The Power of Community, Part Two: The American Dream Is Keeping Us Apart

You ever stop and wonder why it feels so hard to stay connected to people these days? Like, genuinely connected. Not just double-tapping someone’s story or saying “we gotta link soon” and then ghosting each other for another six months. I’m talking about the kind of connection that feels like home. The kind where you can fall apart in front of someone and they don’t flinch.

If you read my last post, you know I talked about how healing happens in community. But this one? This is the other side of that coin.

Let’s talk about why it’s so damn hard to have that community in the first place.

Let’s talk about how the “American Dream” is actually keeping us apart.

Chasing the Bag, Losing the People

We’re out here working two, three jobs. Moving across the country for opportunities. Putting family gatherings on the back burner. Telling ourselves, “Once I make it, I’ll come back and take care of everybody.” But the truth is, most of us are too burnt out or too far gone by the time we get “there.”

This idea that success is about individual grind, individual hustle, individual wins sounds good on paper, but it’s breaking our communities apart. It has us all in survival mode, eyeing each other like competition instead of kin.

We leave our hometowns, our elders, our neighbors, and sometimes even our children, all to chase something that was never built with all of us in mind.

And let’s be honest, who actually benefits when we’re too busy, too tired, or too isolated to organize, connect, or heal together?

Policies That Pull Us Apart

It’s not just the hustle culture. The systems we live in are designed to keep us disconnected. And I mean that quite literally.

Residential segregation, redlining, and freeway construction tore through Black and Brown communities. We were physically cut off from each other. Immigration policies ripped families apart at the border. And don’t even get me started on mass incarceration. So many of our fathers, brothers, sons, and partners locked up while families are left to pick up the pieces.

Then there’s gerrymandering and voter suppression that keep our voices from being heard. Economic policies that let the rich get richer while the rest of us are out here figuring out if we can afford groceries and therapy in the same week.

It’s all connected. These systems are built to keep us tired, mistrustful, and divided. Because divided people don’t rise up. Divided people don’t have time for healing circles or cookouts or third spaces.

The Loss of Wisdom and the Rise of Loneliness

There used to be a time when our elders sat on porches and told stories. When our auntie had remedies for your heartbreak and your grandma had advice for your marriage. Now we put our elders in nursing homes, far away from daily life. We treat them like they’re in the past instead of part of the present.

And we pay the price for that.

We lose our history. We lose our grounding. We lose people who know how to remind us who we are when the world tries to make us forget.

Capitalism doesn’t care about grandma’s wisdom. It cares if she’s a “productive member of society.” And when we start to believe that too, we lose something sacred.

Patriarchy Playing Its Part

Let’s talk about how patriarchy sneaks in here too. It teaches men to bottle things up, keep it pushing, and avoid vulnerability at all costs. It teaches women to shrink, to carry the emotional weight of everyone around them, and to sacrifice their needs for others.

So what we end up with are relationships full of miscommunication, power struggles, emotional detachment, and resentment.

Patriarchy makes it hard to trust. Hard to open up. Hard to be seen. It rewards emotional distance and punishes softness. And let’s be real, connection cannot survive in that kind of environment.

Divide and Conquer

Every oppressive system you can think of (racism, capitalism, patriarchy) have all thrived by keeping people apart. They exploit our differences. They convince us to compete instead of collaborate. They limit our access to resources and then turn around and say it’s our fault for not working hard enough.

They create “us versus them” narratives and sell them as truth. And the more divided we become, the easier we are to control.

So if you have been wondering why it feels like everyone is fending for themselves out here, it is not just in your head. These systems are working exactly as intended.

So What Now?

I don’t say all this to leave you feeling hopeless. I say it so you know you’re not alone in feeling this ache for something deeper. Something real.

The world is loud with distractions. But deep down, so many of us are craving a return to us. A return to interdependence. A return to communal living, shared joy, shared meals, and shared healing.

So here’s what I want you to do:

Leave a comment and tell me who your people are. Where do you feel the most seen, the most held, the most human?

Share this blog with someone you love. Someone who needs a reminder that they are not alone in feeling disconnected.

Or reach out to me directly if you are realizing that the disconnection is starting to hurt more than it helps. Whether you are ready to begin therapy or just want to start a conversation, I’m here. Sometimes therapy is the first step in rebuilding trust and learning how to be in community again.

We were never meant to do life alone. The systems want us separate. But I believe in our power to return to each other. Slowly. Intentionally. Tenderly.

Let’s come home to each other again.

And let’s build something that cannot be bought, sold, or broken.

Something real.