Aloe Vera’s Teachings of Togetherness

I began a cool, May day by processing aloe leaves—the discard of those infected by root rot, who propagation would not take to but rather assisted in the spreading of disease. This processing was as internal as it was externally done, as it prompted a face-to-face recognition of how I failed these lives, my community, sentencing them to death by abundance; I paid too little attention, gave them what I felt they needed instead of listening to them. The hardest part of ridding them of their pulp, other than the grappling-with of my done damage, was forcing the strings of pulp to disconnect from one another, their parent leaf, and my own clumsy fingers. The aloe, even in death, strove for connectedness. For the togetherness that sustained them thus far. Their connectedness showed how they continued to hope for relief, for the sustenance offered by their communion, even in their un-making.

I was the one who had to sever them—again. First disconnecting them from their parent plant to stop the spread of rot, then severing them from all they latched onto in hopes for life: their own selves, one another, and the fingers of the being un-making them. Their struggle for connection did not prevent their un-making, but it certainly made my work more difficult. Their joining, their resolve to continue becoming-with one another even in ruin, dissuaded my work. A few times I paused, frustrated by their sticky tenacity, wondering if it'd be better to just throw them out unharvested (and by better, of course I just mean easier—it'd be more convenient to not accept the gift of their death). The aloe offers gifts abound, continuing to support their communities even within death—their nutrients I will turn into resources for myself before returning their shells to the Earth, where they will continue to be shared. And through the tendrils of their connectedness, I am offered space to reflect on the practice of community building in more-than-human and human worlds. For what might us, their human kin, take from the aloe’s defiant togetherness? How might our own tendrils of connectedness fight against our un-making—just how much might community sustain us in ruin? The aloe, and the more-than-human world through their constant gifts, whisper fragments of answers to me.

In Braiding Sweetgrass, Robin Wall Kimmerer writes that "Plants tell their stories not by what they say, but by what they do" (128). Over and over again, I see the more-than-human world do community, like the collaborative growth present in the Three Sisters. The more-than-human create assemblages of what Donna Haraway refers to as oddkin—kin communities that are diverse and various, making them increasingly odd in appearance and behavior (Staying with the Trouble). Comprised of numerous intelligences, understandings, and unique gifts, oddkin communities flourish from their diversity; they challenge the ways in which we see, and interact with, the world, showing us that community-centered living allows for collective flourishing. Collaboration very well might assist us in surviving un-making and ruin—a vital conversation given the current state of our world. As Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing states in The Mushroom at the End of the World: On the Possibility of Life in Capitalist Ruin, “collaboration means working across difference, which leads to contamination. Without collaborations, we all die” (28). Plants are potentially one of our greatest teachers on the how-to's of collaboration, becoming-together, and flourishing, even within ruin.

Listening to the plants, something I need to work on given my history with root rot, requires challenging our imaginations; the more-than-human world speaks and offers knowledge in ways we are not accustomed to accepting. We must de-center the anthropocentric imagination, instead imagining ourselves flourishing alongside the more-than-human world, healing the Earth and our own selves, and striving for ecological and social justice as connected endeavors. This de-centering is intricately linked to the decolonization of our imaginations, which will allow us to listen to and hear knowledges that have been eradicated by Western empiricism. Decolonizing our imaginations will allow us to uptake radical imaginations, and create radical imaginaries (imaginative spaces and futurisms) as a result.

Ruha Benjamin discusses the importance of imagination decolonization throughout Imagination: A Manifesto, tracing the impact of capitalism and Western empiricism on our collective (and individual) abilities to imagine futures rooted in anything other than the dominant, oppressive systems which define the Othered. Radical imaginaries, which are based on “...collective projections of a desirable and feasible future...” would require radically uplifting the collective as opposed to for-profit, exploitative world-making attempts (Benjamin IX). Community driven thought and action that sustains the living collective, both human and more-than-human, as opposed to only those with power and privilege has the potential to fundamentally restructure the world. Kimmerer's works are just a few examples highlighting the power of community driven thought and imagination; when we re-center the voices and knowledge of the Othered—the more-than-human world and any communities/sects of knowledge existing outside of Western empirical thought and colonial standards—our imaginations evolve. This centering makes a world of trouble for those attempting to keep reality situated around Western knowledge and ways of life; “And, if imagination can lead to troublemaking, is it any wonder, then, that those in power work tirelessly to squash us from having radical imaginations that dare to envision a world in which everyone can thrive?” (Benjamin X).

We must learn to see how we are unable to survive without the presence of the Othered; our flourishing is intricately dependent on their flourishing. If we cut down all the trees, what air will there be for us to breathe? If we pollute all the waterways, how will we drink? If we ruin the topsoil, how will we eat? If we refuse to nurture connections with our neighbors, who will we turn to in times of vulnerability? We find ourselves in situations of increasing precarity by ignoring, and actively harming, the existence of the Othered. Oddkin community formation challenges our selfish desires to think with only “I” in mind. Considering the “we” instead allows for diversifying and decolonizing our thought processes. This is necessary to imagining how to live in ecological ruination, in the wake of capitalism’s destruction; collaboration and community are natural remedies to colonization, capitalism, and other “death-making structures” (Benjamin). In times of such vulnerability, our inability to collaborate (and to even imagine collaboration) could very well be the death of us.

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I think of my own oddkin communities and collaborations. Ones that I take for granted, and ones that I relish in being apart of. I've lived in my apartment for six years now, my longest period of physical stagnation in at least ten years. Part of the beauty of remaining physically stagnant is that I become very familiar with my surroundings and better notice my contributions to their whole. My partner and I have watched people flit in and out of our apartment building, alongside the starlings who, within the past two years, have taken up various nesting places in our roof. That movement is familiar to us, only made visible through our idleness; movement is an oddkin community, as I can trust the constant of movement to never cease, but always evolve (myself with it). And year after year, I witness my movement in the larger community of amalgamated motion. I notice the little changes present in where I move to, how I carry my body, and who I move with among much else. That movement is not I-centered—it is a collaboration with the universe.

In our home, we watch more-than-human life come and go. We have seen about four trees cut down, the return of rabbits in our yard and the neighbors' year after year, and the planting of small maples in the apartment's shabby excuse for a garden (one, of which, I notice is not doing well. No new blooms, no new movement). There is a great chorus around us, polyphonic creation that requires the movement (or lack) of others to be sustained. The rabbits trust this area to make their home time and time again, as lack of harmful movement (by machines or people) proves to them the area is protected. I plant wildflowers in the apartment's desolate planters, introducing new movement and growth, which the neighbor squirrels happily munch on and our human neighbors visually appreciate. The stumps of trees, killed out of concern for their movement and the humans they might harm, regularly house mushrooms and bugs of all sorts. The constant changes support the growth of an increasingly odd community, of which I am kin to. With the aloe I harvested today in mind, my thoughts continually turn towards how oddkin communities are created, in part, through noticing them. And from noticing, witnessing their existence and our own self as a part of it, we can begin to hear their lessons.

Might the aloe, whose tendrils continued to reach for one another even in the midst of destruction, be a lesson in living through ecological destruction? And additionally, a lesson in maintaining hope through ruin? I think so, and I think we should look for lessons in the plants more often. This is not a new or groundbreaking practice, although it has been deemed "radical" in spaces created with Western empiricism as the guide, but is rather a return to what we have always known and what Indigenous peoples have continually practiced: traditional ecological knowledge (TEK). Kimmerer, a member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation, notes how TEK “...embraces the reality that there are intelligences other than our own, from whom we might learn” (The Serviceberry 67). The West has been distanced from the TEK that explains how we are made up of the more-than-human completely and generously; we can allow the reclamation of TEK to collectively heal us, and our imaginations. We can allow TEK to guide us towards noticing, appreciating, and listening to the choir of oddkin communities that sustain us. Seeking community and hearing the teachers of TEK, human and more-than-human, help us reimagine a possible world where Othered voices are centered and the desire of the "I" is not the dominant culture. Such practices take us out of an anthropocentric, colonial worldview—one where human and more-than-human are disconnected, and human and human are disconnected—and allows the opportunity for the world we imagine and create to become, hope-fully.

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2. Kimmerer, Robin Wall. Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants. Milkweed Editions, 2013.

3. A gardening style that allows for reciprocal growth and nourishment between beans, corn, and squash. See chapter 13 of Braiding Sweetgrass: “The Three Sisters.”

4. Haraway, Donna. Staying With the Trouble: Making Kin in the Chthulucene. Duke University Press, 2016.

5. Tsing, Anna Lowenhaupt. The Mushroom at the End of the World: On the Possibility of Life in Capitalist Ruins. Princeton University Press, 2015.

6. Benjamin, Ruha. Imagination: A Manifesto. W.W. Norton & Company, 2024.

7. Kimmerer, Robin Wall. The Serviceberry: Abundance and Reciprocity in the Natural World. Scribner, 2024.