We need each other to go to the dentist together. To navigate the infrastructure of a system that forgets how soft our human bodies are, to remember that our appointments with this unforgiving structure are not just our own to track, but the catalyst for waking up early to drive each other to the airport, knowing that to sob when we miss the mornings we spent sharing the hour to hour plans of our lives is the gift that reminds us of the love we have in our lives.

We need each other to poke fun at us. To know that we can be loved so much and seen so clearly that dying-in-laughter-from-being-roasted is the clearest sign of an intimacy worth keeping. That the unstoppable laughter at our quirks and strange tendencies can cloak us with the warmth we need when we are in a foreign place that brings us to the brink of believing we are alone. And when we feel alone, we can crack open the memory of the full belly laughter that gurgled all the way home into our beds that night. Bolstering our souls for days to come.

We need each other to say no to us, then yes, to say yes and then no. To test out our limits, to overstep, to be guarded and far away, until we feel okay again, and are open to trying once more. We need to dance in the rhythm of stepping in and stepping away, to feel our precious hearts expanding and contracting, growing its muscular tissue to face more loss and thus more love, finding a little bit more stretch to welcome the fullness of our indescribable complexities that make no sense but are oh-so-deserving of wholehearted acceptance.

We need each other to ask for more, to challenge us to befriend our shadows, to tell us that we must find a way to return back to relationship, that our aliveness depend on us not falling into the story that we are loveless and disposable, to come back to the circle and receive the reflection that our running away pains those who love us the most and if that’s what we need in that moment we understand. We need to hold each other’s hand, tempering our egos as much as we are asking others to be brave and show up. To feel the weight of how much it takes to trust, and to hold it with the preciousness of a magic gem.

We need to build relationships that can withstand a scrape, a fall, a forgetting, a rupture, a land slide. We need relationships that create a foundation for homes to be built on, lands that can be shared and together tended to. We need relationships willing to embrace us with our families of origin, seeing that lineage is the soil in which we sprout from, a soil that is complex and mixed, and always worthy of love and life.

We need each other to create a home for our decedents. To care about what we’re putting in the waters, the air, the ground, and the beings of this planet. To care that how we speak to one another, how we respect and honor each other, will be reflected in those we raise. That living the life that we are meant to live is the inheritance that we are passing down. That our gifts are useless without anyone to receive them. That our wisdom is empty without anyone to listen. That our voices are lonely without others to sing along with us.

We need each other,

and it is in allowing ourselves to feel our needing, our desperation to be needed, our longings to be loved, where we open ourselves for relationship, the emptying out that is necessary for us to come whole with the vulnerable parts that create whole ecologies of relations through its recognition of our extraordinarily glorious human needs.

dear relationship ecologists,

i illustrated and designed a zine written by Kazu Haga, Shilpa Jain, Celia Kutz, Erika Sasson. This project is called, because we need each other, and you can download the zine without cost here on Convergence Magazine.

this zine has been such a moving process for me. as I shared in our opening reception, as an artist I find that constraints are what allow for creation, and for this zine I decided to only use 2 colors. (i literally took only two water color pods out of my palette to use) red and blue. i used these two colors intentionally because these are the colors that in some ways describe our deepest division in this country, and because I wanted to show visually that “difference” could still be in collaboration and relationship with each other. that the divide can also be contrast, blending, layering, complexity, and so much more.

i hope that you download this zine and let me know what you think! i also wanted to write a bit above, my own relationship ecology take on the idea of: because we need each other.

-K

Because we need each other