By Kathryn Evans

Last month, I returned to Bastrop, TX for the first time since January 2020. I went to reconnect with a group of network weavers that I’ve been convening with online over the past year of the pandemic. This visit happened exactly when it was supposed to happen. A few days after I returned, the local public health guidance began to warn against in-person gatherings even for those who are vaccinated. Just in time, I was able to connect with folks, see them in all their dimensions in real-time. 

I recognize that technology is a blessing enabling the possibility for connection even when the world is on fire. I have had some transformative experiences in online spaces that have shaped me as much as I have shaped them. But after last week I am convinced now, more than ever, that some work has to happen in the full presence of others.

The special moments at the kitchen tables and front porches and living rooms are irreplaceable. They can not be recreated through a screen connecting us through invisible wires and waves. Those tangible connections – those are what shape us.

I’m reminded of my block in Kansas City. Here, I’m surrounded by a collection of neighbors, mostly families with young children like mine. We spent the summer of 2020 on our front porches, during the day with our children and almost every night after they went to bed – the long aimless days stretching into long aimless nights. We called these precious evenings “porch sits”, and they saved us. We drank wine and told stories and tried to make sense of a world on fire. A country that could not breathe. It was our cocoon of psychological safety. We were hiding from the virus, but we all wanted to be together, to breathe the same air. So we sat on the porch and looked into each other’s eyes and fell in love with our neighbors, co-parents and friends.

We tried to find some reason for everything to be so messed up. We couldn’t find an exact reason, yet we were each other’s reason for being. We needed each other and we knew it. We were, each of us, experiencing our own version of psychic transition and massive disruption in our Selves and in our homes. We all wanted to escape but couldn’t go far, so the porch was our refuge. We made it the safest, bravest, most magical place. We saw that magic in each other and we can never go back.

When I am with people, I can feel their energy. I can see how their bodies shift or their faces change when they hear something that moves them. I can respond to them in the moment, empathetically and wisely. When we gather in person, countless interactions and exchanges occur explicitly and implicitly, and all of that contributes to the space we share. All of it helps shape the patterns that define the complex systems that we are a part of, whether that’s a family, a neighborhood block, or a group of network weavers in rural central Texas.