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  • How We Show Up

  • Reclaiming Family, Friendship, and Community
  • By: Mia Birdsong
  • Narrated by: Mia Birdsong
  • Length: 6 hrs and 46 mins
  • 4.9 out of 5 stars (16 ratings)

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How We Show Up

By: Mia Birdsong
Narrated by: Mia Birdsong
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Publisher's Summary

An invitation to community and models for connection

After almost every presentation activist and writer Mia Birdsong gives to executives, think tanks, and policy makers, one of those leaders quietly confesses how much they long for the profound community she describes. They have family, friends, and colleagues, yet they still feel like they're standing alone. They're "winning" at the American Dream, but they're lonely, disconnected, and unsatisfied.

It seems counterintuitive that living the "good life" - the well-paying job, the nuclear family, the upward mobility - can make us feel isolated and unhappy. But in a divided America, where only a quarter of us know our neighbors and everyone is either a winner or a loser, we've forgotten the key element that helped us make progress in the first place: community.

In this provocative, groundbreaking work, Mia Birdsong shows that what separates us isn't only the ever-present injustices built around race, class, gender, values, and beliefs, but also our denial of our interdependence and need for belonging. In response to the fear and discomfort we feel, we've built walls, and instead of leaning on each other, we find ourselves leaning on concrete.

Through research, interviews, and stories of lived experience, How We Show Up returns us to our inherent connectedness where we find strength, safety, and support in vulnerability and generosity, in asking for help, and in being accountable. Showing up - literally and figuratively - points us toward the promise of our collective vitality and leads us to the liberated well-being we all want.

©2020 Mia Birdsong (P)2020 Hachette Go

Critic Reviews

"Mia Birdsong's deeply personal book calls forth a deeply public truth: that we're all better off when we're all better off. Her search for the meaning of community and belonging will inspire Americans from many walks to show up in a new way." (Eric Liu, CEO of Citizen University and author of Become America)

"This book is a blueprint to being vulnerable enough to love harder, dig deeper and be unafraid to redefine and expand our relationships. A beautiful and helpful piece of work. " (Tiq Milan, writer and LGBTQ advocate)

"This is a the book we've all been waiting for about the 'craft'--and that's what Mia Birdsong so insightfully names it--of creating community. She's a master craftswoman herself--gathering stories of such intentionality, honesty, and reliability that you will immediately start living your life more radically and reaping the rewards." (Courtney E. Martin, author of The New Better Off: Reinventing the American Dream)

"Mia Birdsong is one of our most important thinkers and strategists for how we build structures to support the families that we actually have and the kinds of families we would build if we weren't all so obsessed with respectability. This book gives us both the vision and the blueprint for how to do this in ways that feel sustainable, and quite frankly otherworldly. I left this book feeling something I haven't felt in a long time...hopeful." (Brittney Cooper, author of Eloquent Rage: A Black Feminist Discovers Her Superpower)

What listeners say about How We Show Up

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Extraordinary and powerful

A deeply moving ode to community, instructive and affirming, and shared with generosity, care, curiosity, humour, and conviction. Made my heart swell with love for those I am in community with, and excited me about showing up more and more fully, with openness to learning and sharing and connecting in the sticky, tricky times and the joyful times. I loved this so much.

Mia’s reading is full of the warmth of her writing, and I felt honoured to hear her speak these words.

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Life changing

An inspiring exploration of the ways we can reject the aspects of dominant culture that don't serve us so that we can live in ways that nourish us and enrich our lives.

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