Find Your Packet Here: https://bbuuc.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/Soulful-Home-Cultivating-Relationships.pdf

Relationships ask us to answer the “who” questions: Who is in our circle of friendship? Who is not? Who makes up our family? Whose absence in our family do we notice and remember? Who were we yesterday? And who are we now, changed?

These questions, pondered together, take us right to the heart of what it means to be human. It is in relationship with others that we come to know ourselves and our place on the interconnected web of all existence. This is where we find ourselves this month as Soulful Home families. 

English pronouns get in the way here, but in other languages, there is no distinction between the pronoun used for a sibling or a tree or the ocean–they are all personal pronouns–” who” pronouns– indicating our inextricable link with all of creation. This month, we’ll be stretching beyond English’s limitations and cultivating relationships with these other creations, too. Our Around the Neighborhood section invites us into a grand adventure of acknowledging the non-human entities around us with whom we interact every day.

At least once this month, be sure, too, to seek out that trusted friend, or make time with your parenting partner, to sit out “On the (metaphorical!) Porch.” There, you’ll find “At Least Ten Reasons Why You Love Them,” and a handful of carefully chosen questions that will help you go deeply together into both your pasts, presents, and futures. 

Any grower can tell you that cultivating can be tough work, and our current times have certainly taught us that nourishing our relationships can be no easy endeavor, either. Let your time with your family challenge and inspire you to keep at it together, along with Soulful Home families all over the continent, because we know that it is our connections that will save us and keep us rooted in “home.”