Capitalism Keeps Us Tired on Purpose

In the winter of 2023 going into 2024 my partner and I talked about no longer celebrating Christian-based holidays and instead reclaiming ceremony and gathering for ourselves in a way that felt meaningful, not tied to consumerism, and true to us. We started experimenting with celebrating the four changes of season—the solstices and the equinoxes.

Yesterday was the fall equinox, and for the second year we hosted a gathering. This time we decided to widen the circle—beyond blood relatives and into chosen kin. Two other families came, sixteen of us in total. It was potluck style: I harvested the last zucchinis, our final two cantaloupes (so unbelievably delicious, can’t wait to grow them again), and rainbow Swiss chard. My dad roasted two chickens. My sister took charge of apple desserts from the apples we picked the day before.

We offered prompts for the evening. The first: What does love mean or look like to you right now? I stretched it in my own brain to also include: How are you enjoying giving and receiving love in this moment in time?

What came up for me is that both my partner and I have been craving more intimacy with our friends and our community. We want the kind of relational intimacy—the acts of loving—you usually reserve for family, but with chosen kin. We want to dismantle the nuclear family.

I really do believe all of God’s children are my siblings, and all of God’s children are my children. (We’ve been working on reclaiming the word “God,” which is funny because I come from an atheist background and my partner from a Baptist upbringing he completely rejected. So, lots of complexity there. LOL.)

When Speaking Up Gets You Attacked

Alongside the equinox joy, two dear friends reached out to me this week under attack for speaking out about the genocide in Gaza. One was doxxed on Facebook and told to be “less political” for the sake of his business. Another got a threatening email from a customer promising to tank her bar if she didn’t “change her tune.”

Grace Blakely writes:

“We have a society of increasingly poor people who believe that poor people are losers who just didn’t work hard enough… without any powerful movements to represent people, this self-blame metastasizes into a profound sense of powerlessness.”

That’s the setup for why people lash out, and why fascism feels so attractive to some. I keep asking: how do we help each other see that we’re not alone? That I’m your sister, you’re my brother, my children are your children.

At dinner one neighbor said when asked “what weight are you ready to set down this season?” that he carries so much emotional and intellectual weight about the suffering in the world, but not enough tangible, real weight. His hope for this darker half of the year: pick up a shovel. Do something physical. Even if it’s small.

Okay, But How Do We Actually Build Community?

Amy Kay writes:

“Build your community. Host potlucks. Set up a resource sharing system… Skill-share. Make stuff with your friends. Keep your money local.”

Yes. That’s the antidote. Because as Grace points out:

“Right wing strong men exploit this sense of powerlessness… They redirect people’s rage away from the billionaires and corrupt politicians causing their suffering, and towards women, migrants, and anyone they consider ‘weak.’”

And yet… all of those things sound lovely in theory, but:

• How do we do them if we’re tired?!

• How do we do them if we’re living paycheck to paycheck?

• How does the single mom who’s working two jobs show up for this?

I feel like we’re in this place of hearing these pieces of advice over and over again, but I’m not sure we actually know how to get to them. Does that feel true for you?

Start Ridiculously Small

Maybe it starts smaller than the internet memes make it sound. Maybe it’s not hosting a giant potluck every month but just doubling your soup recipe one night and dropping a quart off to a friend. Maybe it’s texting your neighbor to see if they want to split the Costco run so neither of you has to go as often. Maybe it’s putting a standing calendar reminder to swap school pick-ups with another parent once a week.

Here are a few other tiny, very real starting points:

• Offer to water a neighbor’s plants when they’re out of town.

• Trade skills: fix a bike for someone and let them watch your kid for an hour.

• Share tools instead of buying new ones—hedge trimmers, drills, snow shovels.

• Start a group text with a couple families on your street just to check in weekly.

• Invite someone to linger after dinner instead of rushing to clean up.

None of this is glamorous. But these are the muscles we build when we’re practicing community. They remind us we’re not alone, and they set the foundation for bigger, braver things.

Stop Waiting for Community to Magically Appear

Grace writes:

“It’s not enough to fight the far-right. We have to show people that there is another option.”

That other option isn’t always some massive, headline-grabbing action. Sometimes it looks like neighbors gathering around a table, feeding each other, and risking intimacy.

At the end of our equinox dinner, after the dishes were washed and the tables folded up, each of the dads hugged me goodbye. One picked me up and twirled me in a deep embrace. The other held on longer than the usual quick hug. And in that moment, I felt it: we had done something. We had shifted the trajectory of time and space, even if just a little. We had built intimacy.

"Everyone wants community. Almost nobody wants to do the work."

I saw a meme floating around the internetosphere a while back that said exactly that. And oof, it feels true.

These profound moments of connection don’t just fall out of the sky. They happen because someone cooks the meal, someone cleans the dishes, someone risks asking the deeper question, someone lingers in the hug.

They happen because we decide to put the work in.

My Invitation to You

So my invitation to you this week is maybe a little less business, but that’s okay. We’re here for more than just business, right?

My ask of you this week is: will you be one of the people who puts the work in with me? Who shows others how to do it too? Who leads by example?

Stop waiting for permanently organized communities to come sweep you off your feet—start leading the charge. We need all of us right now.

Workshops you might want to join (all sliding scale/free options available):

• Holiday Emails That Don’t Make You Cringe (and Still Make Sales)  — Oct 23, 11:00 AM–1:00 PM ET

• Intentional Growth: Planning an Anti-Capitalist Business for 2026  — Oct 22, 12:00–2:00 PM ET, $20

• How to Price Your Services: Fair, Sustainable Pricing for Service-Based Business Owners  — Nov 5, 12:00–2:00 PM ET, $20

And — a good deal of you have asked about semi-private coaching pods. For me it usually just comes down to the money so I wanted to be upfront about the money so you can decide if this is an option for you now or down the road. Here’s the deal:

• 4 people = $219/month (for 4 months)

• 3 people = $292/month (for 4 months)

It makes coaching more accessible and gives you a little (permanently organized?!) crew to roll with. Email me your questions or to find a pod to get going with. 🙌🏼