Chapter ten

This chapter, on the other hand, I'm pretty excited to write.

Distributed Carrying/Crisis Management

            There is an extension of this philosophy of sharing resources that goes beyond the material. As with any collaborative project, when we pile into a shared space together, we pool our resources, our minds, our passion, our emotions, and our needs.

            Wait—we pool our needs? Why would anyone want to stockpile those?

            Leo & Maegan were nervous about Mae entering her very demanding third year of med school with Petra barely a year old. Leo worried about essentially being a solo parent, especially with his own demanding career to maintain. When they shared this with the rest of the house, we responded by introducing the dinner-cooking rotation so at least that burden would be a bit lighter—and we ALL benefited enormously, gaining the most powerful element of our community from our disaster response. JFK once famously (and incorrectly) claimed that the Chinese character for ‘crisis’ is composed of the brush strokes for ‘danger’ and ‘opportunity.’ While this etymology is false, it’s a compelling mistake, as it represents our experience—when we rally together to help carry someone who needs us, we make our home a better place to live. As we have weathered insanely busy periods for each of us, or depressive episodes that make us better at checking in on each other, or learned to be consistent in response to small children acting out, we become better humans, better parents, better housemates, and develop our ways of living together in ever-more supportive directions. This chapter is about the gift and the benefit of navigating each others’ stormy waters.