“What? You too? I thought I was the only one.”
CS Lewis

There is a commonly held belief that a Community is a group of people with shared values and that you need this in order to build a community together.  This is a misconception and it is limiting.

Because there is something we all have in common: We all share in the varied, challenging, sometimes joyful, sometimes painful experience of life.

Community building is the drawing of a larger circle, one that encompasses sports enthusiasts, yogis, computer programmers, musicians, readers, dancers, parents, children, teachers, and students.  It includes all diversity; emotional, intellectual, academic, physical, economic, religious, cognitive, and ethnic.  Community building draws a circle that includes everyone.

In our workshops, perfect strangers come to a place where they begin to feel safe to share with one another.  I’ve had the experience in the workshops, twice, of hearing someone I knew very well share a personal story with the group that I’d never heard before.  One, a good friend, messaged me afterward: “So enjoyed your session last night! It really made me feel safe to open up and trust and I have never felt that way before.”  Another person wrote to me after a community-building session, “It was good for  my soul!”

Have we ever needed this caliber of connection more than we need it now?

How wonderful it is to bring all our experiences together, to hear and validate them as communities so eloquently and naturally do, and to enjoy a taste of community together.

Community for community’s sake!

One of the best things you can do for yourself and your world is to learn how to build community.  How can you do that?  Read the book I wrote that tells you how or contact me so we can talk about how I can help.

Photo by Hannah Busing on Unsplash