How We Show Up: Building Community in These Fractured Times

A provocative, essential guide to showing up for each other and cultivating community, from activist, community organizer and thought leader whose viral TED talk has been viewed more than 1.5 million times

From Occupy to Black Lives Matter to the various marches and protests, we have had some powerful moments over the last decade that have galvanized and created new, but brief, feelings of community. Many of us, however, haven't figured out how to spark that feeling on our own, or how to build off or sustain those moments. We are longing for a kind of sugar-borrowing and stoop-sitting closeness we imagine existed in the 50s.

In How We Show Up, community visionary Mia Birdsong delivers a compelling, timely understanding of what true, authentic family and community can look like -- outside of the 2-parent, 2.5 kids norm we all have in our heads. Today we have more single parents, couples who raise children outside of marriage, and more people growing older alone. Tackling topics like creating safe spaces, creativity in community, raising children in community, and more, How We Show Up is the antidote to the social fractures we face in our nation today. By sharing stories and actionable advice, and taking cues from marginalized communities--people of color, women, LGBTQ -- Mia Birdsong offers us the blueprint we need to build true community wherever we are.

Mia Birdsong is a family and community visionary, activist and storyteller. She is Co-director of Family Story and speaks on economic inequality, race, gender and building community at universities and conferences across the country. She co-founded Canerow, a resource for people dedicated to raising children of color in a world that reflects the spectrum of who they are, and sits on the Board of Directors of Forward Together, a nonprofit dedicated to winning rights, resources, and recognition for all families.