Friendship Book Club: How We Show Up
Community care, the American Dream, and collective activism.
Friendship does not exist in a vacuum; it is directly impacted by the society we live in. It can be easy to slip into a blissful bubble when we are with our friends. Things feel lighter, easier. The many worries of the world a bit more distant. We leave recharged, wondering “Why don’t we do this more often?” and posting silly memes that say “Me after hanging out with my friends and realizing life is worth living again.” But what if the reason we don’t center our friendships more is because our culture intentionally keeps us apart?
In How We Show Up, activist, facilitator, and futurist Mia Birdsong speaks to the most wounded and stifled parts of our souls — and gives us pathways to stronger communities, if we are willing to work on ourselves and get in each other’s business.
Why it’s in the Forevers library: How We Show Up is an intersectional, anti-racist guidebook for building stronger communities through real human connection.
The book is segmented into eight chapters, beginning with The Trap of the American Dream (unpacked a bit below) and flowing into Self Care in the Context of Community. Chapter three, The Queering of Friendship, resonated strongly with us as it explored how queer people have centered and celebrated friendships in their lives.1 Next, Birdsong guides us to expand our idea of Family Beyond Blood and Law, to grow into The Village We All Need. The book wraps up with a powerful section on Healing, Repair, and Accountability that spans everything from personal grievances to the inhumanity of the prison industrial complex. The reader is left with the knowledge that reclaiming and reinventing community is something we do with one another rather than for one another.
As a queer white person, the main response I had to How We Show Up was gratitude. I am so thankful to Mia Birdsong for writing this book, for painting blazes on the trail toward community care, and for lifting up stories of those who the American Dream tried to trample. I was impressed by her ability to acknowledge the universal harm caused by oppressive systems, while always keeping the focus on those who are most marginalized. It opened my eyes to new ways of both accessing and offering support within my friendships, and small, interpersonal actions I can take to dismantle biased social systems.
Loving my friends the way they want and deserve, while extending that same care to myself, is radical. Expanding our vision of community is how we build a world that is safe for everyone.
You get two Forevers Focuses (foci?) — one from each of us — based on ideas from the book!
Sam’s focus: Have a conversation about what makes you feel full and fed
This is a question I want to ask myself and my own community more — what conditions make us feel full and fed? Creating community is creating culture — practice, ritual, social norms. What does that creation need to look like so we are not just filled up when we are depleted by live a life that is less depleting?…
Living in my bubble is important for my well-being and it’s the place we practice world making — creating some version of the future world we want to live in now, in the present. Living into the future, creating the culture we want with the people closest to us, is a declaration of love and commitment.
— Mia Birdsong, How We Show Up
I found this call to action deeply inspiring: My friendship isn’t just a place to go when my tank is empty, but also a place to build a new kind of sustainable engine. It might feel a little woo-woo or bring up feelings of imposter syndrome. How can my friendship matter to the future? Ironically, the answer is by changing things now in whatever small ways we can.
So, sit down with a close friend who you want to have in your future, someone who fills up your cup and who you want to fill up in return, and go through these questions:
What conditions make each of us feel full and fed (spiritually, physically, emotionally, etc.)?
What types of future practices, rituals, or norms can we create within our friendship that provide this before we are in a deficit?
What is one small thing we can do, right now, in this moment, to start living that future now?
Erin’s focus: Give a friend the gift of helping you (and vice versa)
Amoretta Morris, a wise woman I know who is rethinking philanthropy, wrote, “It’s okay to ask for help. In fact, by doing so, you are taking part in the divine circle of giving and receiving. While we often focus on what the request means for the asker/ recipient, we should remember that giving can be transformative for the helper.… By not asking for help when you need it, you are blocking that flow.”
— Mia Birdsong, How We Show Up
This quote really hit home for me, especially in light of recently spending nearly a week helping my childhood forever care for her new twin boys — and care for her and her husband, too. Yes, it was exhausting and less of a true vacation than lounging on a beach — and it was one of the most deeply meaningful things I’ve done in a while.
Throughout the book, Mia discusses the many ways care can show up in friendships, big and small, especially when we start to rethink the role friends can play in our lives. Of course, I loved how she touched on auntiehood as a form of community care.2 A favorite of mine was a story she shares of stepping up and offering to be more of a support system for her friend with type 1 diabetes, asking her to share all the information Mia would need to know to care for her in an emergency. It made me wonder about ways I can invite myself into more of my friends’ care needs — and vice versa — especially as we age and the needs undoubtedly get harder.
If you’d like to bring more opportunities for care into one of your friendships, try talking through some of these questions posed by Mia in the book:
What are the other ways in which we could be caring for one another?
What parameters have been set for us by convention that are keeping us out of one another’s business?
How can we prepare to help each other before the need is actually present?
We need to talk about: The American Dream
A central theme throughout the book is the idea of the American Dream3 and the toxic individualism it breeds. Our communities are poisoned by the idea that we should just pull ourselves up by our bootstraps and meet all of our needs through the cis-het nuclear family. This is a big part of why people don’t prioritize friendships to the same level as romantic and family relationships. How We Show Up begins by addressing this topic for good reason; it is ripe for discussion.
Here are a few excerpts to get the conversation flowing.
A quote describing how American Dream individualism keeps us from connection:
Perhaps most damaging, [the American Dream] includes a toxic individualism that creates barriers to deep connection and intimacy. When we are oriented toward doing it ourselves and getting ours, we cut ourselves off from the kinds of relationships that can only be built when we allow ourselves to be open and generous.
A quote redefining what freedom means within the context of community:
The American Dream tells us that freedom is the state of being unburdened and unconstrained by others or systems. It’s about having choices and being able to fully express ourselves. It’s having the power to be who we want, go where we want, and do what we want. But we tend to understand it as an individualistic concept. This is where we have to expand our understanding to fold in what is actually an older understanding of freedom…
In Liberty and Freedom, David Hackett Fischer explains that the word free is derived from the Indo-European friya, which means “beloved.” Friend also shares this common root with freedom. A free person was someone who was “joined to a tribe of free people by ties of kinship and rights of belonging.” Freedom was the idea that together we can ensure that we all have the things we need — love, food, shelter, safety. The way I’ve come to understand it, freedom is both an individual and collective endeavor — a multilayered process, not a static state of being. Being free is, in part, achieved through being connected.
A quote pointing out the ways the American Dream keeps us from getting help:
The do-it-yourself-ness of the American Dream narrative has us refusing to ask for help, and often refusing to take it when offered because it’s seen as shameful. Or, when we need help, we think of it as a burden on others. But the lone-wolf approach to life doesn’t work for anyone because none of us is self-sufficient. Interdependence is part of who we are as people. We are fundamentally wired to need others.
On the empty promise of being normal:
So often we believe that following the traditions we know is an easy path because there are fewer decisions to make and there’s less friction with other people’s expectations and society’s rules of acceptance. We buy into the idea that tradition is better in some way — a thing to uphold and safekeep or American Dreamism’s promised path to happiness…But there’s no ease here. The dissatisfaction, depression, and sense of loss people feel in spaces or norms that don’t work for them can be devastating. And when we don’t see or encounter other possibilities, it can take such a long time for us to figure out that we want something else. It’s one thing to feel that something else is not really possible…But we also put constraints on ourselves, we live inside them, we hold on to them hoping for the promise we think “normal” holds.
There is so much to unpack here. So many unspoken standards, obstacles, and stigmas. I found myself mentally picking up each of my anchor relationships (to myself, my partners, my family) and examining them for influences of the American Dream. I did the same with what I consider my life goals. Some of the Dreamified facets I knew about before this book, but others were newly illuminated.
It was also interesting to consider how my relationships and goals have shifted in the past 10+ years. When I was freshly graduated from college or newly married, the myth of American Dreamism played a bigger role in my choices. But, over time, I have been forced to reckon with its pitfalls and dead ends, abandoning the American Dream roadmap and taking wobbly steps in my own direction. Building with my bestie
(and you!) is a part of that journey.So, let’s talk.
Here are some discussion questions from the Brooklyn Public Library Book Club Kit that offer pathways into this sticky subject:
How do you feel about the American Dream?
Does your dream align with the American Dream?
How does your identity and background influence this?
Does the American Dream feel like a burden or freedom?
I’d like to add one more: How has the American Dream impacted your friendships?
Tell us in the comments!!! (I’ll go first — see you there.)
Forevers is a project to celebrate and deepen forever friendships. Our art and writing is 100% handcrafted by two best friends to help you and your friends stay connected. Will you be our friend?
For more on the topic of queering your friendships, read On Queerplatonic Relationships, From Someone Who’s Actually In One by Siobhan Crosslin.
For more thoughts from Mia on the value of aunties, check out her essay in Slate, “In praise of the auntie.”
You can listen to Mia Birdsong speak about the American Dream and its intersection with white supremacy in conversation with
and on the Dear White Women podcast.
For me, the American Dream feels like an amalgamation of so many other boxes the world wants to put me it. It encourages me to define my success and wholeness by the amount of money I make (very little), how many children I have (none), and how big and tidy my house is (it's small and messy, see Erin's post from last week).
My identity as a straight/cis-passing white person from a middle class background means that, in a lot of ways, I have been able to selectively participate in the American Dream while still having time and resources to (safely) pursue other dreams of mine. The American Dream feels more like a burden, or perhaps even a con. It's a distraction from where I want to be putting my energy, from committing to what and who I love - including my closest friends.