Welcome to Notes on Our Mutual Flourishing
All flourishing is mutual, writes Robin Wall Kimmerer in Braiding Sweetgrass.
Yes! I think. And then, But how?
Mutual flourishing, its beauties, possibilities, and failures, is a major obsession in all my fiction. I write about young people restarting imploded communes, White allyship and its blindspots in colonial independence struggles, band houses as faulty feminist utopias, and early 20th century anarchist colonies. In all my work, people make unconventional families and work to form partnerships on their own terms. And always, people live in the larger context of history and ecology, systems of power and culture and nature.
So this is the stuff my brain likes to gnaw on, and I figured I’d make myself a place to share some of these shreds while they’re fresh. I’m glad you’re here, and I hope you keep reading!
Why this name?
Notes: These are my observations, musings, and current obsessions. They may be raw, unfootnoted. They’re subject to revision.
On: Perhaps it should be “towards.” I like the motion and action in that, and the recognition that flourishing is aspirational in many ways. But I also believe we speak things into being. I believe in the flourishing in us now. I believe in it even when it feels tenuous.
Our: “We” is a complicated word. So easily someone can be left out of it, so easily it can feel like everyone included is one monolith of sameness. It’s an imperfect practice, thinking “our” instead of “my.” I practice it imperfectly, as the lens of my attention spins in and out. But also it’s important to remember I am in relationship with everyone — microbe, neighbor, whale. Our liberation is entwined. So by saying “our,” I’m not wanting to speak for you, but to do my best to be in the world with you as equals.
Mutual: Maybe my obsession with communal living is a hunger made by my own independence. Maybe the tension between sovereignty and cooperation makes something hum inside me. I like the word mutual because it acknowledges both simultaneous things: individuality and cooperation. And, I hope, respect.
Flourishing: I feel this word, in my belly and on my skin. Happiness as flowering, a happiness that makes more of itself, a happiness bright with life. And I love that the meaning includes not only doing well, but “a bold and extravagant gesture.” This isn’t austerity, people. This is thriving and joy and petals. This is what I want to make. You too? Then yes.
