A story of belonging~ My journey of living in an intentional community.
The first time I dreamt of living in community I was about 9 years old. My dad had passed away a few years before, and as result I had grown to be an intuitive, melancholic child. I loved being in nature, connected deeply to my dreams and read into all of my experiences, searching for deeper meaning in everything.
In this dream I lived in a hilly valley with my favorite cousins. It was much like a village. We spent our time playing by the creeks, harvesting wildflowers and freely roaming about. I had this dream over and over again in my adolescent years and realized later on in life that it was embedded with Instructions for my Soul.
As I grew, my interests changed and I forgot about the dream. I became a mother and a birth worker and several moons later in 2010, I was blessed to attend a Birthing From Within retreat at The Farm in Summertown, TN. I was amazed at the vastness of the community. People were growing food, co-housing, raising children together and learning the ancient art of midwifery. I left that retreat in awe of the beauty and potential that I witnessed during those 4 days. I also felt a deep sadness that I had not yet found my community, as well as realizing that so many people will never experience this way of relating with one another.
After visiting The Farm, I continued building my birth work practice in South Carolina. Although I was nourished by having a sense of community in a different way and loved being of service to women and children, I was not thriving in the ways I knew I would if I were living close to the land in an intentional community. After a few years of struggling to make it work, some major signs that a shift was imminent and many prayers for guidance, I remembered the dream. I knew it was time to step into the unknown and commit to living a life in deeper harmony.
I came across resources like World Wide Opportunities on Organic Farms and the Foundation for Intentional Communities. Through these websites I was fortunate to discover a few communities not too far. Shortly after visiting Earthaven Ecovillage in February of 2013, my daughter and I moved with our 3 guinea pigs to an off-grid home over looking a beautiful pasture. We had approximately 100 close neighbors and over 300 acres of forested land to call home.
Like many people who have only ever lived in a nuclear family, I had no idea what of what living in community would really be like. In many ways, I made assumptions that it would be effortless and all of my needs would be magically met. Becoming a single mother and living in community was a challenge in many ways I could not have prepared for. I didn’t quite understand the complexities of village life, and after a year and a half I realized that my daughter was not going to have her needs fully met without a school. Once I accepted this, the winds of change swiftly uprooted our life and we moved over the mountain to a communal home. We had 10 housemates, 4 adults and 6 children and much of the time it was ideal. Each time we shifted, we found ourselves deepening into community, seeing what worked for us and what didn’t.
Less than a year later I felt the pull to move to a small farm. For a season my daughter and I lived on top of a hill, in an off grid yome and enjoyed living simply. I payed very little for rent and did work trade to cover the rest. I was able to spend the majority of my time with my daughter working in the garden or at the creek reading. It was blissful.
Over that blissful summer I connected with my beloved and we fell deeply in love (a beautiful story that I’ll share through another blog post). Our family of four (we each had a child prior) had grown to a family of six in a little over 2 years. My husband also very much valued community and since he had lived at Earthaven Ecovilllage in the early 2000’s we visited occasionally. Shortly after a visit we found ourselves curious as to what living in community as large family could look like.
The doors opened up for us to move back to Earthaven in August of 2019, shortly before the pandemic. We were blessed to land in community in such a tumultuous time. After almost 3 years of living in close proximity to people and nature, we have given our children a life similar to the one in my dreams, we have grown deep friendships and a sense of resiliency. We have experienced both beauty & loss. We have invested ourselves in tending seeds for the future through our devotion to this way of life.
This year we bought a site and are developing our home. Becoming a member has been a powerful journey for me~ I had the opportunity to tell the community my life story and was fully witnessed. I’m becoming more involved with the Village School and the guilds that keep this village creating beauty in so many ways. It takes a lot of work to live off grid in community, it’s not perfect, but it’s for us. In many ways it’s an experiment, one that I trust will support a beautiful future for the children.
So many of us have found the need for community, whether in the past few years, or deeply in our bones. This is a primal need, to root into our sense of belonging and share our life and gifts. As we awaken to this we find that it can look many different ways. What are the ways you have your needs for community met? And have you ever dreamt of living in an intentional community?
With honey in the heart,
