October: Connect, Create, Collaborate

Our monthly resource exchange + what real vulnerability looks like

"The connection economy is the economy of prosperity, collaboration and infinite possibilities. It's the vision of an economic ecosystem, a complex network of interconnected systems built on trust, value alignment and reciprocity. -Forbes

Hello!

Welcome to our monthly “Connect, Create, Collaborate” thread, an experiment in building a new connection economy. You might have noticed this month’s post is coming out later than usual—and I think there’s a lesson here. When we talk about creating community based on reciprocity, authenticity, and trust, what we’re not advocating for is exchanging resources from a place of over-giving or depletion.

We’re not here to replicate a transactional interchange where every gift is meant to be returned in equal measure. We’re not here to hold each other to impossible standards of always being available for a helping hand (or publishing something on a deadline, even when life circumstances change).

We’re here to practice relating in a way that honors our energy, capacity, and boundaries. And that may change, month to month, day to day. Sometimes, we may have more needs than we have resources to share. That’s normal and 100% part of creating a larger network that’s resilient and interdependent.

Thank you for your patience, grace, and presence as we practice together! This month, Kathryn Vercillo has generously shared her insights about building community. I especially appreciate her distinction between performative vulnerability and how we can begin to soften into authentic vulnerability and genuine need.

(If you’d like to jump straight into our resource exchange, scroll to the bottom of this letter!)

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Hello Heartbeats Community and huge gratitude to Mariah for inviting me to share this space this month (and for offering it to all of us each month).

Launching and sustaining a creative community is not an easy thing; in the best of times, it will buoy itself up thanks to the energy of the entire group, but not every time is the best of times. It takes energy and effort and intention and love to keep things like this going, and I’m truly grateful that it exists.

Writer and fiber artist Kathryn Vercillo stands in front of an exhibit of her hyperbolic crochet installation “Suspended Tendrils”

I honestly spent years (decades?) trying to figure out what community even meant for me. Because of a combination of traumas (intergenerational, personal) and the specific situation I found myself raised in, I have always been fiercely independent. This can be a terrific thing (and it’s one that’s celebrated and rewarded in our culture), but it can also be isolating and devastating in quiet ways.

At some point along the way, I knew that I needed community, but I had no idea what that meant.

As someone whose favorite defense is intellectualization, I read a lot about this. I had periodic obsessions with learning about communes and cults, matriarchal societies, countless memoirs about relationships (friendships, families, mostly complicated love).

But, as my partner likes to remind me, there are some things that require you to “be about, not just talk about it” (or read about it.)

And it wasn’t until I started putting in the challenging work of learning myself, facing my vulnerabilities, and being open to sharing them with others in a non-defensive manner that I began to really have community.

For many years, I thought I was being vulnerable when I wasn’t, perhaps because I cut my teeth on 90’s confessional memoirs (think Prozac Nation, Drinking: A Love Story). I shared deeply traumatic experiences in writing like they were a natural extension of the five-paragraph essay.

What I didn’t understand was that stating trauma while erecting a rigid boundary that says, “but I’m fine, I don’t need you” is performative, not vulnerable. Vulnerability only came when I was able to say, “I really need this from you …”

Oh, and it was messy. My first attempts at “I need” were, well, needy. But eventually, with practice, with honesty, with sitting still inside the discomfort of relationships and allowing them to grow more comfortable, I began to understand the exchange of needs in community. I began to see that a willingness to exchange needs and resources is the foundation of community. I began to understand that we all have things, and we all need things, and we are all better when we are able to be clear and honest about what those things are.

I don’t always have a lot of myself to give, but when I do, I give. Sometimes I ask people for what I need and they can’t give it and that’s okay, too … that’s all a part of it. Somehow, the need gets put out there (into the universe or however you want to phrase it) and just by putting it out there, it eventually gets met, sometimes in really magical and unexpected ways from people you never expected would be the ones who could help.

Sometimes, I think I have absolutely nothing to give (due perhaps to exhaustion but also due to moments of low self-esteem) and then someone lets me know what they need and a bell rings, “I can give that!”

I live in San Francisco, a city that I moved to nearly 20 years ago for no other reason than that I absolutely loved it. I invited my best friend to move with me and he did and we just celebrated 31 years of our friendship. That one relationship is the cornerstone of what became my community.

My community isn’t one specific group of people but rather a series of concentric and overlapping circles of people from across time and location. I feel a specific sense of community within my city - but I also feel a specific sense of community across the global reach of the Internet and the little pockets of it I’ve found myself in along the way.

I’ve been practicing being in community for a long time now, and sometimes it still feels scary to be vulnerable. Or I think I’m not doing it right or well enough somehow. Or it’s just uncomfortable. But I consistently take the risk anyway.

I learned from reading Gretchen Rubin the value of “choosing the bigger life,” which isn’t necessarily the comfortable one.

She writes, “To be happier, we need to think about feeling good, feeling bad, and feeling right, in an atmosphere of growth.” Sometimes community and the actions asked of us in community feel more right than good or bad (though they often feel good) and usually I find it’s worth the risk regardless.

So, I guess that brings us to what I really love about this Heartbeats Community. We all have resources to offer, we all have resources to give, and in learning how to take the risk of putting those out there for all the world to see, we strengthen the foundation of our community. It’s a beautiful thing.

Heartbeats Resource Exchange 💞

Thanks, Kathryn, for reminding us that discomfort doesn’t always mean something is wrong; sometimes it’s a necessary sign of growth! If asking for what you need feels weird or scary, I gently encourage you to sit with that feeling and do it anyway.

Our monthly resource exchange is a safe place to practice what it looks and feels like to move beyond a capitalist system of exchange. It’s a bold, yet soft way to reclaim our inherent worth, talents, and connection to each other.

How It Works:

1. In the comments on THIS POST

   • Share your city in ALL CAPS

   • Under "RESOURCES OFFERED" list up to 3 free resources you'd like to share (examples: tarot reading, editing services, homemade meal, etc.)

   • Under "RESOURCES NEEDED" list 1-3 items you'd like to receive from the community (examples: a writing critique partner, 2 hours of childcare per month, an old typewriter, painting lessons, etc.).

2. Connect with others by responding directly to offers/requests that interest you

3. If you can’t directly respond to a request, but know someone who can, invite them to participate!

4. Check back periodically for new connections

5. This thread will remain active through October 31st, with a new thread starting November 1st.

💗More ways to connect

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💖 Kathryn’s Offerings: Where Health Meets Creativity

My work is all about the intersection of art and health. I deeply believe that our health (emotional, physical, relational, financial) impacts our creative wellness in myriad ways and that understanding how that is true for us allows us to release blocks and move more freely.

I have developed a six-part framework through which I understand and articulate this relationship. I apply that framework to two services to assist others in understanding it:

1. Creative Health Blueprints which are written assessments mining your own words for insights into the art-health relationship

2. 1:1 Healthy Creativity Conversations for finding clarity around this relationship in your own life.

I’m offering 50% off both of these to the community using code HEARTBEATS. I also offer free 15 minute phone consultations and a variety of downloadable resources, many of which are also free.

🌱Help our resource exchange grow!

1. Share this post and invite others to participate

2. “Heart” the monthly exchange, so it becomes more visible

3. Become our next co-host! Reach out to thebarefootbeat(at)gmail.com by October 15th if you’d like to share your experience or insights around building community next month.

Thank you for being here.

All my love,
Mariah