MH: Some of the first questions we have are about your family of origin, because we're interested in the relationship between the care structures that formed you, your current care structures, and the community work that you're doing. I think it's all kind of related. But again, if it doesn't feel interesting to you or like you want to share, then that's fine.

A: Well, [my partner] and I both have no relationship with our families. [My partner’s] family is super racist and pretty openly Trumpy—you know the type—and so it was easy for him to just be like ‘no I'm not doing it.’ My parents are a little more complex. My mom's been married a million times. She marries abusers consistently, she's an alcoholic, like it’s just not a good, healthy relationship, so we just have not spoken to them in the last like four or five years—since COVID really. And then seeing their responses to COVID was kind of the icing on the cake—to go over there with our child and there'd be no masks, people talking about how shitty masking is, and I'm just like ‘oh well fantastic, I'm glad people's health is so important to you.’ We just couldn't do it anymore. Casey, who lives with us as well, he does have a relationship with his family, but it's just very, like, not a good, healthy one, you know? So we don’t have typical relationships with our families.

There's a bunch of divorce in our family, which is whatever, but a lot of remarriage, a lot of, you know, just shitty ass families that we were able to walk away from, which I think makes us put so much more into everything that we do, you know, because we really don't have anyone else. If we're homeless—I mean, when we've been homeless—we don't get to move back in with our mom. We don't have that luxury. So, you know, building community is survival too, it's survival for all of us. If we don't take it seriously, many of us don't have those families to fall back on. You know, I mean, I see that more and more. Like a lot of campers are severely in the throes of an addiction, and their family has just fully abandoned them, but that doesn't mean that they don't deserve help, food, a roof over their head, somebody to call when the shit hits the fan completely. Everybody has to have one person at least, but hopefully more like five or six or seven or ten or fifty! We might not be able to lean back on our parents, but we do have each other, and we do have a wider community that will have our backs if something happens. I trust that way more than I ever trusted my family—way more. I mean there's at least a handful of people I could call right now if I just needed to talk about something, and I never had that before.

MH: When did you start building consciousness around that, like creating your own web of people outside of your family?

A: Well, I would say it was hard because, you know, we were unhoused for a good amount of time, and when you're unhoused you're just surviving. So I would say when we got housed is when things got very, very serious. And I would say that it was probably in the last like four or five years that we've gotten super, super serious. You know, when I was younger, I'd say I was ‘progressive,’ but I was a teacher, and I had—it’s kind of embarrassing—but kind of a yuppie lifestyle. I would pretend not, but I was in Ohio, rent is cheap. I was making okay money. I had two jobs, which I thought was normal. I was working from like seven to eight at night at school. Even if I said I cared, I was building social relationships but those were… those were nothing, those were nothing.

When I got pregnant and I quit working and then we ended up unhoused, I think that was when it started becoming real, like, and it sucks to say, like, it had to happen to us. But that is the case, you know, either you have to see it happen to someone that you're really close to or it has to happen to you. And to realize like, ok we’ve cut off our family, we are unhoused, right? We're in a state we've never lived in before. Like, we are so fucked, but then we were like, wait a minute. When you're unhoused, you see how other unhoused people build with each other. And like, that is a piece of the puzzle. I didn't have that before. And then I got that. And then when we became housed, then I realized, okay this is how we have to put it together, like you can't have the division between the housed and the unhoused because that in itself is a problem, you know. Because then you don't have any reciprocity really—it’s not mutual aid, it's just charity. So unless you're willing to see these people as the same as you… if you can't do that, you can't do mutual aid. If you feel like ‘I'm just doing,’ then this is not a reciprocal thing.

MH: Yeah, no, I totally agree. When did you start thinking about it as a mutual aid?

A: Four or five years ago. I think four or five years ago when COVID hit, and I started to see some real life. I mean, just like people connecting in a way that they were not connected before—something I hadn't seen. Like I'm old, and I had literally never seen people doing these things for each other. I had never really truly seen it. Like something different than just like when you were raising money for your school so you would go door to door. That was what I always thought help was like. But to see people coming out of their homes, setting up water tables, just like all that, like I've never seen that. It was so special. It was so great. And even when we were unhoused, like, people reaching out and online like ‘do you need anything? What can we do for you?’ And, you know, ‘does your kid want something?’ Just stuff like that where it was just really amazing to see.

So I would say when COVID hit, in those first few months, just seeing those acts, just seeing something different than what I was used to. People helping each other as friends is different than helping in a community, but I hadn't seen real community support, I had only seen, like you call your best friend if you're sad or don't have money or something. It's different, it was a different thing, so I would say four or five years ago was when I got really, really serious. I think I felt like I understood it better… because I was witnessing it, rather than just reading about it.

MH: Yeah, I do think that is a totally different and very special thing.

A: It is.

MH: And so often comes about in those disaster circumstances, like I saw it for the first time after natural disasters.

A: Yeah, yeah. And I had heard about it prior, you know, with other natural disasters. I had a roommate like years… oh my god, like 20 years back, who was working in Louisiana helping rebuild. So I heard about it, like I heard about people doing these things, but unless you see it, you don't really understand that people can actually do these things and they want to do them. And there are people who will, you know, leave their comfort and be proactive and help. There are people like that. But you have to see it. And you don't just see it once—you have to see it consistently, even having it done for you… I don't know, I just felt like seeing consistent mutual aid happen and consistent community building happening—and I'm not saying it's perfect here because I know there's a shit ton of shit that we all need to do, but I just saw at least the start of some really good community building. I was just like, not gonna not do it. It's so important. It is the revolution on some level. Because if every single one of us just stopped working and stopped paying our bills, and just walked outside and shared our food, our clothes, like can you imagine? Like it would take like two seconds and everything would be over. Like it would be violent and it would be nasty, you know, and like a lot of shit would have to be gotten together, but that is all that would have to happen. That's it.

MH: I think about that all the time.

A: Oh my god, like, can you imagine what a general rent strike would do?

MH: Yeah.

A: [cackles] Oh God, it's magical.

MH: It would be amazing.

A: So I'm just gonna pretty much do all of this until I die and… [laughing] hopefully it will do something, hopefully it changes something. I don't know.

MH: Yeah I mean, I think it is already.

A: I think so too! I mean, there's so many people out doing shit… so many people. It's so good to see. Like I'm seeing so many things popping up. Somebody added me to this signal chat—it was a whole bunch of mutual aid projects that had popped up, like they just wanted a few people from each one in this group so we could share resources, and I was like who the fuck are these people? [laughing] I don't even know any of these people. This is amazing. It was just great. It was great to see. It's amazing. It's incredible.

MH: That's really cool. Can we back up a little bit and you can tell me more about how the project first started and talk a little more specifically about what you're doing?

A: Well, we were on a rent strike, which clearly started everything.

MH: Yeah, I love this story.

A: Oh my God, it's a great story. We were in a house, like a regular house, and the landlord lived in the basement of the house. He had converted the basement into… he was a severe drug addict. He was like 80 or 90. The dude was gonna die soon. You could just see it. He smelled like death. Like he was gonna die. And I hate all landlords, but I will say [laughing]—I'm saying this on record—this was the least offensive landlord you would ever meet in your life. Like he inherited this house. All he wanted was to smoke crack. And Lord knows I wanted him to! I will probably smoke crack in my nineties, and I think it would be much better than just knowing we're gonna die.

Anyway, rent was not super pricey, well I mean it wasn't pricey for around here. He wouldn't bitch at you if you were late, he was always asking me to borrow money, always asking me to make him dinner, like everybody did shit for each other at this house. Then he died. Oh, and he converted the basement for him and this unhoused man. Ten years ago he let an unhoused man who was then not unhoused, live in an apartment converted by [the landlord] in the basement, with [the landlord]—they were roommates. They had a little additional room with a bed so that any unhoused person could come and sleep for the night.

Okay but then he died, and so the second he died we all got together and we were like we're not paying rent right? [laughing] Because my apartment didn't have heat, the bathroom had not been even… there was no flooring. So we were just like yeah, the rent strike would then be against the estate. So that's what we did. We did a rent strike against the estate. They kept trying to hire property managers, but legally they can't hire a property manager until it's gone through the court system. Right, the estate couldn't hire it. It had to come from the owners, but the owners didn't technically have the legal right to do it because it had to go through court. So the estate essentially kept trying to hire these property managers and Don't Evict would… like I was calling them obviously freaking out like “they're trying to evict us!” like we're still not paying rent, but you know, I'm still panicked, and they're like oh, that's not even a legal eviction so you can do whatever you want with it, so of course we all just like threw them out, which we shouldn't [have] later, but it was funny. And he handed me somebody else's eviction too! Yeah, it was so weird. Anyway, so thanks to Don’t Evict giving us such good advice, we were on a rent strike for like two years. Then somebody bought the house and within a week they had thrown [the previously unhoused man] out, they busted up the basement so that he couldn't get back in, so they made an 80-year-old unhoused. He still is currently living in a house that is not made, like it's not built, in the basement of that.

And so the guy who bought the house—he had to pay us like twice to leave. You know, we screwed him over. Anyway, in those two years, obviously, we learned a lot. So while we're rent striking, we had some extra money, and so we started doing the mutual aid stand just because [my kid] and I had always done distro, like, we would just make food.

So for the two years we just were doing distro, regular distro, and while we were doing that we would just walk around here, because our apartment was just like two minutes down the street. We would just walk around and hand out burritos and chicken sandwiches and water and just like fun things. You know, we would go pick up harm reduction supplies and just hand that out. Then the big heatwave that happened last summer, you remember that?

MH: I wasn’t here yet.

A: Oh okay it was really bad. It was super hot. People were gonna die. We started handing out hot weather supplies from the county. We just went and picked them up, like they were handing them out to everyone who would do that, and so I just said like… it's super complicated to have to walk around in 100 degree heat with a—at the time [my kid] was seven or like maybe even six, I don't know six or seven—and like hand this out. We told one of the campers, we will meet you all at that corner on this day at this time, and it just stuck, like we just kept doing it, we just kept going over there and it made it so much easier. And then people started helping and then that was that.

And then a lot of people started helping and now it's a little smaller again, so it's a little more sustainable but… Because what was happening was a lot of people were helping over here instead of making their own. Like we had tried to get people to just do it in your neighborhood, like this can be small… like you can have like 10 people, it doesn't matter. Just set it up in your neighborhood.

So that's how it started—we were just very, very into distro, but it wasn't as centered on community building, so not until we started just setting up and getting to know people and then you have two hours to just get to know people and talk to them. And now we're at a point where people just come over—like they will knock if they're hungry. Like in this neighborhood everybody knows that they will not starve. They can come over. Well they also know that I go to bed really early so they don't come past seven. [laughs] I'm usually in my jammies by like five. I like to live like I'm 80 at 46.

MH: It's important. [laughing] It’s better.

A: So much. I'm tired. So anyway, that's really like… that's why. So the rent strike just led to us having free money. I mean, like we don't have extra income anymore because, you know, we're paying rent, but like just that one thing—just that one! I mean imagine how much extra money people [would have] and if we put that money not into ourselves—I used to get Botox and stuff. I used to actually pay for Botox—I hate myself. I had nails! I would pay for nails and get my toes done. I can't even imagine living like that at this point. At this point like oh my god never! I don't even dye my hair anymore! But if that were me 10 years ago, 15 years ago, all that extra money I'd be like ‘hell yeah I'm gonna do this…’ and now I'm just like, you know, if you put it into your community, your community does much better! Even with that extra stuff, like look at where we are now! I mean obviously we're not housing anyone, but at the same time there are a lot of people here who know that they're not going to starve. That's a big deal, you know? It's not good enough, but it's something, and we wouldn't have been able to do that without that. And so even if it's not like a huge strike all over, even like one household doing it—it can transform so many things. People are paying over a thousand dollars in rent, two thousand dollars in rent. Just fucking—this one next door to this house? Four thousand dollars, 4500 dollars a month. 4500 dollars a month. There's four bedrooms. Like you could put fucking bunk beds in there and house everyone in this neighborhood! Two sets of bunk beds for each room! It's really, it's disgusting. But if we could just funnel that money, you know?

And the other thing is that very resourced liberals love donating money. They do, they do, and that's what their thing is, you know? They will put thousands into GoFundMe's, but all they would have to do is rent strike or mortgage strike. They could use that money to do something totally different—like, we wouldn't need rent GoFundMe’s if we were all rent striking. It's a band-aid, these things that we're doing. We need bigger, bigger things.

So this idea of mutual aid—I think it is the revolution, because you can see these little things… I mean you can bankrupt a billionaire! You can bankrupt a corporation! Like all you have to do is not a thing. And then you can start doing things, but all you have to first do is not a thing. All we did was not pay rent. That's it. And now we have a neighborhood that knows that they will not die of hunger. That's awesome. I'll take it. And that’s all we have to do, like we didn't really even do anything big, like it is not a big thing to give people food. That's not a big thing. I have mental health issues. I am not disruptive by making people food. It's not hard for us to do nothing and then do what we can do. That's it. That’s all we have to do. And everybody has a thing that they could do, you know, we all have a thing we can offer each other. All of us do. Like, shit, even listening to someone talk about their problems, like, that's huge! Babysitting someone's kid! The Free Library, you know The Free Library? You can look them up on instagram. These kids are all very young, like in their 20s, they come over and play every Wednesday with [my kid]. And I get to just go rest.

MH: Nice.

A: And they just come over and play with them every single Wednesday. You don't have to do all of the things, you know? You don't have to do them all, but like, it's not that hard to build, you know? It really isn't, it doesn't take everything. Like it's huge for [my kid] to have that, to have so many adults that they can trust, you know, so many people that care that they're doing okay. That's huge. So, I don't know, anyway, I think all of that starts with just this little thing, like all of these big things can happen. It's really… kind of easy if you think about it. You just have to not pay rent or not pay your bills. Shit, start with your student loans! Start with something and then funnel that money in… not necessarily through GoFundMe’s but in person, like use it to go buy things for your community. It's a simple thing I think. It's a simple recipe for a thing. It's really beautiful. We just all have to do it all at once. That's the problem I think.

MH: Right. Yeah. I'm curious about the relationships you've built to make this possible. Like how many people are working together to make the mutual aid stand possible and how y'all came together, what principles unite you guys.

A: It just initially started, and I'm not even gonna pretend like this is a brand new thing. People have done mutual aid-type things forever, you know, forever and ever and ever, so it's not like it's a reinvention—we're not doing anything spectacular, but it does take a lot, a lot of moving pieces. And I had no idea cuz I can't even organize my kids' school! [laughing] I just remember that there was a time I was like ‘I can't stand seeing people online talking about all the shit they're doing, like they just want attention for it,’ but I was like, but also I need help, so I just started posting little things like [my kid] carrying the wagon around with the chicken sandwiches. I was just trying to get people to ask like ‘do you need some help with that?’ and then when the heat wave started I was like ‘okay fuckers,’ like I just I went off, I was like ‘we have been doing distro for so long, you see that we're doing it, now it's fucking hot, please bring me water and Gatorade!’ I just had this list and people came. People were coming, like I was getting messages like ‘what’s your address? I'll be there.’ I couldn't believe it! Like there were so many people! And I just had to talk to them like trash to get them to do it, like just [giggling] shame them a little tiny bit, just a little bit of shame, just like what are you doing? Like you're just sitting, you know, you’re not doing anything! Then of course it's a bunch of people in like really nice SUVs who pull up with all the Gatorade.

Anyway, but that's okay, that's fine, because that is where it started, you know, that's how people started helping. My friend messaged me and was like, "Hey, do you want…" oh, and they weren't even my friend at the time, like they were just some random person, now they're friends, but they were like, ‘my spouse and I are gonna come help you because we saw all the donations and there's no way you're gonna be able to get all those over there alone, that's wild.’ So they pulled up, helped us get all the donations over there, and then it was four of us and then the next week somebody else showed up and wanted to bring art and so… at a certain point there was probably like 50 or 60 of us but now it's closer to like 20, around 20 people or so.

And we are really just trying to have relationships with all of the other networks. Like there's another distro group on Thursdays, now we're connecting to them and the other groups, you know, and just other people in general that we're trying to just make connections with. But to just do the stand, there's probably seven or eight people who do a lot but there's probably 20 or so people who just like… I mean everybody's helping on some level—oh my gosh people do so much. Even if they can't show up, there's people who bring donations like every other day. There's people who will cook food or you know, anything. It's amazing. It's really amazing.

It's wild cuz I feel like at the beginning of COVID, like for at least a year, we did not talk to anyone really, like [my kid] had no friends, like I think a lot of people were very isolated, super isolated. And like to go from that to like [laughs] people just walking in my house now to say hi, it's like the weirdest thing, but it's wonderful. It's wonderful, but it is a lot. It takes a lot to keep something like that going and to be that consistent. We were talking about it, like the campers were talking about it, like ‘we thought this would be like three weeks.’ [laughs] We are so shocked! Like we were laughing because it's shocking it's lasted this long. But for a while it was really big, like we had, I mean, there were like 12 tables, there was a grill, but that was not sustainable. And then when we were going through all those issues with the cops and all that—we had an issue with somebody in the community who was accused of doing some pretty gross shit in the past, and just trying to keep everyone safe, we decided that we were just gonna stay small and keep the stand smaller. And we want people to do these in their neighborhood. We really don't want this to be a thing where people are bussing in. 'Cause that's not the spirit. Like, we're trying to get to know each other. We're trying to like… if you're gonna get evicted or a camper's gonna get swept, we want to be close enough that we can, you know, like, get to them or I can come to you easily if you need help, but we can't really do that. You know, we just have to have some, like, thought to the future and why we're actually doing this, you know. We don't want to just do the state's job for them.

MH: Right.

A: We're doing this with some purpose, you know it can't just be about resources, like we have to be building enough that I trust you, like you can come in my home, like I trust you with my child. That is what we're trying to do, so we can't really do that with a hundred people. It was turning into a big like, I don't know… I mean it was fun, but it was like a block party every week. So now it's much more manageable, and it takes less people, but it's much much much better, much easier to do. It was getting to be a lot for a while.

MH: That makes great sense to me that keeping it small and local would be more sustainable.

A: Yeah, for sure. Absolutely.

MH: It sounds more… like it would help better with the mission to build community.

A: Yeah, yeah. Because I would see people and I'd be like, I don't even know… is that person helping? I have no idea who that is. It was so weird. I was like that's really the opposite of what we're trying to do. Like, it's awesome that you want to though, so we have been trying to roll with that a little bit, and now I'm seeing it popping up, like people are doing it. I'm seeing it. It's amazing. It's fantastic. I mean really the point is that any one of us can go away and you can just replace us without a problem, like it should just flow like that. And that's kind of what we're aiming for, for the most part.

MH: Yeah, you mentioned potential conflict in the group surrounding maybe a problematic person, and I was curious about how you manage conflict within the group of organizers and make decisions together about difficult stuff.

A: We weren't doing well with it. I mean, we went through a lot. Oh my god, we just… actually the past couple months were just horrific because we were cliqueing up, it became like a clique, which I think is easy to do, I mean, it's super natural. Because you're just like oh, I'm doing so much and you're doing so much and you're doing so much, so we're doing the most, so we talk the most and if there's a decision… it just became like a very unintentional hierarchy, I think. So when the thing happened with the person, we didn't handle it well. There was a lot of fracturing that happened because of that. And we're all just seeing our way through it, talking a lot, you know, actually talking about our values, talking about how we want to handle conflict, talking about when we've done too much, when we're at our capacity. It's a lot of talking. It's a lot of talking. [laughs] It's a lot of talking.

It was just all rainbows and kittens and sunflowers, and then we thought everything was just going swimmingly, except that we were really stressed, and then this happens, and then people start to talk to each other, because then there's this breakdown and you see where people's values are. So then some people just kind of stuck together with one thing and some people stuck together with another, but everybody's working on their relationships, and it's still okay. It's okay. It's a work in progress, but it's hard. It's hard. It's a bunch of people with a bunch of trauma trying to navigate this big thing in a space where we're trying to survive at the same time. Some people are really trying to survive, like some people are on the streets and are trying to survive. There's a lot, it's a lot. But just so much communicating—so, so much communicating, and finally talking about our values, like talking about how important it is that we don't have hierarchy and talking about how, you know, we do want to be able to walk away and not be important. Every one of us wants that: that we should be able to say, ‘I can't do this this week,’ and somebody takes over, or we have to be okay with the stand having less that week.

MH: Do you have any advice for other people who are looking to start a community care project like this or are going through conflict themselves?

A: Well I should not give anyone advice on conflict because I am a fawner, and I am working through it. I'm terrible about it. It's something I thought I had moved past, but I clearly had not, and so in like 20 years if I've managed some conflict in a truly successful way, I’ll let you know! [laughs]

MH: [laughing] We’re all working on it! It’s hard for all of us! Because this culture doesn’t teach us how to do it!

A: They don't, they don't. It's so… oh it's so wild. It is so wild.

—

A: Okay, Casey is going to come out too, for a little bit. We met because he wanted to cook for the stand, and then we always laugh about how he ended up living with us, because he was only helping for maybe six weeks, but he had come over and helped me organize, and I just really liked him. I just felt like really nice around him. So we started to form maybe a little bit closer friendship, then he got into a big fight with his parents and I was like, ‘just come over, stay for a few nights! My 20 year old is in school, he's only here in the summers, there's an extra room, go for it.’ And now he's just here permanently. [laughing]

MH: Oh, so good.

A: It's so funny, and now I can't even imagine, and it's weird even looking back, like it was like not that long ago, but like I can't believe I was like, "Yeah, just come stay."

[Casey comes out]

A: Okay, I was telling them about how you ended up living here. How it was gonna be like a few days. [laughing]

C: Like two days—Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday.

A: And now we make family decisions together. [laughing]

MH: That's awesome.

A: I don't know when it happened, like I don't know when it went from like, oh, this is temporary to like, it's okay, Casey is your uncle now! [laughing] That's Uncle Casey to you!

[Someone approaches the house carrying bags.]

A: Hey, what's up? What do you need?

Person: Do you have any water by chance?

A: Yeah, I have water, I have water, give me a sec. Oh, okay, Casey will get it.

Person: How are you guys?

A: Good, how are you doing?

Person: Doing alright.

C: How many bottles do you want?

Person: Oh just one.

A: We usually have it out here. We’ll leave some out here. Typically we try to keep it out here.

Person: Thank you.

A: Yeah. I'll see ya. Bye.

Anyway, so yeah, that's how it happened. I have no idea when or how, but I just don't even know how we would go back to another situation. There's no way. We just wouldn't. Like it just feels very natural.

C: It does. I mean it's much more comfortable than my biological family. It just feels like something we fell into, and it’s really fulfilling, in a way that like, my biological family really isn’t. I mean, like I do see them a couple times a week or maybe less than that, but it's just a different feeling, like I feel like I put in a lot of effort and when I'm with y’all it's easy.

A: Yeah, it really does kind of feel like you're my younger brother a little bit, and I think it just sort of meshed. Plus I think what we needed… what we were lacking in our families we probably do just get from each other because, you know, we can like stand around in the kitchen and gossip. [everyone laughs] You know, and I always longed to have a sibling I could do that stuff with. And I think we did kind of luck out, but also I do think people have to get really comfortable building these types of connections with friends and just learning to live together and just getting your lives like completely immersed in each other’s.

[laughing] Yeah we were saying, “Do you think people just… they don't see us as separate beings anymore?” We keep some level of our independence, not become super co-dependent.

MH: It's a fine line.

A: Too late! Oh, well. [laughing]

MH: Well, that's very sweet. Do either of you have experience with, like, community living at all before this or is this your first foray?

A: I mean I've had roommates.

C: I’ve had roommates, and then I lived with my brother but that was a little different. And I was married for a little bit.

A: Yeah well my ex-wife and I, we both had kids, so there was a lot going on there. That was in my 20s. So I mean I guess on some level, and I have always had roommates, I maybe lived alone once or twice, but not for long.

MH: Yeah, but it sounds like, in your words, you're making family decisions together, and that's new.

A: Yeah, I think that's new. I do think that we act more together, like if I have extra anything before I do something I would offer. If Casey wants to order something and I have the money to do it, then I would do it. We do treat each other very much like what's mine is yours, and that is a new thing because typically if I've had roommates it's been a pretty… not that we wouldn't hang out, but there wasn't a lot of that.

C: Yeah. Honestly, I think that it's really solidified my… like I started to feel a sense of ownership over things. Because I was able to contribute.

A: Yeah. I think that too. I think you got more comfortable. I think it was that moment we realized too, how could we do things separate really? 'Cause if I didn't have you, we wouldn't have paid rent. And if you hadn't had us, you wouldn't have been in a… it's just very connected.

C: For the longest time I felt it was very one-way like you guys were helping me.

A: Yeah, that's true.

C: But then I feel like–

A: I didn't look at it that way though, just so you know.

C: But it's relatively recent that I felt really comfortable and like, I don’t need to prove my worth to you, it's just like, I'm accepted and loved, and like, that's the new feeling for me. Like, I didn't feel that when I was like married or like—

A: And we asked him to stay, I mean like originally, even though he was gonna stay, we were gonna say that when my 20 year old came home from college he was just gonna find somewhere else to stay for a few months because it's two bedrooms. But there is a little room that somebody theoretically could stay in, but that wasn't going to be an option. He was just going to go. But then at some point I was just like, why? You can't go. That's so weird. Like, you're not going to go. So we just threw a curtain up, and we got a futon in there, which is super uncomfortable I'm sure, but it would be worse if he wasn't here, we don't want him to go. But at this point, we're just planning to stay together. It did happen fast, but I love it. I mean it’s very satisfying, like it's really nice to have somebody around who isn't really like blood related, but it’s like a chosen thing, like we just choose to be with each other and like see these parts of each other and be cool, and you know, it's nice, it's great. I love it. I wish more people would do that, I think. Like, I feel like it really heals some things. I don't think people realize it because I think people live as roommates, but it's very family. It's nice. I don't know. I just like it. It makes me happy to be like that with people.

C: Well and I find platonic relationships to be as important as romantic relationships for me, honestly to be more important, especially at this point in my life. I don’t know, I feel like I've had intimate platonic relationships before but I never lived with them during, and so this is just like really amazing because I can come home after something that might have been rough and I don't even have to tell Addison what's going on but we'll just chat and that'll take my mind off things. And sometimes I'll talk through things, but sometimes I'll just hang out and not say anything because I know that we’ll just have fun and that’ll be good. And I just never felt that way with my biological family. It was like… we had a lot of secrets, and then I also had a lot of secrets from them, and here, like, Addison knows me. Like, I'll do something and think that it’ll be a secret but like Addison knows exactly what I'm doing [both laughing] and will mention it eventually, like when I was avoiding talking about a situation that was not good and you were like ‘yeah I know that wasn't good because you weren't telling me about it.’ [laughing] So, like, it's good to have someone call me on my bullshit. When I feel comfortable taking criticism from someone, that's when I know the relationship is solid.

A: I think it's really the only thing that's saving us right this second from like just really not surviving. I mean really I think it's the difference between surviving and not surviving. I think it's super necessary. I think that this is the world that we should be aspiring to—not even necessarily with just like one other person. It would be great to have a big place and more people, like that would be so beautiful. I really love it. We're just lacking space, but I would do like a big hotel. That would be incredible! Like community meals and stuff.

C: That's really important to us: eating together and feeding people.

A: And we do! We have been cooking for people every day. Every day, we're cooking now, and we do it together. And I don't think we could just do it on our own.

C: I mean, we did but I was like hypermanic and you were very stressed, so like it wasn't good for either of us. I was cooking like 60 hours a week.

A: But now we've learned how to cook together and give each other space when space is needed.

C: And when someone’s having a bad day maybe taking over a little bit more.

A: Yeah, yeah. But I really feel like everybody could do it. I think you just have to be like super open, like really, really open.

C: You have to really trust. You have to trust that you're not gonna be taken advantage of and know that when you give it's not going to a black hole, but it's a community kind of thing. I think a lot of people are just afraid that they’re going to invite an unhoused person in and then they’re gonna take advantage of them—

A: —and it happens.

C: Which, like, you shouldn’t be inviting strangers in, you should get to know people and like develop those relationships and then you might—

A: —Well, I'm not gonna lie, I just, I went off of vibes. [laughing] That's really true, I'm so sorry. And that's probably not the smartest thing. But I did.

C: It worked!

A: I just lucked out, but that's not good advice. [laughing] Don't normally do that. I just really figured like, I've seen the worst of roommate stuff so it couldn't be that bad, like I've already seen some pretty bad shit, so if my vibes are off…

MH: By now you have a good picker.

A: Right, exactly, but I felt like my vibes weren’t off and they haven't been off! It's fine. [laughing]

C: But yeah I think building relationships and living with each other… as things get worse we’re gonna have to help each other, even if it's not living together, but like feeding each other, and, like, yeah, more and more people are gonna be poor… so we have to do what we have to do.

A: Yeah. I think people have to just start getting a little more comfortable with being uncomfortable for a little bit, because I think that with every big thing we've done in the last few years, like when we started our rent strike, that was painful. There were a few months where I was very deeply, deeply uncomfortable. I was scared. I was crying a lot. I was having a lot of panic attacks. I literally thought I was gonna have a heart attack. I was scared, okay. I only reached out to Don't Evict because I was scared shitless. Like, I don't know. When we started doing, like, distro I started getting uncomfortable because I was like I would much rather just lay here and watch my show, like I know that's stupid but like that's really what it was like, but I would force myself to do it and I was okay, but I feel like with these big things like if you can get past this hump of discomfort… like even when we first were living together it wasn't super comfortable right away. There were things we had to learn about each other. You know, like I had to stop pretending to be “on,” like I had to just be myself. I had to just finally show him every part of me, even if it's embarrassing. I wasn't even able to cry comfortably around someone, but I can just weep openly now. [laughing] And I do.

C: I don't think I've cried with you yet, but I don't cry as often.

A: I don't think so.

C: But I probably will eventually.

MH: Something to look forward to.

A: Yeah, I know. I'm excited. [laughing] You gotta knock that one off the list. But like, I don't know… I feel like there's all this uncomfortable energy at first, like when you start something like that, I think it happens with any huge major transition. I'm not sure, but I think it does, like you just… it feels bad, and you want to go back to whatever it was. You just want to go back, and it's pulling you, but like you have to resist it. So it's been very infrequent that I have resisted the pull of going back. Normally I go back. Normally I will just be like you know what fuck this. This is too much, I can't deal with all this bad energy. This is uncomfortable, I'm uncomfortable, I need to not. But when you do get past that, the other side is magical! It's so great! But it's hard as fuck to get past that discomforting time. But I really do think that if you can get through it, that's what people have to do: they have to start. Just start and then get past the shittiness and then keep going. And I think that's it. That's what has to happen.

MH: Yeah.

A: But I understand that pull back is so good. It's your comforting place. Like you could have easily gone back to your parents.

C: Yeah.

A: That would have been an easy thing to do. Just go back. But we just did it anyway. We just kept going. I think it is good. It's really good.

C: And I think that is partly because we communicate with each other and we set boundaries.

A: Yeah, yeah.

C: We feel comfortable setting boundaries. I feel like a lot of different roommate situations are bad because of a lack of communication. And feeling like things that annoy you are done on purpose and are vindictive instead of just like things people do because people are annoying, you know?

MH: No, it's huge. We have to learn how to talk to each other about what bothers us. And work through it.

A: Yeah. It's embarrassing. It can be really, really challenging. I'm like a total fawner too. Like, I am bad at it. I’m bad about it. It’s not my thing. So to be able to openly say ‘hey this is bothering me.’ That’s beautiful. It’s so nice. It really only helps your relationships. It really does.

C: And I’ve also learned to let go of things. And I used to think I was letting go of things but it was just building up resentment. Now I can be like ‘oh that was kind of annoying, but it probably won’t happen again, I don’t need to say anything.’ And if it does happen again, then I’ll say something about it. But I also was just figuring out how to fix things. Sometimes it’s just a little action on my part that’s needed to fix a situation. It’s just good to also be considering how you’re acting in the situation.

MH: Yeah. I mean obviously running the mutual aid stand has affected your intimate personal care structure by bringing Casey into the picture. I'm curious if there's been any other feedback between the two, like your intimate care structures and your community care that you're doing. How one has changed the other.

A: I mean I think it's just like super, super natural for them to have some effect on the other. When you see something working in one space, you're just gonna naturally mirror that in other spaces. I think it is like, ultimately, how you would heal, you know… I mean, which I'm sure is so hard to do in this type of system, but, I do think that learning how to just be open, be myself, like, no matter what, that is the only way I can do anything. I would have always tried to pretend to be professional and, like, pretend to be my age I guess. You know, just like one of those 40-something-year-old mom types. Like I can pretend to be that pretty easily, but I had to not ever do that again. So being openly, authentically me in both spaces has helped me in all the areas. Even like owning up to the shitty things that I cannot stop doing, like it's easy for me to talk about that stuff now, and I don't really know what came first anymore, like if I was like doing that initially and then we met, or I don’t know. I’m not sure how.

C: Well, our relationship fuels our food distribution too. I wouldn't be able to do all the cooking that I do without that relationship with Addison. That gives me the energy to give to the community. Because if we're having a bad day, we'll joke about it and then still be able to cook. You know, if it wasn't, I would be really inconsistent with being able to cook because my mental health would be up and down.

A: Yeah. Oh my god yesterday I would not have gone. I would not have gone. I swear to god. I was a wreck yesterday. I would not have gone. I would have stayed home.

MH: To the stand?

A: Yes. I would have stayed home, and I probably would have openly mocked you all for being there. That's how badly I didn’t want to be there.

C: I was like, well, if Addison’s having a bad day and she can still go, then I can go. [laughing]

A: Yeah, like, it was so bad. I really did not want to do it. But it's good, it helps. Also I don't have to pretend to be having a good day anymore and that's worth so much.

C: I heard people asking you how you were and you were very honest, like I’m having a horrible fucking day! [laughing]

A: [cackling] Listen don’t fucking talk to me right now, it’s not you, it’s definitely me. I’m the one with the problem. Well it's a little you but it's mostly me, like it was so bad. [laughing] But I can do it now, and people know if I'm having a cranky day, I've just done too much, like I've done too much, I have not listened to my body at all. But now people know this, like it's super obvious, and that is so special to me, because I really did mask my way through my 20s and probably a good portion of my 30s, I think. I don't think I dropped it officially until I was I would say like 40 probably. It is nice. It's very nice. I think it really does help in all of these things. It’s freeing.

MH: Yeah. It seems like it takes so much less energy to be authentic and then you have energy to give to other things and other people.

A: Yes! Yeah.

C: Yeah.

A: Like I don't even have to worry about being awkward or uncomfortable in a moment anymore, like it's just okay. It's totally fine. I don’t know.

C: Oh no, I definitely self-censor to avoid being awkward, and I don't have to do that. And if I say something silly we’ll just laugh at it. Like when I fell into the bean bag!

A: Oh my god.

C: I fell into the bean bag, and I couldn't get up, I was trying to get up without Addison noticing me and then she sees me and she just goes like this and then falls back laughing onto the couch and I was afraid she was going to have a heart attack because she was laughing so hard, and I was so stuck, and I had to wiggle out without her like... [laughing]

A: And my partner was just like watching, I think, from the kitchen.

C: Was he watching?

A: Yeah, he was watching, I think. And he just saw me like just lying there. That was the funniest. Oh, you were so ridiculous. [laughing]

C: I don't know. I feel like that's a large part of our relationship which is making fun of each other. But it’s good, it doesn't feel malicious.

A: Not about things we're sensitive about, just the good things that we make fun of ourselves about, like we're openly allowing each other to do that. And it's funny.

MH: That's beautiful.

C: And I have a lot of mental health issues, and if I didn't have someone to laugh with, I would be in a lot worse of a state. And having this family gives me a safe place to be, physically and emotionally, and I think there's so much mental illness right now because people don't have those relationships to rely on when they’re in crisis. I know Unity, the behavioral health hospital, is really full of people and not accepting a lot of people, and I think that we could help a lot of people with mental illness just by housing and building relationships with them, because I feel like healing comes from relationship-building I believe.

A: Yeah I agree with that.

MH: Yeah I agree too.