Being entangled

Invitation ~

“Place your hand over your heart, or on the earth, or on something that has known weather. Pause for a few moments, until your body says move on.”

🌿 What We’ve Been Taught

The world we inhabit reflects to us that we are individuals, owners, consumers, and actors.
We’re taught to see and think of ourselves as separate from one another.
Within this system, it is not at all guaranteed that our needs will be met.

Our actions are turned into equations.
We must always be seeking the correct path, so we’ll be allowed to eat, rest, and belong.
We are told we must behave properly for our needs to be met, and the standards for that behavior live outside of ourselves.

We’ve been taught:

to think of relationships as responsibilities,
to turn mutuality into performance,
to treat land as something to be owned,
to translate labor into value,
to convert love into transaction.

🌱 What Interdependence Really Is

Very few people today live in full alignment with our interdependence.
This is not because we are failing.
It is because the systems we live within sever us from the truth that we cannot exist outside of relationship.

It is hard for many of us to imagine what it would feel like to fully live our entanglement.
And when we do try to imagine it, what often arises is fear.

We remember many failed attempts.
Failed communes.
Failed collectives.
Failed utopias.
Communism. Socialism. Intentional communities.
Experiments in shared living that ended in rupture, disillusionment, or harm.

These memories whisper:

“Interdependence is dangerous.”
“People can’t be trusted.”
“You’ll lose yourself.”
“Don’t try again.”

But these outcomes are not proof that interdependence doesn’t work.
They are proof of how deeply distorted our ability to see and relate to each other as we are has become.

Interdependence is not agreement.
It is not harmony.
It doesn’t mean we see the world the same way, or share the same urgency.

Interdependence is not sameness.
It is the practice of staying present and caring, person to person, through difference.

It means holding the reality of our different experiences, needs, and perspectives.
It means caring for each other as we are, not as we wish each other to be.
It means resisting the impulse to fix, convert, or educate each other into alignment.

To be interdependent is to honor that each person is sovereign in their own life.

We may see each other’s flaws.
We may feel the ache of each other’s blind spots.
But we move forward together anyway.
With respect.
With tenderness.
With the capacity to remain inside the web when it strains, not just when it sings.

It is the recognition that we are already entangled.
And that what we do to the web of our relationships, and to each other, we do to ourselves.

This is not a fantasy.
This is a practice.
It begins with noticing what’s already connected. And what isn't.

And yet, there is a paradox here. To be truly interdependent, we must be able to let go of relationships. We must be able to express our needs honestly, and hear other's needs clearly.

We must be free to honor when our paths simply don't support one another. Otherwise, we aren't interdependent, we are codependent.

Sometimes, when we return to our own inner truth, we realize there are people or projects in our lives that are not truly in relationship with who we are now.
Sometimes, we have to let go of playing roles to keep people close.

Just because we are connected doesn’t mean we must put energy or attention into every connection.
Interdependence isn’t about keeping everyone in orbit.
It’s about staying honest about what’s alive for us and what’s not.

Sometimes, we need to make space.
For the new.
For the ones who can meet us.
For the ones who are ready to practice this with us.

🫱 A Personal Story:

What It Looks Like When We Try

I have been practicing relationships of mutual care for decades.
Recently, my husband and I were ready to explore a deeper experiment:
sharing land and shaping a shared future with two others we cared about deeply.

The dream was beautiful.
It resonated with all of us.
The vision of living in community and shared resourcing felt true and thrilling.

But as we moved from dream to logistics, something shifted.

When we began exploring how we would make decisions together, and what clear, practical agreements might look like, we discovered the ways we diverged in how we saw the world, and in what we each needed.

At that point, the dream could have softened to make room for the real.

Instead, something else happened.

The two others entered what I call fixing mode: a well-meaning attempt to get us to change how we were relating so that the dream could still work.
They tried to show us ways we needed to adapt, think differently, or show up in ways that would work for them.

But that’s not what interdependence calls for.

Interdependence does not begin with fixing.
It begins with seeing and hearing.
It begins with each person naming clearly what they need, what they see, and where they are.

From there, the group can stand together in reality.

From there, the question becomes:

“Can we co-create a path that honors everyone’s needs, not just the dominant ones?”

If that’s not possible,
then the practice becomes:

“Can we release each other with clarity and care, without trying to force change or demand compromise that erodes sovereignty?”

Interdependence does not mean everyone gets their way.
But it also does not mean that some people decide what everyone else needs to become.

Each person is sovereign.
And the group’s coherence must be shaped from that truth.

This experience was painful.
But it taught me something essential:

✨ Shared vision is not enough.
✨ It is shared practice, grounded in plural seeing and knowing, and mutual respect, that allows interdependence to live.

~ Invitation:

Reflect on whether you have shared a dream with someone else, and whether that dream collapsed at the level of divergent needs or perspectives?

What might have shifted if no one tried to fix or convince the others?

Many of us carry residues, both hope and harm, from previous human attempts at systemic care.
Capitalism isolates us and ensures some win while many lose.
Socialism often fits us into roles and slowly erodes sovereignty.
Communism, in many experiments, has enforced sameness and obedience to preserve cohesion.

Interdependence, as I practice and imagine it, is not a perfected system.
It is a relational practice field where divergence is not a threat, and care is not conditional on roles or ideological alignment.

These questions are not here to judge, but to wonder together.

✴️ What are the patterns in all these systems (capitalism, socialism, communism) that make it hard to honor sovereignty and collective care at once?

✴️ What happens when the desire for equality becomes a pressure for sameness?

✴️ In capitalism, worth is determined by productivity. In communism, worth is often assigned by collective needs.
What would it mean to recognize worth in relation, not in output or ideology?

And here are some invitations to personal reflection.

✴️ Where in my life am I pretending to be independent, even when I am not?

✴️ Where do I feel pulled to change someone else, instead of relating to them as they are?

✴️ What relationships in my life feel mutual, alive, and nourishing? What makes them feel thay way?

🌀 Reflection Questions

If something on this site moved you, feel free to write to me.