Hello, reader. How are you doing? Someone on a social media site said recently… she’s a 48 year old woman with a few skills for homesteading like sewing, gardening, foraging, and herbalism. But she wanted ideas of what more to learn.
She mentioned she sews but doesn’t make her own patterns, as if she was lesser-than for not making her own patterns, which seemed sad. People can hype or downplay their skills– she was downplaying.
“May I have half the confidence of a mediocre white man,” is a prayer I saw as a meme on instagram lately. Amen!
I love learning–that’s a big part of why I’m on earth. And I’m a similar age as the social media question asker. So I commented.
learning ideas
Here are some ideas I had.
- permaculture design certificate
- social media like instragram, if the community needs that
- making curtains
- mending
- emotional labor is so important in community but often overlooked
- disability justice
- facilitation skills for facilitating meetings, workshops, and trainings
- cooking for gluten free, dairy free, and other kinds of dietary needs
Other people in the comments were saying she should learn food preservation like canning, or work on her physical fitness, which I found offensive. Sure, it’s good to have health as possible. But I wondered if those people had ever lived in community before.
skills in community
Many of the strangers I encounter in community and homesteading groups on social media seem inexperienced and so unrealistic, yet eager to tell other people what to do.
The physical fitness suggestion hurts because it feels ableist. Sure, options are nice. But we are not more valuable for having health on another’s terms. We are so much more than our physical bodies. Everyone is valuable.
I’m sorry that half the labor in community is invisibilized and downplayed, especially work dismissed as “women’s work.”
Work that
- makes money
- causes dramatic visual change
- has an either/or binary
- can be physically measured
is considered worthwhile.
content warning: mention of sexual assault
Feeding people, emotional nurturing, telling the truth in difficult situations, birthing people and supporting reproduction… things that are tender or in a gray area are less appreciated. Supporting the community member who was sexually assaulted. Starting the birthday cards, baking cakes, making the ofrenda, beginning the popcorn cranberry garlands…
When I pulled tarot cards to advise my friend about the next steps of her life as she left community, did I fix a problem? Not really– she still needed to dream and ponder on her own, and consult with lovers and friends. But the readings took energy and hours of my time.
No one’s going to laud my work at a meeting, like when a window gets fixed or the electrical system is repaired. But my work is important too. I don’t make something go from the binary of “broken” to “fixed,” but I often add complexity, depth, truth. Fuck binaries, especially the binaries which are simplistic or a lie.
oops
Oops, I just went off on a favorite topic. Sorry if you’ve heard me talk about this 300 times, reader. I appreciate you.
I made curtains before out of pillowcases; I just sewed loops of thread on the pillowcases, so the loops could go around the curtain rod, and it worked. Making curtains is sacred, in my opinion.
Caring for people emotionally is sacred too. But it’s important not to get depleted. I wrote about that in an essay called Queer Elder for Communities Magazine and wish there was a link.
One of my favorite skills in community is being real. Some communities are actually not keen on it. But maybe the social media question asker could work on showing up as her whole self, or stripping away layers of should, to get to what actually is.
Wallace Stevens said it in the Emperor of Ice Cream: Let be be finale of seem. As I grow older, I hope I’m closer to that finale of actual.
