Why I Am Trying to Stop Saying Connection

I've been using the word "connection" a lot throughout the Heart-Strong Adventure. Connection to self. Connection to others. Connection to place. It felt like the right word for what love looks like in action.

Then I noticed something. Connection can be one-way. I can feel connected to you without you feeling connected to me. That's not a flaw in the word. It's what it actually means.

Relationship is different. Relationship is always reciprocal. You can have unhealthy ones and healthy ones. But you can't have a one-way relationship. The moment it's one-way, it's something else.

That distinction matters when you're thinking about community. If you're building on connection, you might be building something that only flows in one direction. That's not community. That's an audience. Community requires reciprocity. It requires something flowing between people, not just from one to another.

Once you frame it as relationship, the love and fear lens maps right onto it. Healthy relationships are driven by love. The energy flows and grows. Unhealthy relationships are driven by fear. They deplete. They control. They extract. At scale, that's where you get systems built on extraction rather than reciprocity.

The language shift from connection to relationship feels important. It's not just semantics. It changes what you're building toward. Connection can look like love while still being one-way. Relationship can't fake it.

I think community has to be built on the thing that can't fake it.

Read the full piece on Substack.

Learn more about the adventure at www.heart-strong.org