One of the most radical things we can do for ourselves is to cultivate meaningful relationships that are high in trust and vulnerability.

While it is true that some of the work of being human is diving deep into our inner world and understanding our own bodies and values, what’s even more profound is that our deepest healing happens in relationship with other humans.

Recently the amazing @carmen.cool wrote: “What’s true is that my life has asked that I pull my energy closer in and tend to relationships. Deaths and illness and the reconfiguration of boundaries and digging deep and looking at power and tending – deep tending in ways that have been grueling and satisfying and have shown me what I’m capable of. It is the work. Relationships are everything.”

As I think about pleasure, about bodies, about healing inside of these endlessly oppressive systems that seek to strip us of agency and power, I also think of how toxic so many of our stories are around relationships – especially those that, as an antidote to romance culture and assumed monogamy, now celebrate pushing for individuality at the cost of empathy, connection, and humanity.

Who are the people in your life who celebrate you, cheer for you, and allow you to be ugly? If you find you don’t have many relationships that allow for this, I ask – how much space do you have for allowing people in your life to be ugly, imperfect, messy, and uncertain? Because it has to go both ways. If we want relationships that allow us to be imperfectly human, we must also allow others the space to mess up and get things wrong, too.