On Remembering Care, Together

On our final night in Montgomery, we stepped aboard a boat drifting along the Alabama River—white women, arriving not to lead, but to listen. Not to observe, but to be changed. Not for our individual healing alone, but for the collective transformation that we know is possible even if we haven’t experienced it before in our lifetime.

The river is a keeper of stories—some recorded, many held in silence. It carries the memory of stolen lives and fierce resistance, of grief and unimaginable strength. That river has witnessed the rupture of humanity and the rising of it again, over and over. You don’t float on it without feeling that.

Before the rain came that night on the River, we danced. Mostly strangers, mostly women, a mix of Black and white, young and old—moving together in a spontaneous flow. There was no choreography, no rehearsal, just the joy of shared movement. Boots tapped, hips swayed, laughter rang out in the air. The dance wasn’t for anyone but each other. It wasn’t for display, it wasn’t to impress—it was simply to be together in the moment, to remember joy, to remember pleasure, to remember resistance. The rhythm we found together was as old as the land beneath our feet.

The rain, which had been waiting in the distance, finally arrived. It came down hard. The downpour soaked us, but the dance continued. The rain was a companion, not an interruption. It was as if the sky itself had joined our circle, pulling us deeper into the truth that joy, too, is part of resistance. That pleasure shared is sacred. That movement, together, in rhythm, is a powerful form of care.

The land held us in that moment. Not just the present, but the memory. The ground beneath us—Black-led, woman-forged, soaked in histories of mutual care and communal survival—offered a template. A blueprint that lives far deeper than cognition.

We didn’t know then what we were being prepared for.

Later, after the boat had docked and the dancing had passed, the rain had turned torrential, and one of our elders slipped on the wet pavement outside. It was sudden and hard. We later learned her shoulder was broken.

And in that moment, something else took over. There was no script. No hierarchy. Just motion. A quiet, collective remembering.

We formed a circle around her—all white women this time. All drawn by something immediate and instinctual. Someone knelt. Someone blocked the rain. Someone steadied her. We surrounded her not with noise, but with presence. Soft urgency. Unspoken roles. Shared breath.

This wasn’t charity. It wasn’t pity. It wasn’t saviorism. It was care. Real care. Rooted care.

The kind that arises when we stop asking ‘what should I do?’ and start trusting the body’s memory. When we remember that care isn’t abstract or aspirational. It’s physical. Relational. Immediate. And ancient.

White people have lost so much in the pursuit of separation. In the myths of individualism and self-sufficiency. In the systems that trained us to dominate rather than depend. But mutual care is not foreign to us. It’s just buried. Our European ancestors lived in villages and kin webs, in interdependence. We once knew how to gather around fire, around grief, around birth, around the broken.

Modernity has fractured that knowing. Colonialism replaced it with control. Capitalism commodified it. White supremacy calcified it.

But in Montgomery, on land soaked with multi-racial resistance and Black brilliance, we were offered a portal back. Not into nostalgia—but into responsibility. Into real-time repair. Into remembering what our bodies have always known.

We took her to the ER that night. And what we found there was both expected and devastating: a broken system doing its best with not enough. Not enough hands. Not enough time. Not enough resources. And yet—there were people. Nurses, doctors—showing up with resolve despite exhaustion. We were grateful. And it was also clear: we cannot survive on this alone.

These systems—hollowed out, overburdened, unequal—will not save us. They are fraying at the seams. And still, they are filled with humans doing their best. What held us in that emergency room wasn’t just protocol—it was presence. It was proximity. It was the continued circling of community.

This is what we must remember: we will only survive these broken systems because of each other.

We’ve seen this before—when wildfires swept through towns and neighbors showed up with hoses, food, beds. When systems faltered, people activated. Community, untrained but ready, held each other up. Mutual aid networks rose in hours, not weeks. We’ve always known how to do this. And we can remember it now. In moments of crisis, we witness the power of shared care—whether it’s a GoFundMe campaign to support a father after a tragic car accident, or a young parent suddenly losing their job and needing help to make rent. These are the times when we see community rise, not as a charity, but as a collective act of survival and solidarity. People pull together in the most profound ways: organizing meals, finding rides, paying bills, holding space for grief. In these moments, we remember that we are not separate. We are bound by each other’s needs.

There’s science that affirms this: oxytocin, the “love hormone,” is actually part of the body’s stress response. It gets released not just in tenderness, but in tension—to move us toward connection. To pull us into proximity. To remind us: you don’t have to do this alone.

But that’s the rub, isn’t it? So many of us have learned that reaching will not be met. That care might not come. Especially in moments of need, of fall, of fracture. We’ve learned to cope alone. To tighten. To endure.

And so, even when the urge to care arises—it’s often stalled by fear, mistrust, shame.

Which is why what happened that day matters. Not because we were extraordinary, but because we remembered something ordinary and essential. We remembered how to respond. How to circle. How to stay.

In the hours and days that followed, care continued. We adjusted plans. We cooked meals. We walked slowly. We accompanied. We witnessed. We didn’t ask permission to help—we just did.

Not perfectly. Not with polished tools or prepared systems. But with sincerity. With slowness. With the embodied realization that care is not what you offer after the hard thing happens. It’s what rises in the moment, if you let it.

And the circle didn’t end there.

She flew home to Maine wrapped in community—flanked by three women who walked her through the airport, who carried bags and bore witness. More calls were made. Local doctors contacted. Soup delivered. Visits offered. A web of care, already present, was activated and expanded.

This is the work we must do: the slow, intentional reweaving of the frayed threads of communal life. Remembering what was once instinct. Moving from isolation to interdependence. From scarcity to sacred exchange.

Montgomery offered us that. Not just in its history—but in its present. In its people. In its soil. In the rain. In the dance. In the hospital. In the moment of fracture, and in the days of follow-through.

We left changed. Not just because of what we saw, but because of how we showed up in community, in sisterhood. Because the land held us long enough to remember: care is not a luxury. It’s how we survive beyond systems and across boundaries. It’s how we return to each other. And it’s how we begin again.