to put things in place so that there are stops along the way to check in with people, to check in with ourselves, and that isn't happening because COVID is driving the bus. These stops are pedagogically important as well. This is where the care work and support happens, in the stops, in the gaps, in the resistance to just keep moving forward and "make due" when something that could be provided, like time, an empathetic listener, strategies, could make that making due not necessary. 

I know this post probably a bit disjointed, and it is because I am still not okay. The talk definitely helped but there's still a lot I have to process. And you know what, your students are probably not okay either, or your friends, or your colleagues. So maybe, if you can, if you have a little bit of space, check in on them in whatever way you can. I will leave you with this minestrone soup recipe from sarah "I build/maintain community support spaces" madoka currie, who shared this as an act of care and solidarity with care allies (the image is alt-texted before you ask, she is critical disability studies folk and she gets it). sarah is an awesome human and you should follow her, and maybe make some soup (I am going to tomorrow).