3.3 Resilience pods: shifting the odds in your favor
Decades ago I heard Bernice Johnson Reagon give a speech about coalition building. She was a founder of the Freedom Singers during the Civil Rights Movement of the 60s. She had travelled throughout the South singing and organizing. She’d been through the fire.
Here’s what I remember her saying…
Of course we all need our home base, a place of safety. But if that’s all we’ve got, we’ll get wiped out. That means we have to build coalitions with other groups.
Then she added a sentence I’ll never forget…
But working in coalition will just about kill you.
Is it always that hard? No, but it was for Bernice. In the days when she did her organizing it was difficult and dangerous work. And the relationships between Black organizations and white groups wanting to be allies were challenging. Trust was not easy to build and maintain.
So what can we do about the coalition challenge? We can put together the kind of home base which first of all…
Sustains us personally.
But then also makes us…
Coalition-ready.
That’s what this page is about.
These days, I sometimes still use the name “home base,” but more often I use the name “pod.” It works better in the plural. “Pods” sounds better than “home bases.”
And to emphasize the key benefit they give us, I call them…
Resilience pods.
What is a resilience pod?
It’s a small group of six or so people who love…
Doing deep self-care together.
And who are committed to each other in the spirit of…
Mutual nurturance and mutual advocacy.
Which means every member is your advocate as you are an advocate for each of them.
Your pod is a personal home you get to have inside the movement you’ve chosen as your political home.
It’s where you get to keep building the strength you need so you can keep on doing your relentlessly challenging political work.
And there are more benefits.
For example…
You get to be deeply seen and deeply held.
You get comforting and company when you’re hurting.
You get to drop all pretenses and just be yourself.
You get to ask for what you need, directly.
When your inner critic attacks you, your pod gangs up on it and helps you shut it down so you don’t have to deal with it alone.
You get to have a team of people who know you well and can help you develop your talents and strengths.
You’ve got people who can help you decide what’s the best contribution you can make to the work of your movement.
Together you and your podmates can defy despair.
You get to have allies who will not let you slide into sacrificial activism.
You get to be open and honest when you have doubts about the strategies or culture of your movement. Instead of judging you or making you toe the party line, your podmates will explore those doubts with you.
Add all these up and you have a rigorous practice of deep self-care. And it’s care that’s sweeter because it’s shared.
The bigger picture.
What if you could turn your movement into…
A robust network of pods pulsing with personal power.
That would be the best kind of…
Deep self-care for our movements.
And our movements need a lot more care than they’re getting.
The big why.
If pods are such a great idea, how come they aren’t popping up all over? Why aren’t they naturally occurring throughout the world of political activism?
Because being a member of a pod asks a lot of you. For example…
You’ll need to be vulnerable with your podmates.
You’ll need to do ongoing inner work and self-development.
And you’ll need to make your pod a top priority in your life.
It’s just a fact that committing to a pod asks a lot of you, but then…
It gives back way more than what it asks.
Who do you want to invite to make a pod with you?
Choosing the right people is the most important part of forming a pod…
If you let in a bully, the pod won’t work.
If you let in someone who’s always taking and never giving, the pod will suffer.
If you let in a narcissist who sucks up all the attention, the pod will be wrecked.
Start with the quality of character.
I recommend you look for people…
Who know how to listen deeply to others.
Who are good at being there for others when they’re hurting.
Who understand what it means to be an advocate.
Who love bringing out the best in others.
Who take pleasure in making their relationships work really well and deepening them over time.
And what else do you want to put on your list?
Next is quality of caring.
I’m not recommending you look for perfect people who have full mastery of all the above qualities. What matters is that you find people who care deeply about these qualities, have developed them to some degree, but want to keep doing better and better at developing them on into the future.
Make sure you do thorough vetting with everyone.
Maybe one of the people you decide to invite in you already know well. You’ve seen her tested by life. You know the quality of her character, and so she’s already vetted by your direct experience of her.
But please vet everyone else and vet them completely, making no assumptions about them. Just because a longtime friend is someone you enjoy hanging out with, does not mean he’s pod material.
And if you’re thinking about inviting in someone you don’t know personally, because you’ve heard great things about them, please don’t be polite, don’t be shy about vetting them vigorously.
Remember if you get a wrong person in your pod and have to exit them, yeow! That’s not easy and it’s not fun.
Stealth interviews: a way to do your vetting.
This means you have in-depth conversations with people to see what they’re made of—but you don’t say anything about your pod intentions until you’re sure you want to invite this person in.
For example…
Sarah, I’m thinking about what’s next for me in terms of my activism. You’re someone I respect, and you seem to have clear idea of your priorities, so I’m wondering if I could talk with you for 30 minutes and ask you how you make your decisions about the work you’re doing.
If there’s any question you don’t want to answer, just say, “Pass,” and I’ll move right along to the next one.
I know you’re super busy, and I understand if you don’t have the time to do this, but if you do, I’d really appreciate it.
Now once you’re in an interview you get curious about Sarah. I call this a discovery interview, because you are not trying to make anything happen…
You want to discover what’s here to discover.
You can ask things like…
What have been your three best experiences as an activist?
What have been your three worst?
What have you found is the best way to help a newbie activist find their sea legs?
What have you found is the best way to handle conflict within your group?
If your movement could take a big leap forward, what would that look like?
Who is the person, someone you know personally, who inspires you most in terms of activism?
Notice that these are all relationship questions. And with that last question, you’re maybe going to get another prospect to check out.
If it turns out the two of you have rapport, then you might go a bit deeper, get a bit more personal…
May I ask who supports you? Remember you can say, “Pass,” if you want.
And if she responds and seems happy to talk about support…
Is there support you wish you had that would make you stronger in your work, or happier in it?
And maybe she tells you she wishes she had real partners. And she keeps finding herself at the edge of burnout, and it would really help to have people to talk to about that and to help her pay attention to taking better care of herself.
Now you’ve got a possible member for your pod. And you get to decide, do you want to invite her right then. Or do you want to have another conversation or two with her, to make sure she’s someone you want.
Please don’t settle for anyone who’s a maybe. Wait until you feel…
Ohmigod, YES, I want her in my pod. And I’m sure because I’ve tested her. And I’ll be so disappointed if she doesn’t say yes.
How many?
I think of pods in terms of six people, maybe up to nine, so there’s time to focus in on each member and go deep. Seems like a dozen people would be too many for that.
A confidant.
But what if you don’t have four, five, or six people you’d like to ask to join you in your new pod? What if you only have one? That’s fine. You can…
Start with a confidant instead of a pod.
Getting deep support from one person is light years ahead of not getting any support at all.
Give it a name.
I like the word “pod,” but you might prefer another name like…
Team, squad, posse, band, home base, or affinity group.
Or maybe you want something offbeat like…
Gaggle, covey, pack.
Or maybe you want a more personal name like…
The Besties, the Happenings, the Mischiefs, or the New Dimensions.
As you get to know yourselves better as a group, and you get a clearer sense of your identity, you might decide to update your name.
When you can’t take on new members.
Imagine you’ve got your pod set up and it’s cooking, and you get a request from someone to join, but you’re already at the maximum you’ve set for yourselves, what you do you say?
Instead of sending that person away with a cold no, you could say…
We’re at our max. And we limit the number in our pod because we want to give really good attention to each person. So I’m going to have to tell you no.
But I’d be glad to walk you through the process of setting up a pod so you can create one of your own. And I’d be glad to come to the first couple meetings to help you get started.
Networking with other pods.
Here’s something fun. If there’s another pod you really like, you and your pod can meet up with them on occasion and share what you’re discovering about deep self-care.
Putting together your procedures.
In your first meeting you’ll decide how often you want to meet and for how long. And this can change over time. Or say you’re in the midst of a difficult campaign, maybe you’ll want to have shorter but more frequent meetings. Again, pay attention to what members need.
Maybe from time to time, you’ll do a whole day retreat, so you have the luxury of time to give deep care to each other.
Another thing to decide is how you will make group decisions. Consensus? Majority vote? It’s good to get this settled upfront. Or maybe you’ll do a hybrid. Consensus on major issues, majority vote on minor issues.
Safety plan.
You know how airline pilots get safety training for emergency situations? And then they practice. They do drills, so when something goes wrong they don’t have to think through the situation and come up with a plan. They’re ready to act immediately.
I recommend having a system for dealing with conflict. Something everyone in the pod agrees on ahead of time. And do drills. Do role plays. Test out your system. Get good at it. Then at the first sign of a conflict in the pod, you’ll all spring into action. Instead of the conflict taking you down, together you can explore it and learn from it and become stronger as a group because of it.
Let me emphasize this. Good intentions are not enough in a moment of crisis. Because what happens in such a moment? Feelings get triggered, and adrenaline floods the bloodstream. Then thinking slows down and you get lost in the fog. So, please do drills. Because then in a crisis, you’ll automatically take decisive, nurturing, helpful action even without your full faculties kicking in.
Over my decades of activism, I’ve seen way too many friendships break up over hurt feelings, friendships that with the right intervention didn’t need to break up and be lost. I’ve seen whole organizations implode over conflicts that people didn’t know how to handle, so they battled each other instead of going deeper, getting to common ground, and finding a way through together.
Pod members are humans and humans are complicated and that means trouble is likely to pop up from time to time. But if you’re prepared for it.
Trouble won’t be scary.
You’ll welcome it in and confidently work it through.
And if, as a pod, you do diligent work on how to handle conflict, then when you go out in the world, you’ll be so much more ready to help people deal with all the conflicts you come across in your movement and in your community.
What will you do together?
The two big ones are:
Listening to each other.
You know what it’s like when someone listens to you so well that you dig deep and surprise yourself with what you hear yourself saying? Want that to be part of your pod?
Advocating for each other.
You know what it’s like when someone sees your potential, maybe even something you haven’t yet seen yourself, and doesn’t just point it out, but draws it out, and helps you master some new skill or dimension of yourself? Want that to be part of your pod?
And when you suffer defeats, you can be there for each other. And when you have victories you can celebrate together.
Then if you want to you can do things together like…
Going to protests.
Working in a campaign.
Going out to have conversations with swing voters.
Writing an op-ed.
Doing a book club night with a book that’s the latest, hottest thing in your movement.
And please don’t forget to have fun together, because that will help make your pod sustainable…
Go to a movie together. Maybe not a grinding political documentary. Maybe a rom-com instead.
Go to a dessert-tasting event.
Go bowling and don’t pay attention to the score.
Have a picnic at the lake where you can rent rowboats and canoes.
Have a poetry night, where you read your favorite poems to each other.
Make a playlist of songs that capture the unique spirit of your pod.
Go do something none of you have ever done before.
What if?
What if your pod was so good for you and your podmates, that you inspired other pods to form? And those in turn inspired even more?
And what if this blossoming of pods throughout your movement, brought about a new presence of warmth and safety? And what if that made your movement more inviting?
What if people who had been scared to get involved in the rough game of political activism, said, “I’m liking what I’m seeing. I want what they have, deep meaning, deep friendships, and deep self-care. I want in.”
And what if this new blood brought new life to your movement…
What would that mean to you?
