the baskets & uncomplicated community

If you’ve hung around me at all, you know one of my favorite things is uncomplicating community. I think it boils down to being a human, even when it might feel easier to turn inward and protect yourself from rejection.

The last couple of weeks we’ve been passing around a giant, and I mean, giant basket we call “The coping mechanism Basket”. Recently a neighbor friend had a death of a parent and so the side text went out. “I was thinking , if you have a beer or 2 to spare, a white claw, a wine, a casual snickers bar, a note, anything really you think would be helpful or thoughtful … I’m going to put together a coping mechanism basket for X. You can drop on your porch by afternoon tomorrow and we will drive by and pick up? I’ll go grab some flowers to add while I’m out. “

It took 10 minutes to throw everything in a basket, no special runs to the store ( I was already going)… just give a little of what you already have. We could hardly fit everything in the basket and our friend was so teary and grateful! The next week, a sad thing happened to someone else, and the basket was sweetly offered up by the last receiver. This time she made the porch runs, and our grieving friend felt seen and loved through a tough time. Kindness is truly contagious and frankly, I think we’ve started sisterhood of the traveling basket! Look for my best selling book about this never. But at least you have an idea about how uncomplicated showing up for each other during a pandemic has to be. 

And let me tell you, when this is all over, we won’t step out of our houses wondering who these people are around us. We will have done the work of showing up for each other in other ways. And I can not wait until it’s back to our neighborhood dinners and at home get-togethers. But for now we do what we can with what we have–which turns out, is more that we think.