Reweaving Connection Project Introduction

Have you ever had an experience that was so vivid and full, when you felt calm, at peace and satisfied, in a quiet but important way? I feel grateful that I have, a few times even. The first was about ten years ago, when I was 21.

I’m an analyzer, some would say an overanalyzer, and I’ve been analyzing why that experience and other similar ones later, felt the way it did. I’ve slowly come to realize that those experiences felt so vivid and full because they were about connection. And they stood out for me so vividly, both because our need for connection is written in our DNA, grooved into our brains, and yet is no longer a given in our modern world.

The Reweaving Connection writing project starts from those experiences, which I have struggled to understand and recreate since. One task of this project is to simply document those experiences in writing, to attempt to communicate what they felt like. Some blog posts will be snapshots, or sketches of those experiences. I would love to include others’ sketches of vividness and connection over time as well.

Another task of the Reweaving Connection Project is to understand why connection feels so full, vivid and vital and yet no longer a given, from an academic perspective. I’m the daughter of an evolutionary biologist/theorist independent scholar, so answering “why” questions from an evolutionary perspective has become my first instinct. Evolutionary mismatch will be a central concept in this project, and along with it, an examination of the human ancestral or evolutionary adapted environments, and how it differs from our modern environments.

I intend to gather and examine the diverse range of evidence behind what sorts of connections humans evolved to need for survival and wellness, both mental and physical, and how we can begin to reweave these forms of connection back into our modern environments and lives moving forward.

I propose a roadmap of sorts for forms of connection that are essential for wellness. I will examine the costs we are already experiencing collectively and individually of disconnection, and most excitingly, highlight inspiring and diverse efforts at reweaving connection.

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