“We take the backpack during each other’s weak part,” my husband said to me as we were finishing the second half of a hike. He was referring to the fact that I carried the backpack with the water and food on the uphills, where he struggles, and he carried it on the downhills that stress out my fussy knees. I hadn’t even thought of it that way, but that’s exactly what we were doing that day. In fact, that’s what we do through so much of our lives, both for each other and those around us.

My husband and I have been married for 18 years and together for 24. We’re both neurodivergent and have executive function challenges. I joke that if you put us together, you may get one person’s worth of executive function. He has social anxiety, but is charming. I am kind of fearless, but often don’t make a good first impression socially. He’s hilarious with the kids, while I tend to be more emotional. We complement each other well.

Over the course of our relationship, we’ve tried our hardest to lean on each other’s strengths and support each other’s challenges. He takes the big, single-step tasks like folding laundry; I take the ones with a million little steps like declutterring. I can’t mentally visualize anything, so he’s in charge of all interior decorating (with my input). He panics at a giant packing list so I always take the lead on trips.

We also try to notice when the other person is struggling and be the responsible adult for them. We tell each other to go to bed, knowing that we both have a hard time getting enough sleep. When we see the other is going nowhere with the kids or getting overwhelmed, we switch off.

Playing off our strengths and letting others take on more when we have trouble carrying the load is applicable to so much more than romantic relationships though. It’s the heart of friendship, mutual aid, and community.

Nat Nadha Vikitsreth at Come Back to Care has incredibly beautiful, wise advice about how to carry this out in our parenting, whether you have a partner or not. She speaks about practicing reciprocity, where there’s a back-and-forth between people in a relationship. In doing so – whether it’s with your child or a friend – you’re sharing power and helping each person feel seen. In addition to sharing power, it’s also sharing responsibility.

I saw this in action when we were visiting family. My in-laws and sister and brother in law all live in Cape Cod. My husband is very close with his family and I’ve known them since I was in high school, so I am too. While we were all on a whale watch together, my husband and I went down to the little snack bar to purchase water and coffee. I had the fleeting thought: “I should really be enjoying this time with the kids.” But then I recalled how my husband and I switched off with my brother in and sister in law watching the kids the day before. My sister-in-law’s words of “I’m so glad your kids are here to play with [her son]” rang in my ears. No, it was perfectly fine to be spending these few minutes with each other.

In the context of activism, I read about one of the most amazing examples of this attitude in disability activist Judith Heumann’s memoir, Being Heumann. She played a major role in the 504 sit-in, a 28 day long protest in a federal building in San Francisco. While it would be tough for any activists to stake out ground in a federal building for multiple weeks, it’s exponentially harder for people who are physically disabled. Many of the activists used wheelchairs and required personal assistance to get into bed or go to the bathroom. But they came together to help each other with the things they couldn’t do on their own. They also relied on allies in other social justice groups. For example, the local Black Panthers group brought them hot meals that they wouldn’t have had access to otherwise.

In my own advocacy, I see this in in the bike advocacy group I volunteer with. Because I can’t find my way out of a paper bag, I let others lead the complex rides with a million turns. But as one of the few parents of younger kids in the group, I tap into my connections with the local PTA.

Now, picking up the load for others and letting them pick it up for you is often hard. Asking and receiving help requires vulnerability and trust. Asking our neighbor to water our garden while we were on vacation required telling him we would be away and trusting that he’d help take care of our space as he does his own. This mutual support requires giving up a certain amount of control over the outcome – you won’t get something exactly the way you would do it if you’re letting someone else do it. There’s certain ways my husband has done things – whether cleaning or parenting – that I would have done differently. Sometimes I still get mad at him for how he did it.

But finding ways to trade off our burdens is the only way we can create a better future. Community ties and trust are built on relying on each other again and again. Showing up for each other is essential to social justice. For the sake of our kids, it needs to be the foundation of our families and our future.