Mutuality: Giving and Receiving Care + 10-Minute Meditation

A meditation on interdependence for isolated times.

Click above for this week’s guided meditation

Hey friends.

I recently made the above meditation for Dan Harris’s new app, on the theme of mutuality. It was inspired by a fine interview he did with the pathfinder, futurist, and community organizer Mia Birdsong.

Image Credit: NunDigital

As a co-parent to two lovely and sometimes challenging neuro-quirky young boys, my partner and I have often felt isolated trying to figure it all out on our own. Finding support through government programs in Canada is a highly byzantine process — good care exists, but you must navigate the system — and private care is expensive. It takes a ton of time just to figure out what kind of specialist you want to begin to look for, and the cumulative demands of it all means you’re barely spending time with your partner. It’s a strain on any relationship.

Like many others, I’ve often thought the real solution is community — the extended network — both for the consolidation of resources, and for the creative redistribution of mutual support and care. It takes a village kind of thing. Except, in our atomized nuclear family cityscapes, where everyone is scrambling just to get by, a village can be hard to find. It seems contingent on the lottery of family member and friend availability, and the kind of neighbourhood you’re lucky enough to find yourself in. We have not quite figured it out yet, but we are not giving up — feel free to share your favourite Utopian eco-village locations and / or neighbourhood strategies in the comments!

And so it was that I listened with great longing to Mia Birdsong as she described a simple, sensible system she and two other families worked out when their kids were young. Every other Saturday, one of the families would host all the kids, while the other two partners got a chance to rekindle their romance / humanity. She describes how this didn’t just help with much-needed alone-time for the couples; it also introduced each kid to a different style of parenting, different rules, different ways of being together as a family.

I feel like this is central to the mental health and resilience of any child. Different humans wake up different parts of us. At their best, they connect kids to an expanded range of internal resources and ways of being. So much of health is about having a broad base — not just of other people, but of other parts of ourselves, now alive to the world. Much less fragility from this place.

All of this connects to Birdsong’s main point about “mutuality.” If “reciprocity” is a kind of tit-for-tat, “you do this for me, I’ll do this for you” isometric calculation, by contrast, mutuality is where everyone in a group helps each other, each according to their different capabilities. We don’t expect this to look perfectly equal, because people have different situations, different challenges, and different gifts. But as a general principle, there’s a grounded recognition that, in Birdsong’s words, “our own wellbeing is dependent on the wellbeing of the people in our community.”

Interdependence by another name.

And that’s what today’s meditation is all about: it prepares the ground for each of us to participate in a rising tide of mutual care and concern, one that lifts all boats.

Much love,

Jeff

A few quick notes—

• The Do Nothing Project (DNP) is now happening on Substack. The next one is this Sunday, January 18 at 8pm EDT. Link here.

• New to Home Base? We have over 60 free guided meditations in our audio library, over 350 meditations on YouTube, and a growing number of community practice videos. All can be part of your daily meditation support.

Beneath the Waves: An Immersive Evening of Meditation

February 26, 2026
Vancouver Aquarium, Vancouver, British Columbia

Come meditate with the fishies!

Excited to do this one-of-a-kind fundraiser for Hollyhock, a registered charity, at the Vancouver Aquarium. Expect an evening of guided meditation in the spooky depths of the aquarium after dark, alongside psychedelic jellyfish, patrolling sharks, and curious otters. Proceeds go to support Hollyhock’s scholarship fund, and to increase accessibility to all programs. If you’re in the area, come on by!