October 2, 2025

Please Participate

I received an email yesterday with the subject, “Please Participate in School Council.” And you have to understand that I struggle a lot with imagining that every message on the internet is directed at me. That it took me a long time to realize that I’d been added to certain people’s email lists and wasn’t being personally invited to their art shows or poetry slams. And that I’ve not volunteered at my children’s schools for over two years now, after going all in and then losing my mind, and then after even all that, accidentally ending up organizing the alternative school’s silent auction against my will.

“I have bad news,” I said to my husband when he walked through the door,and he knew exactly what I was going to say. He’d received the email too, but it didn’t permeate his consciousness the way it did mine. He doesn’t feel the same obligation that I do to step up when asked, to partake in tedious community volunteerism, partly because gender roles, but also his psychological issues are not the same as ones that I have in which I feel personally responsible for everything in the world. (He also never needs to volunteer for anything, because he knows that eventually he’ll be roped on my behalf.)

“What would happen,” I asked him, “if I joined, but I brought my newfound understanding of ‘boundaries’ to this experience?”

Boundaries, which means I don’t have to do everything, I don’t have to save everyone, that I can be part of a group without losing a part of myself, without making the group about me.

It has been empowering to learn I can say no to things like this, that if I don’t step up, other people will, but also this can’t be the permanent solution to the problem of community. Not just because I am me, but also because I like community, I need community, I want to be part of and connected to the world.

But can I do it without losing my mind?

Stay tuned… (Hopefully not, here we go again.)