The Myth of Independence and the Cost of Isolation
In much of the modern Western world, we are told that independence is the highest goal: to stand on our own two feet, to be self-sufficient, to not “need” anyone. This story of hyper-individualism is held up as strength, but beneath it lies a deep fracture. Loneliness, disconnection, and isolation have quietly become some of the most devastating public health crises of our time.
The nuclear family model - small, privatized, self-contained units - was (is) not always the way humans live(d). It is a relatively recent social construct, one that emerged in tandem with industrialization, urbanization, and capitalist expansion. By narrowing kinship and dismantling interdependent webs of care, the nuclear family serves an economic system that profits from our separation. When care is no longer shared collectively, it must be bought. When we are isolated, we consume more to fill the void.
Why Healing Requires Belonging
Healing happens in relationship. Trauma, by definition, is not only what happens to us, but what happens without the presence of safe others. To heal is to experience the opposite of what wounded us. If you were abandoned, healing comes through being held and welcomed. If you were silenced, healing comes through being heard. If you were unseen, healing comes through recognition.
We are innately social creatures - not designed to survive, let alone thrive, in isolation. Our nervous systems co-regulate with others; our identities are shaped through connection. There is no healing in isolation. We need each other - in all our messiness, our triggering, our tenderness. It is precisely within relationship that we are challenged and where we grow.
Kinship Beyond the Nuclear Family
Many indigenous and traditional societies hold kinship in ways far broader than the Western paradigm allows. Extended families, clans, and kin networks form the very foundations of belonging.
For example, marriage between cousins - often seen as taboo in the West - has been, and still is, culturally acceptable in many communities. Not as a sign of degeneration, but as a way of strengthening bonds, protecting resources, and sustaining collective identity. Anthropological research shows that cousin marriage has long reinforced trust and woven tighter fabrics of community (Bittles, 2012).
Much of the Western resistance to cousin marriage comes from the assumption that it is genetically “dangerous” for children. In reality, research shows that the additional risk of birth defects for the offspring of first cousins is relatively modest: approximately 4–6% compared to the baseline 2–3% risk in the general population. In other words, the risk is higher, but not nearly as catastrophic as cultural stigma suggests (Bittles, 2012). In fact, this is comparable to or lower than other accepted reproductive risks, such as advanced maternal age.
This is not to suggest that such traditions should be adopted uncritically or transplanted outside their cultural context. Rather, it reminds us that “normal” is always relative. What Western society often pathologizes as strange or unhealthy has, in other contexts, been a vital expression of belonging - while what is glorified in the West, such as radical isolation, may itself be a distortion of our deepest human needs.
Indigenous Wisdom: What Is Deeply Obvious To Anyone Intuitive
What Western psychology and sociology now research and name - the epidemics of loneliness, the necessity of belonging, the health impacts of social isolation - are things that many intact and healthy communities never forgot.
Concepts like Ubuntu among the Bantu peoples of Southern Africa (“I am because we are”), or whanaungatanga in Māori culture (kinship, relationship, belonging), embody truths that Western science is only beginning to validate with data: that we are interdependent, and that well-being arises from mutual care.
This is not to romanticize indigenous cultures, which are also complex and dynamic, but to recognize that much of what is treated as a revelation in Western research has always been obvious to communities rooted in collective ways of life.
Belonging to the Earth, Too
Community does not end with other humans. The earth herself is kin. Forests, rivers, oceans, and mountains have always been part of the wider family of belonging. Many Indigenous traditions recognize the more-than-human world as relatives, not resources:
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Among the Ojibwe and other Anishinaabe peoples in North America, water is considered sacred, with rivers often referred to as “our relatives” and given ceremonial respect (Kimmerer, 2013).
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In Hawaiian traditions, mountains (mauna) are ancestors, and the land (’āina) is regarded as kin to be cared for rather than owned (Kanahele, 1986).
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Australian Aboriginal cultures see landscapes, rivers, and sacred sites as connected to ancestors and storylines (Dreaming), embedding humans in a wider web of ecological and spiritual belonging (Rose, 1996).
Colonialism and capitalism have not only fractured human kinship, they have also severed our relationship with the land. Individualism teaches us to see ourselves as separate from the living world, free to extract rather than relate. This disconnection from the earth mirrors our disconnection from one another: both breed loneliness, both breed consumption, both breed destruction.
Yet wherever communities remain intact, we see that belonging extends in widening circles. Around the world, Indigenous peoples protect 80% of the planet’s remaining biodiversity - not because of abstract environmental ideology, but because land, water, and sky are woven into the fabric of kinship (Garnett et al., 2018). Protecting the earth is protecting family.
To remember community as medicine is also to remember that healing spaces are not just built in human circles, but in right relationship with the land. When we restore our belonging to one another and to the earth, we begin to mend the fractures that capitalism has profited from - and we re-enter the original covenant of reciprocity: I belong to you, you belong to me, and together we belong to the earth.
In Bali, the concept of gotong royong - mutual aid, working together for the good of all - infuses daily life. Across the globe, similar principles of reciprocity, kinship, and shared responsibility sustain resistance and resilience.
Community is both the medicine for our inner wounds and the model for our collective survival. If capitalism thrives on separation, then the most radical act is to remember that we belong to one another.
An Invitation to Remember Together
If this stirs something in you - a longing for deeper connection, a remembering of the way your body settles when it is truly held, or a desire to be in sacred reciprocity with the earth herself - I invite you to step into that field of belonging with me.
My upcoming retreat is a living experiment in community as medicine. Through shared practice, ritual, and embodied exploration, we will remember together what has always been true: that healing is not a solitary act, but a collective one. That we belong not only to each other, but also to the land that holds us.
References
Bittles, A. H. (2012). Consanguinity in Context. Cambridge University Press.
Cacioppo, J. T., & Cacioppo, S. (2018). Loneliness: Human Nature and the Need for Social Connection. W.W. Norton & Company.
Durkheim, E. (1897/2006). On Suicide. Penguin Classics.
Kanahele, G.S. (1986) Ku Kanaka: Stand Tall — A Search for Hawaiian Values. University of Hawaii Press, Honolulu.
Kimmerer, R.W. (2013) Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants. Milkweed Editions, Minneapolis.
Garnett, S.T., Burgess, N.D., Fa, J.E., Fernández-Llamazares, Á., Molnár, Z., Robinson, C.J., Watson, J.E.M., Zander, K.K., Austin, B., Brondizio, E.S., Collier, N.F., Duncan, T., Ellis, E., Geyle, H., Jackson, L., Jonas, H., Malmer, P., McGowan, P.J.K., Parker, C., Satterfield, T., Shrestha, R.K., Wang, Z., & Leiper, I. (2018) A spatial overview of the global importance of Indigenous lands for conservation. Nature Sustainability, 1, pp. 369–374. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41893-018-0100-6
Hawkley, L. C., & Cacioppo, J. T. (2010). Loneliness matters: a theoretical and empirical review of consequences and mechanisms. Annals of Behavioral Medicine, 40(2), 218–227. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12160-010-9210-8
Mbiti, J. S. (1990). African Religions and Philosophy. Heinemann.
Metge, J. (1995). New Growth From Old: The Whānau in the Modern World. Victoria University Press.
Rose, D.B. (1996) Nourishing Terrains: Australian Aboriginal Views of Landscape and Wilderness. Australian Heritage Commission, Canberra.
Tutu, D. (1999). No Future Without Forgiveness. Rider.
World Health Organization. (2023). Social isolation and loneliness. Retrieved from https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/social-isolation-and-loneliness