Resistance is disruption. Resistance is yelling. Resistance is being in the streets and the council meetings and all the places where your presence declares your opposition. Resistance is making phone calls. Resistance is donating your money and time. Resistance is meetings that last long into the evening and art builds that last long into the night.

At least, that is the face of resistance. And all of it is needed today as much as ever, to counter conservatives who fear a changing society and are grasping onto old racisms and sexisms with emboldened ferocity. But gosh, it sounds tiring.

And what’s more, the face is all it is. It’s the visible part, the part people think of when they think of The Resistance. But that type of resistance surges and fades easily, because it is exhausting without a deeper resistance sustaining it. The Resistance of people sharing our stories and listening to the stories of others. The Resistance of being connected humans with empathy and love. The Resistance of building community in the face of institutions that want us to be individual consumers living isolated lives.

As a young feminist, I learned that the personal is political. I didn’t really know what it meant, but I figured it had something to do with thinking bigger about what’s “important.” It’s a phrase that I’ve connected with for a long time, but I didn’t realize just how deeply until a few weeks ago, when I read Carol Hanisch’s 1969 essay, “The Personal Is Political.”1

Okay, bear with me for a bit as I get into some history and theory. Hanisch wrote her essay in defense of meetings where women gathered to talk about their daily struggles and to find connections between their stories. Opponents called the meetings “therapy,” but they were not about healing people (though that would have been valid). Instead, these women were engaging in two distinguished human skills: communication and problem-solving. As the people in these groups told their stories, they found the same issues rising again and again, though each person toiled as if they were the only one.

Hanisch and others learned that “There are no personal solutions at this time. There is only collective action for a collective solution.” A hundred thousand fights over housework based on gender roles weren’t a hundred thousand personal problems, they were (and are) part of a much larger, systemic problem that requires connection and interdependence to solve. They were Consciousness Raising, which is second-wave feminist for Getting Woke.

So what does an essay about the political climate fifty years ago steeped in white feminism have to do with how I resist today? A lot, it turns out.

Feeling alone in times of political crisis is overwhelming. It’s also extremely common, and it can be debilitating. Sure, you can call your senators and write your representatives—and you should—but it can feel like screaming into the wind. And at some level, it is. One phone call rarely changes a congressperson’s mind. Nor does a solitary vote in a national election. Nor does a single raindrop in a hurricane. And so doing it individually feels like it’s nothing. But it’s larger than one vote, or even one election. It’s connecting yourself to a community that makes decisions collectively.

When you talk about your activism, you’re likely to do more, and the people you talk with might be motivated to get more engaged as well. But it’s not just about getting people to act. The connection itself is key to resistance. The more connected we are, the more unbreakable we are. The more we communicate, the more we know what’s really happening and the more we can see where the threads of our tales come together. The more we discuss what is wrong, the more hope we have of finding solutions.

As a storyteller, I see layers of importance and empowerment in sharing our stories with each other. However, as a writer, I often tell my stories alone to my computer, and as an introvert with depressive tendencies, I often seek solitude. And I do need alone time to be my best—lots of it even. But since it’s so comfortable, sometimes I stick to myself when I would get something great out of being with other people. Hanisch’s essay reminds me that seeing friends and even interacting with people I don’t know is a vital part of being human. A human apart has no energy to bounce off of, and even though I can always feel my battery ticking down when I’m around other people, sometimes I need to drain that battery to live fully.

In April 2016, I set off in a Winnebago motor home for a twenty-thousand-mile trip over eighteen months and through forty-four states. It’s been completely amazing to see the range of geography that spans from the Atlantic to the Pacific, and the array of communities that have set roots in these places. I’ve explored some of the history that all but decimated the Native populations and that all but crushed the African populations that were brought here in chains, with the knowledge that so many more atrocities lay lost and forgotten in the dirt.

When the beast we call Trump was declared president-elect, I felt the call for community anew. I’m back in Oakland, California, building community with friends and chosen family. The more interdependent we are, the more we are living the very lives conservatives fear us living: one filled with compassion and celebration, with love and with generosity, with dreams and possibilities galore. I want to share in joys and bear through sorrows together with my people. I aim to live my life in fierce defiance.

My guess is that most of you reading this don’t live alone on the road in an RV. In fact, many of you live with parents and/or other adults who choose where you live, where you go to school, when you can be out, and lots more. Your family might not be affirming folks to talk with about what you see in the world. Your friends (or some of them) might not be either. That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t share what you think with them. But it does mean you deserve people to go to afterward, people whose beliefs you connect with, who respect you and who you respect. That doesn’t mean you agree on everything, but you really do deserve a friendly ear.

Find your people and share in life with them. They might be from home, school, work, the internet, or elsewhere, but find them. And keep talking. Part of teenagehood is about feeling alone and different. Stay connected. You might even have meetings, like Hanisch and other feminists did, with the express purpose of sharing your stories. It might feel a little weird or fake, especially at first, but sometimes that layer of structure makes it easier to get people to drop some of their shields and join you in the scary world of honesty and openness. And that is where the fiercest and most powerful work to change the world is done: in connection.

If you can go there, you make it easier for other people to go there as well, and then suddenly you’re deep in the messiness of reality together, living. And as you may have heard, living well is the best revenge. It’s also The Resistance in action. Bring snacks to share!