How We Show Up

Reclaiming Family, Friendship, and Community

By: Mia Birdsong

Narrated by: Mia Birdsong

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)

Amazing

Hopeful, grounding, and inspiring. A must read for coping with the ever changing world. Community is key.

Great read!

Great book, I think I learned a lot. Views that I didn't see before, or didn't realize I was seeing. Very well read. I will definitely recommend!

Life changing in a difficult world

this is a book that is the ultimate elixir for lonely people to do better for themselves and the world through the power of community. must read for the times we are in...

What America Needs

As a mental health therapist and trauma resilience educator, I can become bogged down with experiences of human injury, even though I love the people, the work and the science. How We Show Up is the blast of courage and authenticity that I need to inform and fortify my soul. This book is where I want to live. Birdsong called me to task so many times I lost count. How Birdsong shows up certainly authorizes her to do so. Gotta go. I'm about to read it again.

I want everything in this book in my life

I started recommending this book to other people I am loosely connected to about a third of the way in, and now that I have finished I am eager to start implementing some plans to manifest this in my local & virtual community spaces.

My only complaint is the audiobook format, being narrated by the author instead of a professional voice actor, made it hard to distinguish which of the many people being quoted were "speaking" when it wasn't the author. This confused me several times when I had paused the audiobook near when a perspective change was happening. With as much weaving in of other ways of being that there were (and done expertly from a writing/storytelling perspective), the skill of distinguishing the vocal nuances that identify the different speakers to a listener is NOT one of this authors many high-level competencies. I wish the audiobook had been done more similarly to "You Are Your Best Thing" by Tamara Burke & Brene Brown, where many (I don't think all) of the essays were read by people with the vocal skills that really brought the stories a fullness even better than reading words on a page. The emotiveness of Mia Birdsong's voice makes it better than reading as a text, but there would have been added layers to the effectiveness if at least the parts when she was speaking for someone else had been performed by another person. Michael Schur accomplished this excellently (in a way I think this audiobook would also be improved) in his collaborative audiobook effort on "How to Be Perfect." "How We Show Up" as an audiobook would have been itself perfect in my opinion if it had the voice distinction aspects - it is pretty darn awesome and absolutely "life goals" worthy as it is.

Loved every minute

This book is grounded in a bold liberatory future while not being so idealistic that it might overwhelm you. Her stories and personal reflections are inspiring, encouraging, and practical. Thank you Mia for these invitations and for showing us what we could gain in embracing the imperfection inherent to building a more accountable, known and interdependent existence.

GET THIS BOOK

This is by far one of the BEST nonfiction books I've ever heard! It's a dream of mine to open a community/retreat center and so I've been looking into people who build better communities and I know this book with stick with me. I plan to buy a physical copy so I can relisten and take notes. Not only is this book insightful, it's inspiring and heartwarming. I teared up a few times and I've reached out to people. GET THIS BOOK.

Amazing book

Thanks Mia for reading this book to me! Her passion were in her words! Great listen!

Thank you for sharing this story.

As a person who is intentional about creating and maintaining healthy relationships, I have an appreciation for this book. Simultaneously, it challenges me to consider the depths of some relationships and the ease of releasing myself from others. While many of the connections in this book are not very relatable to me personally - it gave me space to see things differently.

Impactful

It has challenged and inspired me to show up in more considerate ways to my community and in society. I am working towards de colonizing the way I do relationships. This is an important book. Important stories