How to find your people

I'm taking a class right now called The Artist Must Take Sides: Culture & The Moment Past, Present & Future, hosted by The People's Forum in New York City. It's Tuesdays, 3:30-5:30 PST, through the end of May 2026. I highly recommend it. It's pay what you can/donate to the place as you can. Love it. Zoom sessions are recorded so you can go back and watch the first class from this week and future classes too. Love it. And we learned last week that there will be different teachers across the class, which makes my artist and community-loving and Gemini selves SO happy.

Whether you consider yourself an artist, a cultural worker, a member of the working class, a person who cares about your people or culture or society or region or the land and planet, and/or a leftist or socialist or communist or democrat– basically, if you're a human who dreams and imagines and cares out beyond your individual self and family– you're likely to enjoy some, if not all, of this class. The older I get, the more I tend to gravitate to and love people who begin and end gatherings with music, and they do that too! Love it. We were meant to begin and end with wonder, joy, and connection. I care a lot less these days about people agreeing with me or using the same language I happen to use or drawing from the same traditions and a whole lot more about moving in the same direction with people who deeply care about the earth, water, air, forests, plants, animals, earthlings, and/or humanity as a whole. The folks at The People's Forum clearly love humanity!

After 12 years of focusing strongly on the Alzheimer's disease that runs in our family and caregiving for Mom– who I deeply loved and still love– its also nice now to be back among those who imagine, and dream, big, out loud. Thanks in part to Mom's 23 years living with Alzheimer's disease, I know my people when I feel them: we're the people of immense and wide-open imagination and heart. Whole-planet-or-solar-system imagination and heart. Mom may have left her body recently, but I feel her with us, still. The young woman from rural South Dakota who took her young daughters to the city library every few weeks to check out 20 new-to-them books– across our childhoods– was a woman of immense imagination and heart. My people are people of immense imagination and heart.

And– back to this class I've just started– while we're still grieving Mom's loss and I'm personally recovering from a particularly nasty variation of Covid that damaged my lungs and throat, it's nice to be led by energetic younger people who know even more about their people's roots within collective movements than I know about mine. And, who have far better collective memories than my people and I do. Here are my favorite notes from class last week with instructor Claudia De la Cruz (What an inspiration! And her memory! Asked a dozen complex questions in a row, she then offered complex answers and inspiration in return–remembering all the questions asked. Damn, I remember the days I could remember that much! I love me now, but I do miss that!) I thought I'd share a few of my favorite bits here in case anyone out there is interested in feeling less lonely, and like belonging again, but this time within a HUGE family. A global family of billions of people called Earth's working class. My favorite parts:

• The project of liberation is larger than one person's struggle. It's a collective project that's bigger than individual interests, and we need to defend it.
• Members of the working class are culture workers that create culture every day: from cooking to language, gesture, art, music, education, relationships, and values passed on to others. You are a culture worker! Everyday acts are where resistance grows and lives.
• Creating changes us– both alone and together. We don't just consume, we create and engage– like singing a song together. We are changed in the creation.
• To move hearts and minds, take the culture of people into consideration. Change beliefs through culture. Ideas aren't enough. Emotions matter. It's possible to organize people through joy. Transmit joy. Joy is necessary. Move hearts and minds of people about things that truly matter to them.
• We must not just oppose, we must propose. We propose solidarity, collective dignity, cultural and economic and political self-determination, unity in diversity, peace with justice, social consciousness, and working class protagonists. We are protagonists (main characters) in this story we're creating.
• Philanthropy in the U.S. tends to create fragmentation. Create/join groups that are independent from both nonprofits and for-profits. You can have your job (income) and your political work be separate. In a capitalist culture like the U.S. has today, you may have to separate the two to hold on to your values and principles and soul.
• We ground in the past/people/groups we love, but we have to create in this moment, for this moment, not in the past. What worked back then can inspire and inform and teach, but it's not exactly the same as what we must do now. We change and grow and create within the times we're in– we reflect what's happening right now.
• When you have to sacrifice, let go of stuff but not your values, principles, imagination, dreams, politics/people and things you're willing to fight for.
• Be kind to people when you can be. We've all been pushed to conform/think/move in violent, dehumanizing ways by a ruling class that seeks hegemony (socio-political dominance) through culture. Showing up somehow different from that– whenever we can– is a very good idea. Lori note on kindness: Personally, I often aspire to treat people the way forests and open space/fields treat people. Kindness isn't the word I use, for a number of reasons. I say show up with reverence, deep understanding of place (or at least the silence, curiosity, or good sense to learn), full and non-rushing presence, and playfulness when you can manage it. In 2026 in the U.S., the word kindness usually doesn't remotely land the same coming from a white woman as it does from a Black woman. In 2024, half (51%) of voting white women in this country voted for Trump: a walking, hate-spewing antithesis of kindness. So, calls for kindness from us sound like hypocrisy or utter nonsense to many. White folks in the U.S.– especially those cut from their own revolutionary and liberatory ancestral roots– tend to need more explanation of the word kindness, too. True kindness is whole-community generosity, not the weak shadow of the word– an individual character trait– that far too many of us learned to settle for. Kindness is not individual, and it's not hiding how you feel, comforting the powerful, pulling your punches for white men or the wealthy, or bowing to any convention or action intended to harm, divide, or oppress.
• Questions for protagonists and creators from Claudia De la Cruz and her people:
  • How is what I'm doing advancing the collective project?
  • Whose interests are the groups/institutions/people I engage with serving?
  • How intentional is the culture work you/we do? How intentional are you/we about its connection to collective struggle? Is it integrated into all aspects or on the side when you have free time? In your org/group, do you have a strategy for engaging with artists within the org/group? A relationship with artists outside the group/org? A deep and meaningful relationship?
  • Are we afraid of joy, beauty, and emotion as we organize? Why?

Finding your people!

Having read or skimmed that, you'll maybe notice that I have found some of my people in this class. Find your people by taking a tip from Claudia de la Cruz and her people– and from me and my people too– imagine yourself the protagonist in a story that you're living and write it down. Like this:

1. 2009 - This neighborhood is my people! We moved into Seattle's Central District in 2002, but I was so busy with full-time work and full-time school and home that it took me a while to hear the voice of the neighborhood. But once you hear the voice of a neighborhood– and fall in love with that whole voice– that neighborhood and everyone in it is your people. Until then, I'd forgotten. My family hadn't exactly spoken out loud of place in this way, although I know now that our ancestors did. Wow did I need that connection to my place and my people. Thank you for teaching us that, 206!
2. 2012 - Artists are my people! I knew this as a kid and I've remembered it as an adult for about 15 years now. I've known since the year our dear Grady dog got very sick and then died in a horrible 6-week period, and the only thing that came close to holding our sorrow was the sky– which cracked wide open as he passed– and writing poetry, which was me, cracking my adult self wide open along with it. Poetry was a childhood love that I gave up as frivolous, not practical, and then privileged, for two decades in adulthood. Argh. Don't give up what you love, people!!! Since 2012, I've continued writing poetry and essays, and I've returned to drawing, dancing, singing collectively, and playing the piano, too. My people are artists. We're all stubbornly sensitive souls. We're souls disinclined and almost unable to be insensitive to others no matter who demands it of us, because it's our sensitivity to this world that is our lifeblood and our protection. We know that hurting others hurts us, too.
3. 2014 - Wilderness is my people! Forests and trees and fields and wildflowers and grasses and weeds and sky and breezes and stars are my people– I knew this as a kid and I'm happy to have remembered it as an adult. I first remembered this through my poetry, when I pulled a collection of work together for a book and realized that more than half of "my" work was actually the work of old trees on the block and apple trees, forests, grasses, soil, sky, parks, beaches, sea, plants, and birds. When the loss of several family matriarchs and the pain of the younger onset Alzheimer's disease that runs in our extended family became more than we could bear, my extended human family shattered around our too-big-for-us grief. Not everyone experienced it that way, but I did. And it was then I noticed how much welcome and comfort and true belonging I found– had always found– in the wilderness. In being outside, or barefoot, and sky-above-us, and with other beings that listen to and learned with the wind, weather, and seasons. Wilderness is my people, always. And bonus, there is no shattering of this family. We're everywhere. We of the wilderness are deeply interconnected kin– building each other up, holding each other, and breaking each other down to be reimagined again, as needed– no matter what happens. It is lovely to be part of a family that understands you and trusts you to be you, even without words. That's wilderness.
4. 2019 - The people of the green are my people! I learned ancestral herbalism from my grandmother as a kid. But when I returned to study herbalism full time in 2018, I realized what I'd been missing as a kid. The people of the green as community! In a time when screens and AI and surveillance tech and weaponry are being forced down our throats and making more of us feel disconnected, unwell, unsafe, and lied to than ever before, I've never felt more fortunate to have found the people of the green. Who are they? We are... Other women who listen to wild roses. Other people who talk with trees or birds or stars. Other people who notice intention from within the green world: for example, I noticed that wild violets show up around our homes here when we're deeply grieving and that fireweed often first gets noticed by people when they're feeling completely devastated. Plants notice what we need just as we can notice what they need when we're fully present. We are people who tend the earth and water and wind as kin, not strangers, and who allow the earth to tend us and those we love, and people who forage and grow and connect with the living with reverence, like our own favorite green beings do. Many indigenous people, herbalists, foragers, small farm farmers, tea makers, cooks and chefs, and gardeners are people of the green. Other people who've hung on to their own people's deep connection to the earth and her most-rooted beings or who are returning to that knowing now. People who introduce others to plants, one on one, when they know the connection will be beneficial to all present.
5. 2023 - Earth's working class people are my people. More recently I've realized that my people are the working class people who deeply care about ALL working class people on planet earth. I've known this for sure for just a few years– basically since 2023 when I had to watch the daily unfathomable horrors of a genocide of people I love. A genocide that was happily supported and funded by the Democratic president and my Democratic "representatives" who I'd voted for. When I realized that they would absolutely NOT listen to my voice no matter what I said or did– because I am a working-class human being screaming in defense of other working-class civilians, elders, and children– I stopped screaming at them and instead looked for people who would listen. It was only working class people who faced and cared about U.S.-funded genocide of civilians. Neighbors. Small-business owners. Small-farm farmers. Veterans. Artists. Musicians. Elders. Tribes. Teens. Those tired of the billionaire-funded lies and billionaire-funded violence and grift of wealth and resources from the earth and working people that most elected members of both major political parties in the U.S. seem to be perfectly fine with– either because they're the ruling class themselves or because they've been bought and paid for by billionaires and corporations and choose their own comfort above all the hard working people of earth. People who've sold their souls for so long that they've lost track of them. People who choose to fund the mass disappearance, torture, and murder of children, elders, and civilians are not– cannot be– the good guys. Those who hoard unimaginable wealth while others suffer and die aren't my people. Working class people are– even when we disagree.
6. 2026 - Wanderers are my people. I'm starting to think my own very favorite people are wanderers. People who don't have all the answers. People who aren't experts. People who feel lost or who get lost regularly, on purpose. People who've been cast out simply for being who they really are. People who don't fall into clear, cut-and-dry, human categories anymore or maybe never did. People who outgrow rules that serve nobody anymore. People who change often enough that they almost don't recognize some of their former selves. People who cross real and imaginary borders, often on purpose. People who regularly need help and regularly ask for it or accept it. People who've cracked apart and shattered lives too small or hurtful for them and those they love. People unusual enough that they've been diagnosed as ill by a medical system that's far too busy (and arrogant and greedy) to understand nuance and difference. People who cry in public and people who play in public, even when it's dangerous. People tired of old customs and ways of thinking that harm more than they help. People who may move among different people and places and living beings, learning and unlearning as they go– weaving ideas and practices across cultures– or people who may deep dive into their own ancestry to mine for the old ways and better ways than the harmful pre-packaged ways we've been sold by profiteers in the modern age. People experiencing deep grief or deep wonder are wanderers. People utterly incapable of hiding their feelings and their hearts are too. People so disinterested in stagnation that movement– even scary or uncomfortable movement– becomes joy. That's my people. We are wanderers.

Now that I know who my people are, figuring out what to do next with my art/work/play/life is becoming easier. Not easy. Not yet. Because letting go of my 12-year caregiver self and my 7-year business-owner self simultaneously is hard. Letting go of my Mom's constant loving presence is really hard, too. Still, something within is telling me not to rush. To allow that being-held-by-this-planet feeling to arrive in her own time. I'm still learning patience at 55. Ugh. And yay!

Here, I/we don't quite have the close-knit, shows-up-to-play-and-help-and-build-together community that we need close to home here on south Whidbey. Personally, across the past decade, I over-focused on my parents' needs, and on helping them find and connect with their north Whidbey community, and on my business the past few years too, so I haven't yet found the sister-close community on Whidbey that we built across 20 years and had in Seattle. That said, the more I understand who my– and our– people are, the more it comes clear who I– we– should be spending more time with. And who and what our lives are in service of. I don't have answers for myself this year. But I'm back to enjoying finding and following clues. Which is no small thing these days.

Joy, of any kind, has never been a small thing.

My people know that.

We know that.