We need messy, imperfect care

On showing up when you think you can't

Written June 12, 2025

Have you ever seen the TV show ‘Alone’? The premise is this – 10 folks who have expert level skills in survival and living off the land are dropped into a remote area, alone, and whoever lasts the longest wins a lot of money. They are able to choose some survival items to bring with them and are monitored by a medical crew, but for the most part they are totally and utterly alone. They even have to do the filming of the footage used in the show by themselves.

What surprises many of the contestants is how hard it is to actually survive alone. These are people who are self proclaimed experts in the fields of hunting, bushcraft, foraging, herbalism, and ways of living off the land. But they’re not used to being totally alone. Many leave, admitting that this isn’t worth it, that this isn’t how we are meant to live. On my watch, it seems the ones who win often do so by sheer stubborn nature – defying all the internal guidance and needs that tell them this is not right, this is not right, this is not right.

For we are not meant to be alone.

We fail to thrive when we are alone.

We die when we are alone.

I’m thinking about this in the context of care, and the ways in which care is showing up in my personal life, and the widening circles of the collective groups I am part of: my marriage, my family, my communities, this country, this Earth, the entire Cosmos.

I’m dealing with a lot right now in my day-to-day (who isn’t, am I right?). My wife and I are caregivers for my mother, who lives with us, and on a normal basis this is a fine balance of giving care and needing care. I have chronic illness and care support needs, and my wife has to work a demanding, full-time job. But for the past month, my mom has been moving through different health crises, and as a result of an injury from being transferred into an ambulance, she now has two broken clavicles. It’s much harder for her to move, and as a result, she needs a lot more care.

I have no choice but to show up for my mom, even at personal cost to my own well-being. My wife has no choice but to show up for my mom, even at personal cost to her well-being. And we each have to show up for each other, to care for each other, as we care for my mom. And we are being asked to show up for our communities and for humanity in many ways, on top. We are exhausted and doing our best. And, through these personal costs, we find all that we gain - wisdom, love, connection, and a remembrance of another way of being, of another way of loving one another.

That this is happening right now, is an echo of the question of care we are all facing in different ways.

What do we do when the care we are called to provide comes at great cost?

From those putting their bodies on the streets to protest against ICE and fascist take-over, to military members speaking out and resisting, to those who have been surviving on necessity in poverty for decades and generations. To those fighting to survive and care for one another in Gaza as they are being starved, bombed, and erased, and those fighting for the rights of Palestinians, Sudanese, Ukrainian, Congolese all around the world as they face arrest, detainment, deportation by hostile governments. To those fighting back against all the forms of oppression and violence, while being violently oppressed.

It feels as if we are being called into a deeper care of one another – one that requires that we give much more of ourselves than we have been conditioned to believe we can or believe is appropriate. We must show up in messy, imperfect care. For if we do not show up for each other, we will not survive.

I don’t say this with hyperbolism or melodrama. It feels, to me, as if it is true.

If we wait until we feel we are “fully ready” to show up for others, it will be too late for some. If we wait until we ourselves are “fully healed” to show up for others, it will be too late for another. If we wait to stand up and speak out for others until we are “fully prepared” enough, it will be too late for many of us.

We must dissolve the illusion of “self-care” which has taught us that we can only step out into care work once we ourselves are totally recharged, grounded, and calm. With the state of the world, hardly any of us will be able to get to that state or be able to maintain it. We need to be brave and bold and show up anyway.

We need messy care that shows up in the moment. We need authentic care that tries its damndest and gets creative. We need imperfect care that doesn’t always get it right and has to apologize for failing. We need care that jumps off the cliff in total faith that somebody else will catch us, or will build the net for us before we hit the ground. We each have to do our part, all at the same time, and co-weave our web of care together. This is the care where we all survive, as we all take turns caring for each other. Where it is not only on some to care and some to need. Where we are all, constantly, giving and sharing and providing and taking and working together, for our collective survival.

My life right now is a messy, imperfect, loving interwoven and interdependent care web.

I am caring for my mother, and I am caring for my wife
   as my wife is caring for my mother, and caring for me
           as my mother is caring for us
       as my community is caring for me, and I am caring for my community
as my wife is caring for their family, and they are caring for community
    as we are caring for community, as we are all caring for the world
            as we all are caring for each other

And none of us have it together. And none of us are doing it perfectly. But none of us are doing it alone.

Humans are not meant to be alone. Western sciences confirm this, Eastern sciences confirm this, Indigenous sciences confirm this, religion confirms this, spirituality confirms this. We inter-are. And if we are not meant to be alone, how could we be meant to care alone?

The idea of “self-care” is a myth that we have been sold to further isolate us, individualize us, and separate us, to keep us from true, long-lasting well-being.

We need messy, imperfect care, and we need it now. For all of our sakes.

We must build a new world where no one is alone.

The full blossoming and fruiting of that world will not be here in our time, but we are the seed planters.

The actions we take today – showing up for others imperfectly, making connections in a place where they are lacking, seeing the humanity in the other, viewing care as a birthright and a natural form of love and relationship and not a transaction – these actions matter, and these actions bring us closer to the world to come.

For who do we belong to, if not each other?