Living within rising fascism carries an experience of the inescapable, even when we aren’t direct targets, as we contemplate if and when we will be targeted — and how and if we can fight it.

Before I continue, a quick disclaimer: I’m not a citizen or resident of the US, so I do not believe it is my place to say what citizens and residents of the US should do in terms of taking action right now. I feel hope seeing the mobilization of community resistance, and I’ve long been inspired by civil rights leaders from the US. As someone who lives in and holds citizenship of Canada, I confess that I often feel like we’re in that slow-boiling pot up here, and every day I consider what actions I will take to stop the spread of fascism here.

Unless you hold a tremendous amount of privilege, you probably know what it’s like to live through experiences that feel inescapable.

When we feel trapped, we become highly vigilant, sometimes even consumed by rage or fear, and yet may struggle to protect ourselves or know what to do to reach safety.

We may feel opposing impulses to push back at those in power, and to survive by submitting to the will of individuals and systems that appear to have more power than we do.

We may desire to run away, and yet feel compelled to stay and fight.

We may want to get involved but not know where to start, and decide that it doesn’t really affect us directly, so we ignore it.

We may end up suppressing any urge to move or take action because no course of action feels truly safe.

In the language of Somatic Experiencing™, we explore the “inescapable attack” or inescapable threat through the context of animal attacks on humans in the wild. But there are so many other causes of the somatic sensations of feeling trapped: systemic oppression, living in a physically and/or emotionally abusive relationship, poverty, sickness and/or disability, war (including civil war), genocide, being bullied, being cancelled — the list goes on.

It’s almost irrelevant what the cause of this experience is: the sensations of it are the same. And, our nervous systems respond accordingly.

Living in compulsory, patriarchal monogamy, I felt trapped. It wasn’t just the structure and form of the relationship; it was the way my husband held me to his expectations of what being married would mean, and the discomfort he had with my creative endeavours, layered on top of my experience as an immigrant who felt reliant on him as I navigated a country and culture I was unfamiliar with (Canada) and waited for my paperwork to come through. My health suffered, my creativity went into a collapse, and I spent so many years dissociated as a means to endure the situation that I have only very foggy memories of my 20s.

When I left the marriage and entered into the freedom of exploring my queerness, my sexuality, and my polyamory in earnest, every day was filled with the ecstasy of at last, I am free to be my self!

But, even in my polyamorous journey, I ran into experiences where I felt trapped. Controlling metamours, emotionally unavailable partners I was deeply in love with, the feeling that I might have to push my needs and boundaries aside if I wanted to be included, and bullying from people who felt that the soloness in my polyamory made me a threat.

More than once, I have squashed my impulses to leave a painful situation in a relationship, hoping that the payoff of continued connection and intimacy would be worth it. The stress of these situations seemed less painful than the pain of being alone. Instead, my nervous system responded by going into collapse. In one instance, I actually physically collapsed stepping off a bus, colliding into the bus shelter as I passed out on the sidewalk. This incident became a catalyst for me, and I began seeking support to understand what exactly was happening within me that made me feel so trapped, when there wasn’t truly anyone keeping me stuck where I was.

Where I had once been frozen and unsure about how to move forward, I got support to get clear on what I needed to do, and take action to set the boundaries I needed for myself, address the stress, and focus on nurturing the relationships and friendships in my life that did not seek to control how I showed up in my life. I got external support to ‘escape’ the perceived threat, and over time, found my nervous system emerging from years of collapse and back into connection.

Navigating our way out of any perceived threat can be complex. It doesn’t matter if the source of that threat is a partner who guilt-trips us when we don’t meet their expectations, someone bullying us on the internet, or a militant force making its way through the streets. We may not know the way out or which direction to take. Even identifying the threat can be challenging, as so many forms of systemic oppression have been normalized. “Boys will be boys” is often used to excuse a man's harmful behaviour. Leftist and radical spaces can sometimes slide into policing people’s behaviour every bit as much as conservative and fascist ones do. And, some threats come on like that metaphorical slow-boiling pot that the frog doesn’t realize is killing him, till it’s too late.

For centuries, colonial, white supremacist, patriarchal, capitalist/oligarchal systems have built a structure that is based on threat. It’s this structure that we refer to when we talk about Empire. If you aren’t a rich white, cis-het man (or allied to one), you are a target for being controlled, exploited, enslaved, and killed. It’s been happening for centuries, but social media makes it more visible. Every day for the past few years, we have witnessed that trans rights are under threat, that misogyny continues to affect all women, that patriarchy traps men into increasingly rigid parameters of masculinity, that hate crimes are on the rise, and that in Canada, the USA, and Europe, Black, Brown, Indigenous, and diasporic people (such as the Romani) are murdered and go missing at much higher rates than light or white-skinned people.

In my coaching work in non-monogamy, one of the primary things I explore is how to rewire the mono-normative thinking that often leads us to be controlling or self-abandoning in our non-monogamous relationships. I resonate with the saying, “silence the colonizer in your head,” and apply that to silencing the voice of the monogamy hangover that carries over when people begin exploring polyamory — and that can be very loud when there’s any kind of relationship stress.

To survive the trap of Empire, we have to silence the voice of Empire in our heads. Many of us who dream of a better world still carry with us a colonial hangover that continues to push us into being small, dissociated, disembodied, and to be led by fear. It’s a hangover that can push us to behave like colonizers ourselves, and attempt to get free by hoarding power.

I truly believe that all of us, myself included, have to take responsibility for our own personal work to overcome that internalized narrative that believes we’ll only be free of the cage when we’re the ones holding the keys to its door.

This is why I love somatics and working with my nervous system. Because when the nervous system learns to recognize that safety does not, in fact, rest in holding power over and placing others into positions of power under, everything begins to change. The ways we may have internalized colonized thinking (neurocolonization) begin to unravel, and it becomes much, much harder for the systems of power hoarding to make us feel truly trapped.

If you’ve never thought about your nervous system before, let me offer you some non-jargony ways to think about it. Your nervous system has gears that it shifts into in response to what you are doing and experiencing: connection, mobilization, shutdown, and rest. We move through these four states every day: connecting with loved ones, taking action towards our goals, disconnecting after periods of stress (think of when you’re doomscrolling at the end of the day), and resting when we sleep or meditate.

Each of these states has its purpose and reason. None of them are bad.

But, if we are always mobilized, we burn out. If we are always shut down, we disconnect from relationships. If we are always resting, we lose connection. If we are always orienting to connection, we may surrender our autonomy without realizing we’ve done so. Moving between these states, in ways that are congruent with what’s happening around us, is vital.

This ability of our nervous system to shift between states is the essence of resilience. And, resistance to the systems of harm currently inflicting terror on the world relies on our capacity for somatic resilience. To survive, and thrive beyond the crumbling of empires asks us to resolve the inner experience of fearing that inescapable threat. And that means we need to practice navigating out of the state of collapse and into positive, relationally connected mobilization.

SOMATIC ORIENTING PRACTICE

Next time you feel stuck, try this little somatic practice.

You can do this practice seated or lying down.

Put your feet somewhere comfortable. If having your feet touch the ground is more comfortable, you can sit or lie with your knees bent and your feet flat on the earth. Or if you prefer to sit cross-legged, make sure that your sit bones feel grounded and your spine can elongate with ease.

However your body is positioned, make sure this is a position where you can rest without tension.

Take a moment to breathe in without forcing your breath. As you exhale, invite the parts of you feeling tension to let go. If it’s helpful for you, try an audible sigh or hum as you exhale, to encourage more ease as you let your body drop into the caress of gravity.

Gently place a hand on your thighs or knees, and feel the weight of your hand against your legs. You exist within this body, a body that has journeyed with you through so much. Say outloud, or think about, something you are grateful to your Body for.

Now, place a hand on your heart or your belly, and gently pat or rub the area. Feel the warmth your touch brings to your torso, and notice the sensations of blood flowing through your core, as it does day in and day out. Say, or think about, something that you are grateful to your Heart for.

Keeping your eyes open or closed, cup a hand behind your neck or gently touch your face, forehead, or eyebrows. Allow this touch to be comforting, soothing, calming. Notice how your thoughts become more easeful with this touch, and say or think about something that you are grateful to your Mind for.

Let your hands rest by your side, and gently breathe in and out effortlessly, without forcing your breath. As you breathe in, invite your body to be more open, invite your spine to elongate gently, your shoulders to roll back, and your gaze to move slightly upwards. You might imagine or visualize the air that you are breathing into your lungs, the oxygen given to us by the plants, and then the air that you exhale, containing carbon that the plants will breathe. Paying attention to how you breathe can be a reminder of your connection to the ecosystem around you. You can say or think about anything in your life that you are grateful for. As you complete this practice, gently move your body.

Take your time, and look around you. Drink in your surroundings and pay attention to anything that pleases or is beautiful to you.

When you feel ready, move your body around, shake out your limbs, or dance for a few minutes, and notice if how you feel now is different from how you felt before you did this practice.

Thank you for engaging with Radical Relating. Please follow and subscribe for more on somatics, non-monogamy, and liberatory relationships.

You can also find me at radicalrelating.ca, where you can learn more about my somatic coaching and workshops for non-monogamy and relationship anarchy.

Your support means the world to me. Together, we can grow and sustain loving, kind, and compassionate relationships for a better world.

One of the primary things that drew me to polyamory specifically — as opposed to other iterations of non-monogamy like swinging — was the potential for building a strong community from a network of polyamorous relationships.

With the social media trend du jour being a comparison of 2016 to 2026, let me tell you- looking back at my life in 2016 has been a stark reminder of why I abandoned “community” and “villaging”, and went on to revisit what I was doing in my polyamory.

In this moment, when so many are seeking community and village-building as a survival response to crumbling systems around them, it feels important to offer counterpoints and share the red flags I’ve stumbled upon in my own anarchist quest to build community through my polyamorous relationships.

TL;DR version: Once Upon A Time, I thought I had found a community. What I had actually found was a would-be cult populated with high-control personalities, none of whom seemed capable of engaging with one another (or anyone else) in a truly trauma-sensitive way, nor of relinquishing power — many of whom were somehow involved in my polycule at the time.

When I stepped away, I shifted my focus to personal healing, understanding why I had gotten so drawn in, and learning how to show up as a better friend.

So, here’s the long version.

As a solo polyamorist (and as someone who has been shouting from the rooftops about it for almost 14 years now), I will be the first person to say this. When you’re polyamorous (and especially when you are solo), you absolutely need community. You need peers (who you aren’t fucking or dating) to help you understand your experience, and you absolutely need friends you can talk to who aren’t going to balk about you dating multiple people.

I’ve always valued community. I grew up with a global sense of my community - I have a global sangham through my spiritual path, and through my years living in Kuwait, I made friends from all over the world. My cultural roots are communitarian (Greek and Romani), despite intergenerational wounds of loss of community through wars and genocides. This has always been in stark contrast to my father’s very British and stoic family (who tend to forget to let everyone know when someone passes away).

Moving to North America, I felt void of community. It wasn’t just that I didn’t know who Mr Dressup was, or had never watched a hockey game. People around me didn’t relate to me the way I wanted to relate to them. I was used to relating generously - feeding my friends and being fed by them, sharing the highs and lows. Canada was a culture shock to my system , and I struggled to find spaces that replicated the kind of friendship I had come to know.

When I was married, part of what I yearned for when we started talking about having threesomes was someone else to share with. I was painfully lonely in my marriage, and lacked friendships that had depth to them. The ‘third’ I sought was someone who I hoped could be a lover, but more importantly, a friend. A friend who might understand me far more than my husband. Someone who might join me in sharing not just a partner, but meals and adventures, and in creating warm, cozy social experiences for others and with others.

Even after my husband and I split, and I began exploring polyamory as a solo, single-ish person, that yearning for the closeness, the family-of-choice, remained strong.

Something I’ve seen happen far too often in polyamory is that we slide into relationships-by-proxy.

Oh, you’re polyamorous? So am I! We must have so much in common!

Oh, look, we’ve dated all the same people, surely we will get along!

I, too, have done this, most especially in the years after I divorced my husband and came out to my mother (in short, she was not supportive, and sought to have me institutionalized for my queerness). Ending one of my core life relationships and losing another left me with a huge void, one that I hoped to fill with loving, supportive polyamorous people (and hopefully, partners too).

There’s an undeniable delight when you find other people whose experiences are in any way similar to your own. The intoxication of this can be mutual, and the platonic new-relationship-energy can carry us just as romantic new-relationship-energy does — until we bump into our incompatibilities and conflicts.

Between 2012 and 2016, I threw myself into what I called “community”. I attended every polyamorous and sex-positive event I could, and even started organizing a few. I was a regular at the polyamory discussion group in Vancouver, took on organizing the polyamory float in the Vancouver Pride Parade (getting DJs and a dancing platform together!) and co-producing various dance events with different individuals and groups around the city. Being involved and having a visible role meant I didn’t have to look for people; they would come to me. My introvert self found it both a relief that I didn’t have to introduce myself to strangers, and simultaneously overwhelming AF when strangers introduced themselves to me. I was hungry to build connections, and through these connections, I thought I had found something that felt like safety.

Eventually, through all these events, I connected with a collection of people who seemed serious about building an intentional community. They talked about it as a village. But a sexy village. A community that would be sex positive and welcoming of everyone’s queerness and kinks. But what started in joyful moments on sexually-charged dance floors would go on to take a turn to the dark side, the culty side.

This is where things get complicated, and let me be forthright that I’m not going to go into details or name names because, quite frankly, I still don’t feel safe around the people who held power in this “village” space. The new-relationship-energy I felt with them crumbled in the face of high-control personalities, conflicting values, and emotional abuse directed at me when I spoke up. I have gone to great lengths to distance myself from any past association with them. So, despite drafting out three pages of the story, I’m not going to share it. Instead, I’m going to share with you my conclusions, and what I now do to grow community.

What makes a community a community, and not just a gathering of people doing the same thing, is the ability to navigate conflict and difference, and to stay connected through that process. To meet conflict without trying to control the people you’re in conflict with.

I think about how Colonialism teaches that relationship is acquired through power, while cults say you get to have relationship through conformity. Community, on the other hand, says relationships start with sharing power while celebrating diversity—and giving a fuck about the well-being, feelings, and inner workings of everyone in the ecosystem.

Community relationship is rooted in conflict intimacy, and that’s a skill we have to cultivate individually. It’s a somatic skill, one that asks us to hold the energies of mobilization within our systems, whilst also staying relational.

This is counter to the way dominant culture has taught us to navigate conflict, which is to adhere to being right. “Being Right” is a power move, where we position ourselves in superiority — and take any challenge to our rightness, or invitation to humility, as an attack on our power and by extension, our selfhood.

As a very slight tangent, I see this is a dynamic that is reinforced by a lot of new age spirituality, neo-tantra, and fascist appropriations of yoga. The root teachings of yogic and tantric traditions that address polarity, especially the shaivite and shakta traditions, present it from a non-dual perspective. That is, the whole point is to transcend the polarity and to experience instead the unity of seemingly different and ‘opposite’ energies. Instead, those who are committed to “being right” and using systems of supremacy to control and coerce, use polarity work to accentuate differences between genders, sex, etc, because that then upholds the power over/under systems that supremacy culture thrives on.

I say this as someone who spent years working on growing a village with whom to survive and thrive:

A village of lovers may not be the solution you hoped for.

Leaning on your polycule alone may be just as precarious as relying on a single romantic partnership through apocalyptic times.

My experience of this attempt to forge a village via polyamory changed the way I engaged with the whole idea of ‘community’. It opened my eyes to the fallacy of trying to build something new while still entrenched in the ways of the old. After years of describing myself as desiring kitchen-table polyamory, I let go of being attached to that and started to embrace my dating and sexual relationships existing seperate from my friendships and social connections.

I now feel about many so-called ‘community’ projects and the colonial systems they attempt to replace the same way I feel about many ‘men’s circles’ and internalized patriarchy: brand new packaging, same old taste. So, what do I do instead?

I focus on friendship.

Specifically, I focus on being a good friend to the people whose actions show me they are safe to be friends with.

In the wake of expulsion from the fledgling, proto-cult, polyamorous ‘village’ experiment I fell into a decade ago, I became more discerning about whom I connected with socially. I spent months, years in therapy reflecting on what had led me to surrender so much agency to high-control personalities I mistook to be friends. What attachment wounds did I hold around community and extended family that had primed me for the experience of mistaking the dysfunction for safety?

I decided I needed more people around me with emotional maturity, people who could hold nuance, express conflict while keeping love in their hearts, and who are willing to go deep with me. We may have different ways of living our life, various spiritual practices or approaches to intimate relationships, but the common factor is that we give a fuck about one another — and that doesn’t change when we confront a difference.

I write in my dating profiles that my polyamory is about quality, not quantity, and that my relational ecosystem is focused on friendship. The people I have sex with are not a default priority, and I have found myself with a desire not to push or force relationships with the extended polycule of anyone I date. This practice has not only brought relief to my heart but clarity to my thoughts and given me the spaciousness to move more authentically towards an actual community of authentic relationships — not a de facto assumed community-by-proxy. That isn’t to say that I don’t give a fuck about the people in my extended network of polyamorous connections: I know that we are in a shared ecosystem together. Instead, I practice recognizing where we are, rather than projecting expectations of where I want (or don’t want) us to be. Where relationships (romantic and platonic) used to be a source of stress, they are now a source of expansion, possibility, and liberation.

Today, I have a plethora of friends who understand me far more than my partners or lovers. People who join me in sharing meals, adventures, and with whom I create warm, cozy social experiences for others and with others.

I could write a short essay on each one of the people I consider close friends. I feel blessed to have these close friendships, and I recognize that none of them happened by accident. They’re the result of mutual investments of time, energy, love, and a desire to understand and support one another.

The biggest teacher for me about what really makes a community has come from my spiritual sangham. Many of the people in this sangham have known each other for over 20 years, some for over 40, and they still engage with one another with joy and enthusiasm. There may be debates about who makes the best chai or whose dal was the right amount of spicy, but there is always an overwhelming feeling that we are all there in support of one another’s greatness. There’s no competition for control. No one’s trying to be in charge of everyone else. There’s respect for each person’s gifts, and a desire to support one another when we’re bumping against our personal edges. The collaboration among everyone, from minor tasks like rearranging the cafe seating to major ones like planning a new program, blows me away. A new idea or suggestion from an individual isn’t seen as a challenge; it is welcomed as a gift. Feedback is embraced with love and humility. And even in the midst of experiences of rupture, there’s a desire for connection and understanding.

If you’re someone whose motivation for polyamory has included the desire to find village, I hope that you are not deterred by what I share. Rather, I hope this invites you to reflect on potential red flags and to consider how to identify and navigate the arc of each individual connection, rather than assuming community-by-proxy.

I still believe that the relational skills that support us in our non-monogamy are the same ones that support us to build community. I just suggest that maybe these don’t overlap or intertwine as much as some might like them to — and that there’s nothing wrong with this.

So, consider this an invitation to make 2026 a year where you don’t focus on “building community”, but rather, focus on being a good friend, being a good neighbour, and being someone who is safe to be in community with.

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