I used to think survival was a solo sport.
Thought healing meant disappearing
until I had good news to report.
Until the bleeding stopped.
Until the smile came back.
Until I could walk into a room
and not apologize with my eyes.

But that was before I understood
what love looks like
when it shows up wearing the face of community.

The kind of love that does not need you fixed.
The kind that knocks,
not to check if you are productive—
but to ask if you have eaten.
If you have slept.
If you remembered to breathe today.

This is not a poem about romance.
This is a poem about the ones who stayed.
The ones who saw the war
and still chose to come close.
Who said,
“I cannot fight your demons,
but I will hold the door open
while you do.”

The love of community is not always loud.
Sometimes it is a shared playlist.
A casserole dropped off without fanfare.
A text that just says “still here”
when you haven’t posted in days.
It is someone learning your silence
well enough to read it
like scripture.

I have been broken in ways I will never name on a stage.
And I have also been rebuilt
by hands that did not flinch
when they touched my cracks.

That is love.
And it is not accidental.
It is cultivated.
Chosen.
Messy.
Miraculous.

Community love says:
“You are not heavy—
we just carry differently here.”
It says:
“We do not leave anyone behind.”
It says:
“You do not have to earn rest.”

Let me tell you something
they do not teach in school:

Healing does not happen in isolation.
Healing happens in the circle.
At the potluck.
On the group thread.
In the shared hoodie.
At the protest line.
On the porch steps
with somebody’s grandma
who hands you sweet tea and says,
“You don’t need to explain. Just sit.”

Love by community is
someone learning your pronouns
before you had the words.
It is the friend who walks into your hospital room
with their own blanket,
ready to stay the night.

It is the uncle who finally said “I’m proud of you.”
The elder who pulled you aside and said,
“You are not crazy, baby—just awake.”

That kind of love
makes it harder to hate yourself.
Because if they can love me this undone,
this raw,
this uncertain—
then maybe I am not a lost cause after all.

The love of community
helped me rewrite my name.
It reminded me that the story is still mine
even if it was once written in someone else’s hand.
It said:
“You are not too much.
You are just enough—
and then some.”

So no, I do not believe in doing this alone anymore.
I believe in potlucks.
In shared playlists.
In group chats full of memes and grace.
In long hugs.
In small nods that say, “I see you.”

I believe in the kind of love
that costs nothing
but changes everything.

Becoming was never just about me.
It is about who I become
because of who I am loved by.

And I have been loved
by warriors in softness,
by quiet revolutionaries
who teach with casseroles and side-eyes and grace,
by people who looked at me and saw
a mirror worth holding onto.

So if you ask me where I found my healing,
I will not point to pills or pages or prayer.
I will point to people.
To the village.
To the messy, loud, beautiful tribe
that let me come undone
and still called me whole.

This is for them.
This is for us.
This is for every single person
who ever loved someone
back into themselves.

That is the kind of love
the world needs more of.

And I—
I am just trying
to give back
what I survived on.