The barbeque is not medicinal, despite appearances
I threw a barbeque over Memorial Day weekend. It was the usual sort of thing: a garage sale, a grill, lots of seltzer and beer. People rolled through on their own time. Waves came & went until the wee hours.
The food was good as always. I know what I’m doing with the grill. I source good meat. Asparagus is full tilt right now. It is always my game to lose.
Last year’s barbeque had about 10 people at it. This one, still small by nickd standards, had about 30 over the course of the day, just chilling, slow conversation, softly dying in the sun. I expected this. I know how the day works.
What I was not expecting was the three separate incidents over the following week where three separate people told me that the barbeque was healing. Usually, I find that throwing a barbeque does the opposite of heal me, what with the meat and beer and sun exposure. But people are starved for human connection, and for many, a 30-person barbeque may be the sort of house party that they have come to miss.
Still I am hung up on the word healing. “I missed going to big barbecues” is a reasonable thing to say. “The barbeque healed me” is quite a bit bolder. What are we looking for in healing? Conscious, in-person gathering is one part of it. Growing as a person. Shedding the toxicity of the past. In this way, I suppose going to a barbeque after a year of not leaving the house is indeed healing.
But the word healing has also been diluted within an inch of its life. I personally view the process of healing as both necessary and painful. I have never had a good time healing my own psychological and spiritual wounds. Barbeques do not typically involve shadow work. Most people adjacent to healer communities – in yoga, say, or meditation – seem to have substitute the word “healing” for times when they mean “awesome.”
There is also the very high probability that this barbeque would have just kind of sucked. Gathering is a Monte Carlo simulation. Most of the work is in preparation. You try to get the right people in the room. Then you can guide the conversation a bit, but mostly it’s out of your hands. And there is always, always the chance that nobody will turn up. I’m grateful that the barbeque was enjoyable, but that was all up to chance, and it worked out right this time.
I feel uncomfortable taking responsibility for any healing, even at something as simple as a barbeque. All of the healers that I know simply create containers for others to find their own healing, on their terms.
I’m not going to heal you. I’m going to create a structure of nourishment & community that is worth supporting, during a time when nobody feels particularly compelled to support anything. I’m going to keep making good food until the end of linear time, and I’ll occasionally serve it to you if you want me to serve it to you. I will sometimes ask you non-leading questions about your life, because I am a UX researcher and I physically can’t turn that part of my brain off. And then I will get out of your way.