Community Starts within Us All

“We cannot live for ourselves alone. Our lives are connected by a thousand invisible threads, and along these sympathetic fibers, our actions run as causes and return to us as results.” – Henry Melville

Community has been on my mind and heart this month. I've had amazing reminders of the beauty of authentic community alongside devastating examples of how fear divides us. A couple of weeks ago, I basked in the joy of community with our 2024 National Women’s Impact Leadership Institute (NWILI) cohort (thank you to Stephanie Shivar for partnering with me to start and grow this program) – we shared appreciation and gratitude with each other. There were belly laughs and tears, all of it. Even as I am taking in the love of this community, my heart continues to break with the wars around the world along with the politics of fear underpinning the 2024 election. And what I know to be true through it all is that we are meant to be in community. It matters for our health and well-being, it matters for our work and leadership, it matters for our souls. 
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Community is the outer layer of my leading from the inside out framework and for me it’s a non-negotiable. We are all wired for community and my wiring is especially sensitive, or maybe it’s tight.

I love connecting deeply, it’s part of my DNA. I’m in my happy place when I’m having a meaningful conversation with a family member, friend, colleague, or someone who I’ve just met (even better if we are walking while talking 😉). I love to laugh and share and hear stories. In looking at my past blog posts this spring and summer, I see the theme of community running through them. In April I wrote about how stories create community, in May I wrote about true belonging starting within, and in July I wrote about being my own best friend. This highlights what I believe is key to community – starting within ourselves. In my leadership framework, the inner layer of Presence, where powerful leadership starts, is the same color as the outer layer of Community, where we are inspired together.
 
To be truly in community with others we must be present in the moment. It’s about coming home to ourselves to build a home for us all. This is the key to me. To be clear, this is not about centering our own needs for the sake of getting what we want, it’s about being present to who we are for the sake of building real connections with ourselves and others. The hopeful part of this perspective is that when community starts within us it’s something we have the power to build right now. We don’t create community on our own, that would be a very small community 🤣, and we do create the foundation for the kind of community that feeds our souls when we touch our own aliveness. This is where the magic happens, it’s where we meet each other in real time. When you are in the here and now and I am too, our souls meet in the space in-between us, the relational field, and we play together. We talk, laugh, sing, dance, and sometimes cry together both literally and figuratively. It’s the joy of connected community.
 
In the TransformAble book of the month, Everyday Awakening: Five Practices for Living Fully, Feeling Deeply, and Coming into Your Heart and Soul, Catherine Duncan describes five practices for awakening: coming back to presence, connecting with something greater, growing your trust, embodying love, and holding openness. I see these awakening practices as the spark to build the fire of community. It’s about starting within! When we ground ourselves in presence, purpose, trust, love, and curiosity we are exactly where we need to be to create and nurture positive connections. This is the place where we weave together the vibrant and colorful threads of who I am with those of who you are and create a breathtaking tapestry of togetherness. This tapestry represents the power of us, a single thread is pretty and multiple threads together are exquisite.
 
We have what it takes within us to create community and the currency of connection is requests and offers, it’s giving and receiving. When we make and respond to requests of and offers to others, we start to weave our thread with theirs. This give and take either tightens the weave or sometimes breaks the thread. This is the both/and of community, it’s not an all giving or all receiving place, instead it’s a space of loving reciprocity. I sometimes get wrapped up in the giving part of this space and I forget about the importance of receiving. Plus when I offer something (help, listening, food) and it’s not received fully or at all, I feel the loss, it’s a disconnect. It’s almost as if I’ve wrapped up a package and the other person tosses it aside unopened. We are meant to connect through giving and receiving; it starts with a grounding in who we are and this precious moment, from there we weave our tapestry of love and connection. This is the good news, we all can do it! Looking for authentic community – let’s connect.