Rising Rooted

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Every February, we’re bombarded with one version of love: romantic, monogamous, usually heterosexual, sealed with a diamond ring or a $6 Hallmark card.

But love was never meant to be this small. Love is the way we hold each other in grief, the way we pass down recipes, the way we text “got home safe?” Love is what binds communities together, what fuels movements, what makes survival not just possible, but meaningful.

And yet, we live in a world designed to make us feel separate, unworthy, and alone.

Loneliness isn’t just a personal struggle—it’s a political outcome. Capitalism, colonialism, and patriarchy have built a system where connection is a privilege, not a given. And that’s not an accident. Because disconnected people are easier to control, easier to sell to, and less likely to organize.

But here’s the thing: they will never be able to fully erase our longing for each other. Love, community, and connection? They’re our most natural instincts. And no system—not even capitalism—can take them away completely.

***Check out my other posts about attachment theory and how it can help us understand our patterns in relationships.

The System Loves Me Not: Why We Struggle to Feel Connected

If you’ve ever felt like love is hard to find, hard to trust, or just… hard, you’re not alone. The world we live in makes attachment tricky.

💔 Capitalism thrives on scarcity. It convinces us there’s never enough—money, time, security, or love. It keeps us working ourselves to exhaustion, so we’re too tired for deep relationships. It makes us compete for resources when we could be sharing them. It sells us on romantic love as a solution to systemic problems—as if a partner will fix what capitalism broke.

💔 Colonialism disrupted communal ways of living. It ripped people from ancestral lands, severed kinship networks, and replaced community-based care with Western individualism. In many cultures, raising children, grieving, celebrating, and healing were all collective experiences. Colonialism replaced that with the nuclear family model, which isolates us and forces relationships to bear more weight than they were meant to.

💔 Patriarchy teaches us to fear vulnerability. It makes men suppress their emotions and burdens women with unpaid emotional labor. It keeps us stuck in roles that make genuine connection difficult, encouraging performance over presence in relationships.

💔 Normativity pits us against each other. From birth, we are measured against a “normal” baseline—a myth that tells us we should hit certain milestones, achieve specific goals, look a particular way. But who decided what’s normal? And why are we measuring fish based on monkey metrics? Normativity keeps us competing rather than connecting—as if love, success, or belonging were trophies we had to win instead of birthrights we already hold.

And yet, despite all of this…

Love persists.

Every time we show up for each other, every time we resist the urge to isolate, every time we choose care over competition, we are disrupting the very systems that want us to feel alone.

Loneliness is Not Your Fault (But Healing is a Group Project)

We are told healing is an individual journey. That it’s about self-improvement, productivity, and “doing the work” alone.

But the truth is? Healing is a group project.

We don’t heal in isolation—we heal in connection. Our nervous systems regulate through relationships. Our sense of self is formed through community. We need mirrors, reminders, people who reflect back to us who we are when we forget.

So if you feel alone, it’s not because you’re failing at relationships. It’s because the world makes it too damn hard to find each other.

But that doesn’t mean we stop trying.

Reclaiming Love: How to Break the Isolation Cycle

Valentine’s Day tells us to measure love by roses, dates, and grand gestures. But real love is often quieter, less flashy, and far more radical.

Instead of asking, “Who loves me?” try asking:

• Where have I already experienced love today? In a shared laugh? In a memory? In the way your pet follows you from room to room?
• Who in my life might be lonely, and how can I reach out? Love is just as much about giving as it is receiving.
• How can I expand my definition of love? Maybe love is solidarity. Maybe it’s mutual aid. Maybe it’s making soup for a sick friend or offering a listening ear.

You don’t have to “find” love. You can create it.

Community Building is the Most Radical Love Story of All

The most rebellious thing we can do in a system that thrives on isolation is to build connections.

❤️ Love is resistance. Choosing to care in a world that tells us to compete is radical.

❤️ Interdependence is revolutionary. It dismantles the idea that we have to “earn” love or security.

❤️ Creating community dismantles oppressive systems. Because people who trust each other, organize. People who feel safe, dream. And people who feel seen, fight for something better.

Love is not just a feeling. It is a structure of support. A practice of showing up. A force that refuses to let people slip through the cracks.

And that is the most romantic thing of all.

Your Love Story Starts Here

This season, don’t just look for love—create it.

💛 Be the person who checks in.

💛 Be the person who notices when someone is struggling.

💛 Be the person who reminds others that they are not alone.

Because love isn’t just found in couples. It’s found in friendships, in communities, in the radical act of believing that we belong.

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If this spoke to something in you, there are a few paths you can follow from here:

Each door leads somewhere different. It is my hope that all of them lead back to you.

<3 Rachel