In Which the Introvert Reaches Out (and an In-Person-ish* Book Club)

So, just in case you’re in a hurry, here’s what I want people in the Sioux Falls area to know is happening:

The book club will run year-round, meet once a month, and discuss books that examine care experiences — from self-help to cultural commentary to fiction and memoir. It’s for anyone who wants to elevate the discussion around care work and acknowledge that we bring our whole selves to care — not just our hearts and souls, but our intellect and aspirations as well. We’ll meet the first Monday of the month starting in July, and our first book is Nightbitch by Rachel Yoder. We’ll be meeting in a child-friendly location for those who need to bring their littles or other care charges with them. DM me if you’re interested in joining, or click on the image above and request to be added to the private Facebook group.

I first met Kelsie Thomas of Transitions: Doula & Life Services when I was pregnant with my first son. She was there through his LONG labor and eventual delivery by C-section, and she also spent hours with my husband and me preparing us in the months before his debut. For my second pregnancy, I opted to attempt a VBAC (vaginal birth after Caesarean) rather than do a scheduled C-section. I hired Kelsie again to help us prepare for a birth that might end up looking very different from my first. (And it did — my second-born gave me the “textbook birth” I’d expected with my first, all the stages of labor and then a baby pushed out of my you-know-where at the end). I was so glad I’d opted to prepare for a VBAC, because my second-born came two and a half weeks before his due date — meaning I wouldn’t have made it to my scheduled C-section (which was set for the day after his due date) anyway!

A few years later, my secondborn and Kelsie’s firstborn attended the same preschool. If I caught her in the halls before or after dropoff, we often exchanged updates on books we were reading or had come across that centered on care work. I think the experience of working with a birth doula was one of the first I had that awakened me to the importance of care and support for those who care. She texted me an idea about starting a book club centered on care books, which are having a bit of a “moment” right now. (I used to think I was noticing all these amazing books about motherhood for the first time because now I AM a mother, but it turns out these types of books really were actually few and far between before the last ten years or so. So, as someone whose always found great solace in books, I chose to become a mother at the right time!)

In the first few years of being a SAHM, I felt incredibly isolated. Despite living in a politically conservative state, it was also the state that had the lowest rate of at-home caregivers in the nation.1 So I found my community through books — parenting books, memoirs, fiction. There were people out there grappling with the same things I was grappling with, and that gave me great comfort, even if I could only access those voices for half an hour a day during my son’s nap!

Fast forward to the second Trump presidency, which is full of rhetoric about family values but totally devoid of any support for actual caregivers. We’ve come through the isolation of the pandemic and are rebuilding our networks again. And something that is becoming increasingly clear to my husband and me is that we are healthier — as individuals, as communities, as a nation — if we invest more energy in face-to-face community building. Perhaps somewhat ironically, being on Substack and reading from others who have been working in this space for much longer, has ultimately driven me AWAY from social media and my phone in favor of more time spent in “the real world.” Because I have come to believe that our collective isolation as demonstrated in the various “information/misinformation” silos that have sprung up online is a significant contributor to getting us where we are today. One of the most powerful ways to combat this is through in-person interactions. It’s harder to demonize someone when you look into their eyes.

When my husband and I were having one of our many conversations about this, he asked, “What can we do to support these in-person communities?”2

And I said, “Well, there’s that caregiving book club I’ve wanted to do.”

He said, “When can I give you time to get that going?”

Although it was a year after Kelsie had initially floated the idea to me, I texted her about it again. Turns out she was still thinking about it, too. We finally got together in-person to brainstorm getting it off the ground last week, a meeting that flew by with logistical questions and division of tasks, all enthusiastically punctuated by stories about our kids. If anything, the meeting between three moms/professionals/readers cemented the importance of these moments of mutual support and sharing.

So, apparently, care-based book clubs take even longer to gestate than actual babies. :) But I’m so excited to see it coming into the world at last.

*in-person-ish because there likely will be a “hybrid” option for joining the book club online.

1 This was in 2018. I’m not sure if the numbers have changed since then.

2 We’ve also been adding people we’d like to get to know better to “dinner-guest” lists and set dates for hosting at our place. This is something I never really saw myself doing, and we’re still getting it off the ground as a habit. But at some point, the need for strong community outweighed all my excuses about the house not being big enough or clean enough or there not being enough time.