I am reading an excellent book, A Midwife’s Story, about a midwife (Penny Armstrong) who takes on a job delivering the babies of the Amish. She knows that many English view the Amish as an old-fashioned society, but as she gets to know the ways and cultures of this community she makes observations about her own – which gradually seems less sophisticated after all.
In the following excerpt, Penny is considering why she (a “worldly, independent and self- sufficient modern woman”) did not feel ready to marry her partner Richie and “take her place in the modern world”, yet a 16-year old “child-mother” she was attending did.
“Where I came from, the idea of belonging, of carrying and being carried by others, had been sacrificed or lost. No, it was worse than lost, it was considered bad. To trust others, to follow an instruction, to ask for help with the burden of one’s life, was to show oneself a fool. It showed you didn’t know your way around.
Each of us pretended that we could manage life’s events – births, deaths, sickness and transcendent joy – on the strength of our personalities…
Richie and I, if we married, would have to be married by ourselves, alone; if we faltered, we would have only our own peculiar strengths to guide us; and if, between the two of us, they didn’t happen to be the right strengths or if they didn’t happen to be enough and if we gave ourselves up to others in a moment of trial… Others would bear no responsibility for us.”
The 16 year old “child-mother”, meanwhile, knew that she belonged to her community, that she and her husband didn’t have to survive independently.
Belonging
The passage really struck home with me. I have observed in myself the same lacking that Penny sees in herself. It is a need for belonging, and for interdependence with others. For many of us in my own community, that need is married with an intense resistance, a resistance which I believe is non-instinctive but which is taught to us from an early age. It makes such sense to me that we can gain stronger communities and more fulfilling relationships by allowing ourselves to depend upon one another. But I still catch myself saying, “No, no, I can do it!” more often than I say, “Thank you, yes, I need your help with this”.
But the beautiful thing is this: interdependence can be the light which comes out of our darkest moments. When we are really struggling we have no choice but to ask for help, or to accept it, or even just succumb to it if we are to survive. Of course, it could be that this creates dependence. But if we allow sufficient time to pass, and if we attend to our relationships with intention and care, we can discover opportunities to make our relationship reciprocal and to build interdependence. The first glimmer of light appears when one of us truly needs the other and we are not too proud to say so.
Light out of the darkness
I regularly coach myself on this asking or accepting help. I am still not brilliant at it, but my newborn baby son certainly taught me how to do it better! I can see how I could work harder at making each of my relationships more reciprocal; in some I need to give more, in others I need to accept more support. What I would love to do is to find new ways to bring that sense of “belonging, of carrying and being carried by others” to my wider community, beyond my immediate friendships. I feel I learned something from the Amish community that Penny worked with. I would love to hear your stories about where you have experienced this work well.
Come In From The Cold 
well said. there are so many iterations of this continuum between independence and what someone I was reading the other day called communalism. I was in Alberta at a wedding a few weeks ago and was struck by how different it was from weddings I am involved in here on the coast – there was only one place to have the reception so everyone organized sharing that place, if it was to be decorated, it was up to the people getting married and their friends – everyone knew each other. My sister (mother of the groom) came in with 22 plates of different desserts that the people she works with had organized making and collecting… it made me think of my prairie grandmother who was once telling me about how they’d get stuck in a snowstorm and have to knock on the door of a farmhouse for a place to stay overnight. “We had such a good time,” she said. “But now that everyone has such good cars and good roads I wonder how they’ll ever get to know each other?”
Have reposted a couple of paras on my Facebook – this is such a great post! Thank you. I felt so strongly that I wanted to get married, generally, and particularly within my home village, because it was my community, and that was exactly what I believe marriage is: ‘this is what we are doing now, this is our place, in our community, together’. Plus the reception venue was really cheap…
@ Aaron,
Thanks for the thoughtful comments. I struggle with the “good cars and roads” thing all the time here in car-centric California. Trying to figure out a way to be more of a walking community…which can be challenging in an area designed around and for cars. Love Communalism!!
@Stella,
Thanks for sharing via FB! Glad the message is being well received…Oh and that your venue was cheap 😉