On Saturday, I sat in a circle.
Not a committee. Not a task force. Not a working group with terms of reference and a mandate to report back to a Minister. A simple circle. Seating was arranged so that no one sat at the head or the back, and everyone was equal. That arrangement was not incidental. It was the point.
This was the second Community Sharing Circle co-hosted by MLA Smith-McCrossin and the teams at Autumn House, Lilac Place, and Sexual Health Centre of Cumberland County, held at the YMCA’s The Anchor facility in Amherst. I joined my friend Kristina Fifield — trauma therapist, social worker, and a fierce and grounded advocate in the gender-based violence space — to hold space for a community that has been asking for exactly that: space.
The context matters. These circles are happening because the incidents of sexualized violence in this region are rising. Not because the community is more broken than others. Because it is paying attention, and because it had the courage to ask for something different.
A sharing circle is not a complex concept. In fact, it is a profoundly simple one, which is part of why it is so easy to overlook, and part of why it works.
Rooted in Indigenous culture and values, the circle is a form that carries meaning in its shape. A circle has no head. It has no back row. Everyone is an equal distance from the centre, meaning everyone has equal space and power. The conversation is not dictated. It is facilitated by everyone in it. You speak when you feel it is right to speak. You listen when it is not yet your time. No one is forced to contribute, and no one is permitted to dominate.
We came in with intention. We came in with compassion. We came in understanding that this was a listening space, not a debate, not a briefing, not a strategy session. We came together to help one another feel less alone in a world that is working very hard to make us feel exactly that.
What emerged from the circle was not surprising. It was clarifying.
The consistent thread running through our conversations was how hard it feels right now. How difficult it is to stay present — for ourselves, for our children, for our partners, for our communities. How exhausting it is to carry both the weight of daily survival and the ever-present terror of a world where violence feels increasingly normalized and close. People described a kind of fog. An overwhelming fatigue. A sense that no matter how much they do, it is never quite enough.
Kristina offered a frame for this that I keep returning to: a disconnected society is a fearful society, and fear is politically useful.
She is right. The erosion of community, the defunding of public services, the hollowing out of third-sector organizations, and the rhetorical insistence that trickle-down economics will solve things is not accidental. Isolated people are easier to control. Frightened people are easier to manipulate. When we cannot turn to one another, when there are no services to turn to either, we are left with nothing but our own precarity and whoever is willing to exploit it.
This is the political logic of disconnection, and it is playing out in real time across communities in this country.
When people’s basic needs are not met—when they struggle to feed their families, afford housing, access mental health care, or find safety—we see an escalation in violence. This is not a controversial claim. It is well-documented and intuitive: scarcity breeds desperation, and desperation, when it has nowhere to go, can turn inward or outward in ways that harm.
The cascading effect of budget cuts and scarcity rhetoric lands hardest on the people already carrying the most. The organizations built to catch those people — the shelters, the sexual health centres, the community mental health programs — are themselves underfunded, under-resourced, and under siege. The workers inside them are exhausted. The communities they serve are exhausted. And everyone is being asked to do more with less, in a political climate that frames this as efficiency rather than cruelty.
We are not just tired. We are bearing the weight of policy choices that have been made on our behalf, without our consent, and often against what we are advocating for.
But here is what I also witnessed on Saturday: people showing up anyway.
One participant offered something that landed for the whole room. “This is a form of harm reduction,” they said. They were right. When the systems meant to protect us fail — when the legislation hasn’t passed, when the funding hasn’t come, when the supports aren’t there — community care is what stands between people and harm. It is not glamorous. It does not scale easily. It cannot replace a properly funded social infrastructure. But it is real, and it is something we can actually do.
What we can choose is to pool what resources we have. The spaces we have. The time we have. The capacity we have. To show up for one another.
This is not a long-term solution. Let me be clear about that. We should not romanticize community care to the point where it becomes an excuse for governments to abdicate responsibility. The people in that circle should not have to be each other’s mental health system. Advocacy for systemic change must continue—loudly, persistently, and collectively.
But while we advocate, we also need to survive. And survival, right now, looks like sitting in a circle. Listening. Refusing to let one another disappear into isolation.
What ails our society, and what is being deliberately cultivated, is isolationism.
The antidote is community.
It has always been, and it will always be.
The sharing circle is not a new idea. It is one of the oldest ideas we have. And perhaps that is exactly why it still works.
We come together. We hold space. We remind each other that we are not alone.
That, right now, is an act of resistance.