I dedicate this blog to all the real lovers out there: ¡Feliz día de San Valentín, que viva el amor, la amistad y la comunidad!

Bienvenid@s

In today’s conversation, I’m thrilled to be joined by Tasha Dominguez. Tasha is a queer person and a worker-owner of For The People Cafe. With a background in coffee and organizing, Tasha’s passion lies in bringing people together. I’m so excited for you to read through our conversation about what it means to show up for ourselves and each other in authentic, meaningful ways. Whether you’re reflecting on your own relationships or thinking about the broader cultural landscape, I hope this conversation sparks new perspectives on what it means to love and care deeply in a world that often pushes us towards superficiality. Let’s dive in! 

Hey Tasha! I’m excited you’re joining me in this conversation. I am so thankful and I can’t wait to get into it. First, please introduce yourself and tell us about yourself. 

T: First of all, thank you for inviting me to talk with you! Gosh, I’m not used to introducing myself! I am a worker-owner of FTP Cafe and have been serving coffee to the very same community I grew up in, which has been a dream. I’m also involved in mutual aid work and organizing in South East LA. 

I’d love to start with a recent conversation we had that really struck me. You and I spoke shortly after the dumpster fire of January 20th about mutual aid, conflict-avoidance, community care and intimacy. Let’s begin by talking about mutual aid. Can you share what it means to you?

T: Mutual aid is the collective coordination to meet each other's needs in ways that circumvent traditional systems and structures. It’s about creating community networks that tap into existing skills and resources to help us survive and live without reliance on the government or corporations – the very institutions that often created the severe conditions we live under. It’s being able to rely on our neighbors to live in dignified ways and take care of each other. This can look like diverting food that would otherwise go to waste back into our communities experiencing food insecurity. It can look like community gardens that give our neighbors the self-determination to live on their terms, free from the rising prices of groceries. It can look like giving rides to work or school to those who do not have reliable transportation. At its core, mutual aid is an understanding that we have been made dependent on systems that do not serve us. Through mutual aid, we get to imagine a future where things are different, and that starts today – in choosing to look to our communities for the solutions. 

In recent years, the idea of self-care has become more mainstream. At some point, the conversation started to expand to consider community care—a practice of collective support that goes beyond individual wellness. Both are extremely important to our mental health and emotional well-being. What does community care mean to you? How does it differ from mutual aid?
T: Right, community care is very much rooted in mutual aid. To me, it’s about offering each other the space to exist as we are and providing relief by leaning on others when we need to step back. I’m encouraged that we’re moving away from the individualism often associated with self-care and looking at it in the broader context of the systems we live under. Our well-being is impacted by many external forces beyond our control, and it is important to acknowledge how these forces affect all of us. Our anxiety, depression, or burn out doesn’t exist in a vacuum. Community care recognizes that a person cannot heal in isolation. Because ultimately, no matter how much rest and prioritization of one’s mental health, they may still be underpaid, still worry about making ends meet, still face discrimination, struggle with medical bills, and worry about feeding their families. These are ongoing issues that require a robust support system to offer the kind of relief needed. 

When we last spoke, I think we were on the same page about how frustrating it feels to live in a conflict-avoidant culture. I’ve noticed a pattern in our society where people deeply long for love and community, yet they don’t focus on translating that yearning into meaningful steps to build genuine intimacy. Nairy Fstukh, one of my favorite writers, once shared a powerful insight: "If your actions don't align with your values then those values don't actually exist." This resonates with me and my work with clients—lots of discussions around the critical alignment between our actions and values. It’s hard and inconvenient work. 

This practice of alignment brings me to a concept I've long meditated on: devotion. I love this word because it feels deeply spiritual. I have a profound need for devotion in love and community. For me, devotion means a commitment to love and care, not just in the easy moments, but also in the uncomfortable, inconvenient, and hard parts of life. To me, this is what true community and intimacy demand—effort, vulnerability, and the willingness to be present, especially when it’s messy. Everyone loves the light, right? She’s cute, she’s fun, and yes, that’s great and needed. Blah blah blah. If it’s not obvious already, superficiality bores me to death! For me, what’s much more interesting and meaningful is a commitment to vulnerability, consistency in care, and bringing the darkness to light. I’ve said a lot here, so I’d love to hear your thoughts on this. In your opinion, what do relationships and community require from us? And what does devotion mean to you?

T: Not to quote the memes online but, “in order to receive the rewards of being loved, one must submit to the mortifying ordeal of being known.” It’s scary – so scary to let your guard down. Facing rejection? No thanks, I’d rather get my tooth extracted. But ultimately, we have to be real and ask ourselves if we are ready to not only give love (easy for many of us) but also receive love (hard, so hard). I think devotion includes an understanding and acceptance of great risk. Devotion asks us to embrace it anyway and declare, “it's worth it, and I’m gonna do it – on purpose.” To me, community is about creating relationships, which means the same concept applies: you have to be willing to be uncomfortable, on purpose, with the hope that you can build relationships founded on the trust that, on the most basic level, we want similar things: to live with dignity and not be alone while trying to survive. 

Let’s move from devotion to a broader landscape on love and community. Given the emotional and conflict-avoidant culture we live in, what do you think it’s going to take to survive the next four years and beyond? What will it demand from us?

T: Simply put, we have to talk to each other, in person, and we have to do it often. I know this sounds so basic, but we cannot build community, solidarity, or any kind of relationship if we’re not talking to each other – especially since these next four years are going to bring up so many feelings. People will understandably be scared, angry, and overwhelmed – all emotions that make us want to hide, retract, and isolate. But we have to remain committed to working together to get through it together, even when – especially when – it’s uncomfortable.

As I think about devotion in love and community, I find myself turning to queerness—not just as an identity, but as a way of reimagining what’s possible. What does it give us? Queerness, for me, has been a lens that reshaped my entire worldview. It invites fluidity and duality—offering liberation from rigid structures we’ve been given. This is why queerness and devotion feel so intertwined for me. If devotion is about commitment to love and care, queerness is about possibility. It helps us create a new vision and future where devotion is loving wholeheartedly and loving is boundless.

How do you think queerness plays a role in devotion? Can it help us reimagine community care and love?

T: You said it beautifully, queerness is the limitless expansiveness in which there is room for devotion to live without judgement and normative societal confines. Devotion thrives through queerness because it is wholly embraced, free to expand and contract in safety. My own devotion has only been able to show up authentically through queerness. 

This brings me to a follow up question about community care: how do we balance it with self-care? Therapy has given us valuable language to name harm and prioritize our individual needs, and that’s powerful. But I wonder if there’s an unintended consequence: when these practices become rigid, they can inadvertently keep us from truly connecting. We might flake or cancel plans on hard days when maybe what we need is to allow our community to show up for us—even if that just means being together in silence, without the pressure to perform or fix anything. We text instead of calling, use distance as an excuse not to meet, and let small inconveniences become barriers, and this keeps out true intimacy. I hear about this dynamic a lot, both in my professional and personal life, and I’ve found myself caught in it, too. 

What are your thoughts on this? Have you noticed how therapy language has shifted our approach to relationships and community? Like, when is it self-care and when is it actually avoidance? How thin is the line? And, I’m curious whether you think our culture has always leaned toward avoidance, or if this is something that’s evolved over time as we’ve become more focused on self-care? 

T: Therapy language has been so helpful in naming things that we might not previously have had the vocabulary for. But to your point, there’s been this emphasis on taking care of ourselves on our own. I think this plays into the shame we already feel about asking for help, making us feel our well-being is solely our own responsibility. This idea of self-reliance is rooted in capitalist values that require us to buy into the system and remain reliant on its systems and solutions. Society wants us to believe it's a moral failing to not be able to take care of ourselves, and so the default when things get hard is isolation and avoidance. With tools like therapy, we feel like we’re a burden for asking for help from others – even our own friends and family. Like, since we have the resources to understand how to care for ourselves, we shouldn’t need to lean on others, right? And if we all believe this to some degree, we continue to reinforce a culture that feels guilty for having needs and taking up space. But actually, we could be building these networks of care in our community to support each other. By asking me to show up for you, you’re giving me permission to do the same.

I don’t know about you, but lately I’ve been feeling really sad, sometimes angry, and mostly disappointed in humanity. I see all the good, how we can make things work if we just collaborate with one another. I am able to acknowledge the light; I don’t need help seeing it. But, at the moment, I still feel really upset and disgusted about humanity’s shadow. I know my feelings are temporary, and still, it’s a really hard place to sit in. I cannot say I enjoy it, and also, I feel deeply devoted to sitting in it as I find my way back to hope and faith. Tasha, what inspires hope for you? 

T: I made pasta for my friends and comrades on Thursday. We picked fresh basil and shredded fluffy parmesan over all our dishes. We laughed and cried. And got really angry together. Chismiando about this and that. We read a poem to each other, taking turns reading each line. They sang the same sweet lyrics and in the next breath, cursed the world. I sat there and looked at all their unbridled joy, their beautiful wrinkles as they smiled at each other; their tear stained cheeks. I slowed down that night as best I could to hold it just a little longer. They give me hope, constantly. It's easy to be brave with our eyes on each other. That’s why we fight.

Thank you again. It’s always a pleasure. Before you go, please tell us about For the People Café, what are y’all about? Any cool things y’all have coming up?

T: Thank you for the opportunity to talk about these important topics! For the People Cafe is a worker-owned pop-up cafe that’s had a residency at Art Space HP for the last year. We’ve always strived to serve and work in our community with the hope of creating a space for people to come together in Southeast Los Angeles (SELA) – to build community and organize together. We have a few pop-ups coming up; follow us on Instagram @ftp.cafe to keep an eye out on when and where we’ll be! 

Closing Thoughts

All of these reflections were inspired by sitting in the therapist chair for countless hours and by my own experiences as a human. As we’ve discussed, love and care require more than just good intentions—they demand consistent action, practice, presence, and sometimes discomfort. But they also offer the gift of deep intimacy, which can help us feel less lonely, more present, and purposeful. I hope you enjoyed reading through our conversation. And I want to leave y’all with some questions: What does devotion mean to you? How do you practice and embody love—not just when it’s fun and easy, but when it asks something of you? How do you balance your own well-being with showing up for others? I hope this conversation sparks something in you—perhaps a new way of thinking about love, about intimacy, and about the kind of relationships you want to nurture.