
Illustration by Carson McNamara
Recently I wrote about how we can thrive as a community through sharing, something that’s far easier said than done. That’s because many of us struggle to see past family and friends, our neighborhood or our social standing to make a larger community connection. The solution is to be intentional about building relationships with people outside our comfort zone.
This holds special importance in Richmond, a place with a complex, often painful history. Because of that history and its influence on our present, some of us are thriving while others are not. But it doesn’t have to stay that way.
I fell in love with Richmond because of the promise it holds to lead the way to true unity, healing and prosperity through a deeper understanding of what it means to be a community. Sounds great, but how do we get there? How do we work through those personal and societal divisions, historic and contemporary inequities, and intentional and subconscious separations to reach our potential?
It’s all about improving our ability to connect with others personally, professionally and socially — by developing better relationships.
I reached out to get some perspective from a friend of mine, Susanna Wu-Pong Calvert, the founder and convener for mission and vision with the Richmond-based Foundation for Family and Community Healing. She spent 25 years in higher education, and expanded her activities beyond academia through the foundation.
When I asked her what comes to mind when she thinks about the word “relationship,” she said, “Understanding, intimacy, love, connection, synergy, care, listening, seeing and hearing.”
That makes sense to me when I think about my family and my friends, but how do we listen, understand, see, hear, connect with and care for people we haven’t met yet, especially on a community level?
Susanna’s answer floored me: “We are already in relationship with one another.”
In the most literal sense, as inhabitants of this planet and part of its ecosystem, “our mere existence puts us there in the same way that we’re already part of families, neighborhoods and communities,” she says. “We have these impressions and beliefs that we are separated and on our own, islands in our communities and perhaps our families, but it’s like when we’re kids and we first learn that the air is full of oxygen and nitrogen, etc. We go from thinking that it’s empty space to realizing it’s not empty at all, and we can’t unknow that.”
Working to uncover these “hidden” relationships and connecting in healthy, productive ways comes down to awareness and intention. So how do we do this? I think the answer is profoundly simple: one relationship at a time.
Here’s what that looks like, from my perspective:
1. Take stock of where you are as an individual. Are there wounds that prevent you from connecting and seeing or hearing others? Professional help is often needed to navigate such questions, but when those resources are out of reach, ask your caregivers (family and medical) to point you to free help (including reputable self-help tools), so you can explore how you show up in your family, at work and in your community.
2. Get to better know your family, our neighborhoods and our community. Pay attention to the underdeveloped and ignored relationships in your life. What’s holding you back? Is it a matter of only wanting to connect with others on your terms? Do you have negative beliefs and perspectives you need to address?
If you’ve had experiences with people that left you feeling angry, upset and wounded, there is still internal work to do in order to feel healed, whole and empowered. This is especially true in families and communities, when negative experiences become magnified and cemented in our lives.
And if you have had no negative experiences with people that you’ve overlooked or ignored, ask yourself what is preventing you from seeing and hearing them the way you experience people who are more familiar and similar to you.
3. Take action. Ask people how you can engage with them on their terms. That might mean showing up in their spaces — by invitation, of course! — to listen and learn about their experiences. It might mean finding common interests and pursuing them together, to get to know one another beyond the surface. Or it could mean offering to share resources to help one another solve problems.
James Warren has called Richmond home for 18 years. He is vice president with brand strategy and consulting firm JMI, and he’s the founder of the company’s storytelling offshoot, Share More Stories.