Rebelling

Amy Parrish 
Hey y'all, welcome back to Rebelling. Today marks the start of a new series called Social Security. And I don't mean the monthly check you hopefully get someday. I mean actual social security. The security that we build with other humans and the environments we live in.

In the conventional sense, we trade our lives for the promise of security later, decades of work, sacrifices and stress, and hopefully a check shows up when we retire.

But what if security could exist in the here and the now in the connections we build and the care we give and receive? That's the kind of social security we'll explore in this series. In the next few episodes, I want to talk about what security really means and how we create it.

My goal with this series is to demolish the idea that the best or only way to be secure is by stockpiling money. We've been sold this idea that security is something you buy, something you earn, something you hoard. But the felt sense of being safe comes from connection, not accumulation.

Money keeps concentrating into fewer and fewer hands. People are increasingly isolated, lonely, overloaded, overwhelmed, burned out, and convinced that the only thing keeping them afloat is another dollar.

We're stressed because we're chasing a version of security that was never designed to actually work. It was designed to keep us chasing.

This Social Security series is about actual social security. It's about social connections, alternative ways of building security, and safety nets beyond money and material goods. In the upcoming episodes, I'll share thoughts and ideas about what security means and how to create it.

When most of us think of Social Security, we think of it as a monthly check we get when we retire. Money that keeps us going when we stop working. Retirement accounts as Social Security. But there's a real and ongoing Social Security that exists all around us. The support, care, and connection we build with other humans and our environment.

over the course of our lives. It's the one we slowly lose as we trade community for independence, connection for productivity, support for self-sufficiency. And that's what this series is really about, exploring what it looks like to feel secure through belonging, not through currency.

Y'all having money is seen as freedom, but at costs that are often invisible until it can feel like it's too late. There's this weird self-sufficiency thing that happens where the focus is on external security, but that we make it ourselves when security isn't really possible without connection.

And because we try to build security through institutional relationships, our security is often at the whim of the markets, the economy, and policy. We create close relationships with our companies and our money, and our lives end up at the mercy of systems that cannot and do not care about us.

We create relationships with our jobs and expect them to keep us safe. And then we're shocked when they don't. I'll never forget, I was working at Whole Foods and my gosh, y'all, I loved Whole Foods so much. And.

One day someone I worked with stopped me as I was talking about how just like disappointed I felt in Whole Foods and this person said to me they said Amy Whole Foods is never gonna love you back.

And it really like totally floored me. I had never considered that the care and the love that I felt for the company that I was working for was not being returned to me.

It was a pivotal moment in my life.

In our society, money is treated like oxygen. Without it, people panic. And with it, we want more. But what we rarely acknowledge is that relationships, trust, and community are equally, if not more, essential to surviving and thriving.

Social safety nets are undervalued because they're harder to quantify. They're harder to see. But they're what actually keep people afloat when life gets messy.

We spend a lot of time talking about what we can afford, what we can manage, and when we do, what we're usually doing is talking about money. I can't afford to quit my job. I can't afford to take time off. I can't afford to not work all the time.

We equate more money with more time, with more freedom, with more life. As soon as I have more money, then I can afford to relax. Then I'll have time for my kids. Then I'll have time for myself. But what if security? What if affording isn't actually about

money. What if affording and what we can afford is about social security?

What if we started saying, can't afford to miss my children's childhoods? I can't afford to ignore my relationships. I can't afford to put my life off any longer.

What if we said things like, I can relax because I am secure socially.

So imagine this, you're working a job and it's intolerable and you've stayed because of the money and the benefits and because you don't see another way out.

There are bills to pay, people to feed, life benchmarks to hit, and money is the only way to make those things happen, to create the security. But what if money wasn't the only way? What if you had a community that could shore you up with resources? What would it be like to call people together and say, okay, y'all,

I'm struggling and I need help.

And what if someone called on you?

Can you imagine paying a friend's electric bill for six months so they could leave a job that was crushing them?

or having your neighbors help you out with laundry or meals because you're in a hard season.

What if our neighborhoods were actual neighborhoods and not just rows of people living next to each other?

What if our kids didn't have to leave at 18?

What if our aging parents didn't burn through their entire retirement on basic care? What if the people around us were part of our daily lives in small, steady ways?

We are our own safety nets, and yet we have been convinced that money is the only thing that will save us. That we shouldn't ask for help, that failure is shameful, and that being down on your luck is humiliating. That the biggest symbol of success is not needing anyone at all.

We're embarrassed when we fail and embarrassed when we succeed. And when you really need people the most, you rely on credit instead of a helping hand.

I know this from experience. I had to take out a personal loan to pay off debt I accumulated when work suddenly dropped off and I didn't know what to do. I didn't tell anyone. I just kept hoping it would get better. I was embarrassed.

Even though I didn't do anything wrong, I still thought I had to hide it.

And I really wonder if I could have been more honest and turned to my friends and connections and community. What could have been different? That's what I want us to talk about.

In this series, I want to create a new understanding of security that treats community as wealth, that demotes money to the role of resource rather than savior.

I hear people saying they're lonely, longing to feel like a part of something. And I'm an idealist, but I do believe in the power of our humanity over the power of the almighty dollar. So I'm going to be dreaming big.

The episodes in this series are going to explore things like asking for help, investing in your social circle, being influenced by the people in your life and letting yourself be affected by them. We'll talk about privacy and social purpose, expanding the idea of self-care to include social care. We'll talk about

communication, healthy relationships, and the difference between conflict and tension.

and we'll set social goals for the upcoming year.

It's kind of funny when I was putting this together, I thought, is it weird to be a neurodivergent person talking about the importance of social connection? And really, no, not at all. When you understand that neurodivergence is about more than just differences, it's about seeing the world differently.

and how these perspectives can give us the freedom to adapt and grow beyond what is normal.

It gives us all the leeway to find new ways of doing things when the usual ones are not working. And I'm really excited to bring this idea to you and to hear what you think. The next episode, we'll look at the ways systemic individualism has become a way of life, who benefits from that, and what we can do to become a community again.

It's not going to be easy to turn away from money as the silent partner that helps you stay self-sufficient and secure. But I think it's definitely going to be worth it.

Please feel free to email me at amy at rebelling dot me if you have any thoughts or ideas about new ways to understand social security. I'm always interested in working with people who are ready to explore these kinds of ideas for themselves. There's a scheduling link in the show notes if you want to talk to me about that. Y'all thank you so much for listening and I'm looking forward to seeing you next time.