Music. This is Belonging, a podcast that explores being alive in the age of loneliness. I'm your host, Becca Piestrelli, a writer, mother, and community tender currently living on the ancestral lands of the Coast Miwok people in present-day Marin County, California. In this show, we explore topics like rites of passage, cultivating meaningful community, seasonal and cyclical living, and what it means to be a good ancestor in these times.
I have thought-provoking conversations with friends, teachers, elders, and ancestral medicine keepers to help support you in bringing more meaning and connection to your life. I also pop in here and there to share updates and learnings from my own story, because we were meant to do this together, cosmically holding hands as we walk the spiral of life. Can expect to be challenged by new or old ideas. Face your beliefs and what
systems informed them. Get curious and brave to tell the truth about the deeper harder things and feel comforted in the knowing that you don't have to do it. Music. To belonging the podcast. It's Becca Piestrelli coming to you on a fine spring day. The birds are chirping outside my window. I got outside and walked and I'm just like, wow, this is the secret to life going on walks. Is this what I should have been doing all these angsty years
is going on walks? The answer is yes, I think. Anyways, I'm feeling great after my walk. I also have been moving through so many sicknesses, I can't tell why. Is it an immune system thing? Is it having a toddler thing? Is it a waning pandemic thing? We'll never know. But all I have to say is it's a freaking miracle to breathe through my nose. And share this amazing, amazing episode with you. A conversation with someone I have been just like dying to get nosy with.
It's Sarah Wildman, aka Our Common. And Sarah Wildman is a leadership and relationship dynamics coach and community builder who has literally lived in a real deal, like shared intentional land-based community. And she raised babies in that, and now she's living in suburbia. And she has a lot to share from her experience and what she's really passionate about is infusing the things she's learned from living in what I would call deep community, in a way that all of us can access.
I think, you know, if you've listened to me for a while, I was like so intent on like buying the land and building the yurts. And I did buy the land and I may still build the yurts. And I'm also coming into this deeper understanding of the various ways, a sense of community, deep connection, of re-villaging.
Can be accessible to each of us in different ways, in different ways our nervous systems can handle based on privilege, based on access, based on bio-region, that it's all within our grasp, no matter where we live in our circumstances. So I just like dive into the nosy bits with Sarah about all of this. I'm like, what is it like to live in an intentional community? What is it like when religion is involved?
How can community take shape in ways that aren't always from a place of being unintentional community? She also shares her whole systems approach to relationships, which I think is so key because conflict is inherent in relationality. And I think so many of us, hand is raised, we're raised to be conflict diverse. We're raised to be harmonizers and caretakers. And I think to rise into a place of community care is to rise into a place where one can be with and move through and hold conflict.
And this is something I'm really curious about, and I just love it every time Sarah talks about it. And the frame she takes, the patience with which she holds it, the grace, all of it. So here we are with Sarah Wadman. Okay, everyone, we have a very special guest today.
This feels very special and important, not just because I adore this human, Sarah Wildman, but also because I really feel like I have been talking about re-villaging and yearning for ways to make it feel like we aren't doing life alone for so long, looking for someone who's lived it and teaches it. And then through my wonderful friend and basically creative collaborator, Azalea Mowen, I found you, Sarah.
And you are here to talk about what it's actually like to live in a village-like community and lessons learned. And you're going to let me be nosy with you. And we're going to talk about how to apply it in our real lives in this modern time. So Sarah, thank you for agreeing to let me be nosy with you and welcome to belonging. Well, you're welcome, Becca. You can be nosy with me anytime. I always love a conversation with you.
Yeah. Okay, so we should name you a leadership and relation dynamics coach, community builder and founder of Our Common. And Our Common is a super rad Instagram account. I highly recommend, the link will be in our show notes, but if you look up Our Common, you'll find it. Highly recommend following it if you are like me and curious about like moving from the like Instagram memes of like...
That feminine trait of wanting to buy land with your friends and raise your own food and live the cottagecore dream. And then like the actual doing of it, Sarah's Our Common Instagram account educates on that and has amazing, amazing content. So Our Common is a coaching and consulting practice serving community seekers, community builders, and existing communities. So Sarah, how did you come to the experience of living the experience of living in an intentional,
is it an intentional community that you lived in? What are the terms, what are the words we use here? How did you come to live in a village-like format? That's a great question. So many different pieces to the story that led to living in a communal context. And it's a funny one, even as you ask the question, right? Because it evokes images of commune and what does that all entail or include?
And our experience was deeply tied to work in the nonprofit sector, and at the time to our Christian faith. So we were initially working in a nonprofit in the Rocky Mountains doing outdoor leadership stuff where we lived in a community type context, a bunch of families that were on staff, singles on staff, where we all had our own home dwellings, but we shared meals and we worked together and we were quite remote in that setting.
And we did that as young, newly married, before we had kids and through our first pregnancy and the birth of our first child. And then from there, when we moved from that context, we knew we wanted to continue to live in some sort of community context because we experienced so much value from that.
And that's what led us again into a nonprofit setting where we were living and working maybe in a more explicit, intentionally communal way with other families living and working on land where there was farming. Yeah, I'm gonna stop there because I feel like you have questions to deep dive into that. Okay, so what you're telling me is you were not raised in a community setting. I mean, you're from Vancouver, right?
I'm from Vancouver. I grew up in the city. And it's so interesting when we start to talk about the word community because everyone has different images of what that evokes. And there's so many definitions. And I grew up in the same home for 30 years. Oh, I didn't live there for 30 years, but my parents were in the same home for 30 years in a neighborhood. In the west side of Vancouver. And it did have a very significant community feel at the time.
A lot of the kids in the neighborhood walked to school together. I went from kindergarten through grade 12 with a lot of the same kids. We walked to the same organic grocer down the road in the same pharmacy. So there was quite a community type experience, even in this big city. And I definitely grew up in a home that was very centered around hospitality. I would describe of hospitality as kind of a core family value.
So people over for dinner on a regular basis, people that maybe we didn't even know through our broader network, coming to stay with our family for days at a time, hosting international students, sometimes for months or even years at a time as a family. So quite an open door hospitality oriented experience of childhood, but not living on shared land in more of this kind of collective communal way, no. Okay, so you're a natural extrovert, I'm hearing.
Oh yeah, raging, raging extrovert. And you are partnered with an introvert much like I am, right? Oh yeah, off the charts introvert. Why does that happen? Ooh, polarity baby, makes for a beautiful relationship. But hard when they talk about community. And we can talk more about your partner, Jessie, in a bit.
But my curiosity with that is like you saying, okay, I was raised with an open-door policy, we hosted international students, we had such like a communal-based family, and sort of my first little like... Little nosiness trigger came up where I was like, okay, I also have a desire to have that kind of a home with an open door policy. I'd say we maybe had a hybrid approach, but I have a very introverted
father who sort of wanted his privacy. And I find that particularly, I've had Tim on the podcast talking about our community longings and discussions. There is this whole thing around a fear of people intruding on your space. And I wonder if it's an introvert-extrovert thing, it could be trauma-based, it could be so much of the cultural context, but I hear from the get-go that was not a thing in your family culture. It was like, come on in, right?
That's an interesting observation. Yes and no. I actually have quite an introverted father as well who I think has modeled a pretty beautiful picture of his love language is to cook for people. So we often had people for meals and like the meal would be over and he'd be like, okay, see I'm going up to my room or he'd be like, I'm heading out to the backyard or I'm gonna go watch the news. Like he did a very good job of opening the door, offering hospitality and when he was done being done.
And those of us that wanted to linger and stay did or sometimes people picked up the message and packed up and left. So I actually think we weren't beyond that concern about what was the word you used Becca here? Invasion? Intrusion. Intrusion. Yeah, I think there wasn't an avoidance of that necessarily. There was an openness and yet there was an awareness of the need for privacy or the need for downtime or the need for family time growing up.
But myself as an individual, I absolutely loved having people in the space, in the home. Even as a kid, I didn't mind sharing the dinner table with strangers. Yeah. Wow, that's such a healthy way of doing it with your father.
That's beautiful that that was modeled for you. So really what I'm picking up on is for you and your partner very early on in your nonprofit work to choose these shared land community experiences, there was a level of safety felt in your body that I welcome this in, you know?
Because I find when I have conversations with my partner, with my community, with people on the internet who I consider my friends, there's a real, I find there's like different levels of like capacity and concern, control, capacity, concern, and control around letting people in, inviting people in.
And I'm sure that's a skill, like a muscle you can build. But I find that you, I'm hearing you and Jesse said yes to this new adventure of sharing space, which I think can only speak to a nervous system and being like, I welcome this. Yeah, I also think it speaks to a bit of our naivety. And, you know, we were young when we first moved our first context. I was 25 and Jesse was 23. So, you know, we didn't have a lot of like
worldly experiences to indicate for us how much we might need space. We just kind of jumped in with two feet. And that initial experience really was unique in that we were so isolated. We lived an hour from the nearest grocery store in that community. And it was a number of young families at similar life stage was an outdoor wilderness center. And so a lot of us had similar interests, we were all, you know, into backpacking and climbing and mountain biking. And, and we were.
At similar life stage in terms of being either newly married or young kids. And we weren't just cohabitating. We were each other's friends, closest friends and family, really, in a lot of ways. We hung out maybe three nights a week. We'd put our babies to bed and bring our monitors all over to one person's house and hang out and talk and – Oh my god, I want that so bad. Be friends! So that was quite unique. And I think that's a time we look back on as being
really special for what it was. And I think that it would be hard to replicate, because the setting is what set it up to create that sort of intensity. Does that make sense? Yeah, I think something that the first year of postpartum, first year of postpartum in like a lockdown setting, we weren't locked down, but right, we were avoiding leaving our homes in 2020
when I had Atlas. So there was like the idea that being close to home felt important and also because young babies nap all the time or like, I don't know, a lot of new moms, some are quite adventurous, but a lot of new parents have this sort of like needing to be near home with their babes. I realized proximity... In relationship is essential. And as someone who a lot of my bestest friends live far away,
I mean, I consider you a dear friend and you live far from me, right? We have the WhatsApp and the texting and all that, but I found for the physical in-person relational tending that I required as a new mom, I needed people who lived blocks away to see. And that way we would pop in and see each other. And that was like a bing, bing, bing, big aha for me around, re-villaging in the context of like my life and what I desire as a parent is people close by.
And when you talk about everyone brings the monitors and you go hang out and how that was a unique experience, it's because you were in proximity to each other and you were all you had in a lot of ways. And I find someone who lives in suburbia in this technological age where the
grocery store is down the street and there's five of them nearby, to choose proximity. I'm sort of dancing around here, but it just feels important to speak the lessons as they come, to choose people to be in proximity with is something our ancestors never had to choose, you know? And you in that context didn't have to choose, it was given to you. And I think maybe that's a gift you were given early on when you jumped in with two feet at 25 to be like, oh, this is important. Would you say?
Absolutely. And I would really emphasize this piece about proximity. I don't think it's the only way to do community or to do village. And yet, we live in a culture that is busy. And so if we don't have proximity, proximity equals convenience. And we do live in a culture
that is fed by convenience. And so there's just the simple fact of it's much easier to go to my neighbor next door and ask for a cup of sugar than it is to call my friend that lives three blocks away to ask for a cup of sugar than it is, you know, literally impossible for me to ask you unless you're going to mail it to me and it's going to come three weeks later, right? So there's just some simple facts that make proximity such a factor. And I think you point to the postpartum
period and the new mother period. And that was my experience. For the first seven years of being parents, we only knew parenting inside a shared living context. And that early first year, I can't. Bless all the mothers who do it another way, who do it in isolation. But for me, that was a, survival thing as an extrovert, especially to be able to put my baby down for her nap and to take my monitor and go have a cup of tea next door on the same property where I felt totally safe to do that. And...
Really commune with other mothers going through the same stage, the same phase of life. And that came at the cost of not being able to go to mom and me yoga or to go to swimming lessons because we were so far from a town. But that shared experience of being able to step out my door and find somebody and knowing that that somebody I would find would be safe, would be somebody that knew me, that somebody that cared about my child, that knew my child, that they
knew and they felt safe with. What a unique thing to have. And really a thing that, again, I think when we talk about ancestry and not having had to look for that historically. It's in our bones to yearn for that. For me, it didn't feel strange to have that. It felt like survival, but it didn't feel strange because I think inherently we remember. That that's how it's meant to be, that we're not meant to do it all alone.
Mm-hmm. You're speaking my language. Truly, truly. Okay, so then you were in that smaller community in the Rocky Mountains and then you headed west, right, for a larger shared land community that included farming. So this is where I'm like, tell me about it. What were, and I know that you were a part of holding that container. You had interns, you would walk the the land, I know Jesse was a part of it. So if you could just tell us, cause we all wanna know.
Yeah, so it was a pretty unique, it is a unique organization. The organization I worked for is called Arasha, which means the rock in Portuguese. And the first, it's an international organization. They operate in 20 countries around the world. The first one was an environmental center, community-based environmental center in Portugal, in an estuary where they did environmental restoration fur. Birds.
And there's a center in the Lower Mainland where they run kind of three core program areas. So conservation science, like environmental restoration, monitoring, research. And then they run environmental education. So programs for kids, day camps, they do a lot of work. They have a farm to families program where they do a lot of work around food security with refugees, newly landed immigrants, really beautiful program. And then they do sustainable agriculture.
So they grow organic farm, they have a community shared agriculture project, you can buy a share. Monthly share or weekly share. And then they have, I would say, kind of a fourth core program area, which is the community aspect of hospitality aspect. So there's a guest house there, you can go and stay. And we ran a residential internship program, which I think has a new name
now since I've left. And folks from all around the world would come and live for three months at a time as part of, you know, as a resident experience kind of community within community, the internship program would be its own little community inside our broader community. And there was a number of us families that worked for the organization that lived on property, and we considered ourselves like the residential community. And then there were a number of staff
that lived in the local area that commuted in and worked on site day to day. And so there was kind of nested layers of community inside this context. But we did shared meals together. At the time this was all pre-pandemic, I think nine times a week. So lunch together five days a week, supper together four days a week. And that was most, suppers were mostly residents, interns, the residential community and any guests staying in the guest house.
Lunches would often be bigger, off-site staff, maybe volunteers or a program, a group, a class that might have been running might join us for lunch. And all the food we ate would be cooked from food grown on site. Okay, who would cook? This is a good question. You know what? There's a funny story about this because, of course, we came from a community context in the Rockies into this setting. When we first arrived, we had expectations like people do based on our previous experiences.
So when we'd been in the Rockies, there was a full-time cook. We never cooked. The full-time cook did all the cooking. We could sign up for meals and go or not go. We had a kitchen at home, so we could cook at home, but we mostly ate in the main shared area. At Arasha, there was a bit more of a rotation setting.
So some specially residential staff took turns cooking, interns take turns cooking, and then there is a full-time hospitality coordinator who cooks some core meals, mostly the bigger lunches. And we were newly there, I think it was like three, four days, and somebody was like, the, person who's scheduled to cook on Thursdays out, could you guys fill in? Could you cook?
And it was for something like 40 people for lunch or 50 people for lunch. And, you know, of course, you're having to cook seasonally based on whatever's available in the garden at the time. It's not just like, oh, I'm going to go to the grocery store and get this or that. It's like, this is what's booming in the garden. Here's what you have available to cook with. And we felt so thrown. We were like, what do you mean we have to cook? We did not come with that
expectation. So that sort of summarizes it. In the end, as a family, I think we cooked roughly every other, every third week for everyone. Wow. Okay, so what I'm thinking about is like, food allergies and preferences. And do you sort of have to put that I guess allergies? No, but you have to put that to the side. I'm thinking about the individualist mind of like, I want to eat what I want to eat.
Yeah. Isn't that an interesting thing? That's, that's more common in our current age. Michael Pollan has a really great, I don't know if you're familiar with his work, but he has a really, great article about kind of the common pot. And this idea of like, hospitality and shared meals, I think coming around the table is such a core element of community and village life and
that shared experience of life together. Eating is such an elemental thing where we connect with, our bodies, we connect with the earth through our food, we connect with each other in the communion, of sharing or breaking bread with each other. And much of that is lost when it's like, oh, this person can eat this and this person can eat that and maybe we'll just go to a restaurant because it's more convenient. But there is actually something quite profound of eating
out of the same pot together, literally breaking the same loaf. But of course, we live in a modern age and people do have restrictions and this and that. And so, absolutely, we did work around those things to the extent that that was possible. And usually, there was kind of like a gluten-free, dairy-free version of the thing. And a standard version. We ate probably about 95% vegetarian. And a lot of lentils, a lot of beans, yeah. A lot of winter squash, a lot of cabbage for certain
months of the year, you bet. Yeah, okay, all right. So shared meals and then there was the land-tending portion, yeah, about how you took care of the land. Yeah, I think there's again, there's this uniqueness to that setting in that we were, living this way of life, but part of living this way of life was also our work.
And so there was somebody whose job it was to look after hospitality and do all the grocery ordering, you know, of course, there are still things flour and sugar and, and there was somebody whose job it was to tend the farm, and to manage what was being grown and to update everyone on what was available and to harvest and store food was somebody's job to do preserving of making sauerkraut or canning beans or whatnot. So there was a really unique quality
there. Because I think about this a lot since we've moved away and it comes time to cook lunch. I think I used to feel this shame like, while we were there, we ate such hearty, healthy, beautiful, meals that were cooked from fresh produce out of the garden. But it was somebody's job to spend three hours in the morning cooking lunch. Now, when I eat lunch, it's not my job to cook lunch, it's my job to tend to my clients and respond to emails. And cooking lunch is kind of an
afterthought, it's this extra thing I add in. And so that, again, I want to qualify that, because as people explore this question about living communally, there's something very unique when the living experience is also tied to this work experience. So, are you saying everyone who lived there had a job? Yes. Or could you just live there and receive in some way? Or no, everyone who lived there had a
job? That's, yeah, mostly correct. There was a couple of residents who were married to folks that worked there who worked off-site, but they still contributed in terms of contributing to meals or chores on the property, taking out the garbage. That's what I'm saying. Yeah. Yeah. So I'm seeing how you, your experience at a raw show was really, you know, this like well oiled machine in the way that like everyone had a job. And so what I'm doing is I'm seeing
that as like one, you know, scaled model. And then of course, I'm like, okay, I don't think I can create that from scratch. Because the other thing is you are supporting Tim and I in creating whatever comes next with the Three Waters Farm out in New York and you are dreaming in something, maybe similar. We can talk about that in a bit. And one thing I get overwhelmed with is like,
well, we're going to need shared agreements and whose job is it the kitchen? And then I remember talking to some friends who are mothers who are like, what if we all just like buy houses and knock down the fence next to each other and knock down the fence and like just do a community meal once a week. And so this is all for me to guide us in listening to you because I think there's, this experience a lot of us have in isolation in nuclear family individualist living.
Of yearning for maybe what you experienced, right? But either that's not possible, or that's not near us, or whatever reason. But what can we glean from what you're sharing, right? Around like that cooperative model of like everyone does have a job, or everyone does have one meal, or everyone does have one thing that they are focusing their tending and their care on so that it can fully feel shared.
Because of course, I'm fascinated with community-based communities, and then I'm always fascinated on whether or not they're a cult. But it sounds like a Roshda is not. It sounds like it was very healthily held. But yeah, that's the other part of me, right, is like looking for the ways in which it's unhealthy. Do you have any thoughts on that? Okay, so you said a bunch of things here,
and I wanna speak to a couple of them. So one, absolutely, and you know my story a bit, Becca, that since we've moved, we've been for four years living in a single family dwelling in your kind of standard quote unquote suburban neighborhood. And so absolutely that's been the exploration for me and through my work the last number of years is what does it look like to cultivate community and village in these more accessible ways?
Because not everybody can or wants to dive so deep into the full immersion experience of community. And we could speak again here, let's maybe put a little flag to circle back to that introversion thing. And my husband and I, Jesse and I, coming from different experiences of community. So yes to that.
And I love that you've pulled the learning from this piece about everyone having a job to how do we maybe create an expression of that that includes everyone has a role or a piece that they're tending or holding uniquely in the broader community. So that absolutely is a piece to carry, to think about. What would that look like where I am?
Is there a piece about childcare or a piece about meals or a piece about gardening that I could hold in my broader community, in my neighborhood or with friends that live nearby? And then the bit about cults. Okay, the bit about cults. So, right. It's so funny, right? Because it does sort of evoke that imagery. And especially, Arasha is a faith-based organization. They're a Christian non-profit
whose focus is environmental stewardship or environmental care. So quite different maybe than what is typically pictured with such a, you know, you include that word Christian and it attaches a lot of labels. But I would describe it as quite a spacious community. People came from all walks of life, all backgrounds and belief systems to participate, to engage, to volunteer, to stay, to learn. So Margaret Atwood is a huge advocate of Arash. I don't know if you know
Margaret Atwood. She was one of the keynote speakers. And even the David Suzuki Foundation, which is historically known to be quite anti-religious, has partnered with us in a panel. So again, very spacious type organization and my experience there, I actually can't quite articulate how healthy I felt like it was. In five and a bit years of living there, and over six for working for them, I never once heard a single person gossip about another single person. Oof. That's unique.
That's unique. That's really unique. Now, you hear a lot of experiences of people in community contexts, and I just heard one this week, where there's a lot of dysfunction, right? And where power gets into play. And so I think this question about shared agreements, absolutely. If you're even if you're with neighbors, deciding to pull down fences, like what are we committing to? What is it that we're agreeing to with each other? I think those sorts of things are really
important. You know, what are what's our intentions with each other? If things come awry, how will we address those things? Those are absolutely important to be having whatever the scope or scale is. If you're wanting it to be intentional community, it does require some of those upfront conversations and some of those shared elements. Okay, so what were the best parts of living in that shared land, intentional community space.
For you? The food. For me, the meals was huge, especially as a working parent. Now, my experience, our first week after living away, I was like, so I said to Jesse, I was like, does every family, they have to cook five times a week? He looks at me and goes, hun, there's seven days in the week.
All right, seven times a week we are in charge of this. Us two adults, we are the ones responsible. We grow a huge garden here, so we're responsible for growing the food, preserving the food, harvesting the food, cooking the food, cleaning up the food. That's a huge part of everyday life that I think a lot of people pass right over. We think of it as an afterthought. And of course, there are lots of businesses built
around creating convenience around food. So for me, that is absolutely the biggest one, to finish a day of work, to hang out with my family for an hour and then show up to dinner and to have it cooked and to sit and enjoy with friends that feel like family and to take our turns doing dishes, but then to like linger at the table and then walk my kids home across the field to put them to bed at the end of the meal. That's magic. Now I know the difference because we live
a different reality now. And that's magic. I absolutely miss that probably more than anything else. And what were the hardest parts? Okay, for me, again, the hardest part circle back, to motherhood. It was for sure, even as an extrovert, this feeling like there was nowhere to go. Outside that was our own. Anywhere we went outside, if we left our home environment, we were in communal shared space. And again, there are other ways that somebody could set
this up or design this, but this is how it was where we were. And the funny thing about, as a mother, I was there with, you know, my second child was born in that community context. So we had little ones, you know, picture a three-year-old and a one-year-old or whatnot on the property. If we were. Out, they might be free roaming other children, a six-year-old that would just tag along and join us. And it felt really hard to have those moments to say like, actually, we're just wanting alone
time or family time right now. That is like the children would flock to the nearest kind of wise adult that was present in the space. And so there was many a moment where I suddenly found myself watching many children and not just my own. Which I think would be different now, my kids are older, I probably could, you know, I would appreciate it differently having them out and roaming. But that element of, okay, now we have to manage these kid dynamics. And there's no,
necessarily, there's some degree of choosing when to have that happen and others not. So that piece for sure. The other piece that felt really challenging, and I think a lot of us experience this nowadays, those that work from home or work in an online setting, but that feeling of living where you work. My work was to tend the internship program and their community experience. And so.
When I would go to a meal, my interns who I cared about, they were in community, I had relationship with them, but it was also my job to care for their experience and, and to answer their questions and tend to a lot of their scheduling logistics. And I'd be sitting at a meal with my kid and my interns are sitting across from me or at the table with me in that
sense of like, I'm communing all the time with my work. And my kids felt that tension of my energy and focus being pulled, especially at a meal time or just even on a day off with the kids out in the field, somebody would have a question. So it's harder to have those distinct boundaries for any of us that live and work in the same place or without a lot of distinct lines of separation. So I'm going to ask the question everyone's wondering, why'd you leave?
That's a great question. This is, I think, where we start to look at our values around, whole system flourishing. So this is something I talk about a lot, looking at things from a whole system perspective. And so, I think about our family unit as a whole system. And I would describe myself as thriving at Harasha and probably could have stayed in some context, for another 20 years. And I had a very introverted – I have a very introverted husband
who was not thriving. And for him, a lot of those pieces related just to feeling, Worn out stimulus wise, meal after meal. For me, the meals were a highlight. For him, maybe meals were a challenge, right? A lot of stimulus being at a meal with a lot of folks. And there was a transient nature to our community. There were those of us that were residential and long-term, but interns came and went every three months. Guests came and went sometimes daily or weekly.
And so for him, that relational experience had a toll. And so there was a broader conversation for us as a family about re-imagining a scenario where all of us were thriving. In a lot of ways, it felt like a really complex, was a very complex decision because so much of our experience of a Russia was kind of for me, the end goal vision of the life I wanted to craft and create. And I remember distinctly having this one conversation with Jesse where he said, is it though, is it the whole vision?
And I had to pause and recognize like, No, my broader vision is one in which our whole family system is thriving and flourishing. And here I have this partner that's not flourishing, that's not actually the whole vision. So it was on the surface, 90% of the way there, and then there's this piece that's actually, it looks like 10%, but it's so much more, it's so much bigger to have a partner that's not thriving in a setting.
And so that was a conversation and a decision that we absolutely made collectively. I feel like it's a decision we made in partnership together. And I would describe it as a decision we made on behalf of his needs and his request, which is a unique thing to journey through in partnership because I grieved our move very, very deeply. And for him to hold that grief with me was quite activating, of course, because he had really made that request of me and of us.
And so, that's a complex thing again. and his grief was that... It was grieving me so much. So I'm trying to hold that grief for him. That's a complex thing to hold with each other and to navigate. But ultimately, that is what led to our departure. Thank you for sharing that. And every time we talk about it, I'm like, wow. What a healthy partnership to be able to have that conversation, make those choices, hold all the emotions. Thank you for sharing that. So you chose to move to the suburbs.
Right? With a small town. Yeah. Small town. Oh, you're in a small town. Okay. And you've got your two girls. And, and so how are you doing village now? Yeah, well, it was a process. It's been a process. I did a lot of pre grieving. So I'll just say that I think I cried every day
for the six months between when we announced our departure and when we moved. So the initial landing phase, I think I'd done a lot of the pre grieving, I was able to enter into like the new energy of being in a place and really holding this collective vision of okay, here are the elements that were so essential and important to me were these like, shared elements of life, community experience. And here are the things that Jesse is needing a bit more time as a family unit, a bit more space
and autonomy over his own energy and schedule and capacity. So how do we bring these things together and envision new ways? And some of that has looked like things we do together, and some of that has looked like things I do versus things he does, and kind of divvying up those experiences or expressions of life. But now community looks really different than it did. And and yet I would still describe it, our experience, as having an evolving village type experience.
You know, there are a number of families on our block that we've built relationship with in quite intimate ways that we swap childcare with, that we watch each other's dogs, that we, you know, do meals with. Got three other families we're gardening with this summer on a shared piece of farmland. So there's a lot of aspects that are woven in, And yet it takes a lot more effort because they're not just right there because the intention needs to be named or asked.
The number of times I've said, well, I'm really craving building more of a sense of community with folks. So we'd love to get together with you more intentionally on a regular basis. Like the number of times I've had to be very explicit with people about what it is I'm longing for, what it is I'm calling in, you know, I'm new here, I'm making new friends. I would love to get together with you. This was so great.
We do it in a more consistent way? Let's try to do it regularly." A lot of invitation, a lot of initiating. And there's a weariness. There is definitely a weariness associated with that. When you feel like it's your job to hold or tend the thing, you described stepping into it in our. Previous experiences. When we arrived the first time in the Rockies, we needed a couch. Somebody found us a couch. Somebody helped us unpack. Somebody we didn't know helped us paint our
bathroom. It was instant village. Same thing. We moved to Russia. First morning, they threw us a big welcome breakfast, and somebody helped us unload and set up and made sure to introduce us to everybody. There was this instant carrying the load and moving here. There's more of a starting from scratch experience where you're looking for those like-minded folks, you're orienting towards them. You're maybe adjusting your schedule to make space for things to work in a consistent
way. You're asking for what you need. And you are needing to be a holder in a more significant way. And that is, it's heavy and it's tiring. And so I think we have to need a co-holder or many co-holders to share a vision and get a thing started in a way that actually feels energetically sustainable for us. Yeah, that brings up a lot for me hearing you. Because I know you and Jesse because you both work full-time and you have.
Your kiddos, and that's a whole thing. And then you're, you're calling in and doing the inviting for community and then there's caring for yourself and then there's making all the freaking meals. Right. And so here I am, you know, you're a mother of two and your littles are older than mine. And I've got a two and a half year old and I'm like, I'm already tired. I'm already freaking tired. And I also know because I tell and coach people who come to me about this,
like, if you want it, create it. We're in a moment in history where we are remembering through our longing and we have to, I believe we must trust ourselves and the ability to imperfectly create that which we crave. And so I really hear the amount of labor you are exerting in order to like keep, keep that momentum going because that's the value system of your family system and that's what equals thriving and flourishing, right? And so that's always where I'm interested in and like.
Commiserating on is like why is it like the mothers and the grievers and the ones who have felt that like acute loss must be the ones to reach out and like I don't want to harp so much in the woe is me because I do really believe in the action it has demonstrably improved my thriving right? To dig deep and reach out and create it. And also, yeah, it's just like a systemic grief. I have around and I can feel that I feel in the movement of you from Arasha to the small town of
like, there was a loss. And yeah, do you have any thoughts about that? Yeah, I mean, there's a couple things that are coming up for me. One is absolutely this idea that we, not always, but we choose our hard. There are some things that are handed to us that we don't get to choose. And of course, privilege plays in there. But when we make choices, every choice comes with its own flavor or version of hard.
And we get to choose what those things are. And I think a lot of the times when we start to think about community orientation, it's not familiar to us for most folks. And so it's really uncomfortable. and the flavor of heart that comes with it feels maybe undigestible. It's like, we don't know that flavor yet. It looks sort of foreign. And am I sure I wanna try it? Because the flavor of heart I have in my independence, I know this flavor of heart.
And I'm more inclined to continue to choose the flavor I know, right? And so I think there's something unique about our experience now, having lived So it. In depth in a community type way that allows us to observe those choices in a more objective way for ourselves and recognize what we're choosing. Okay, well, we could choose to do, you know, one of the things we talked about with the meals, for example, we could choose to do meals more
collectively. One of the hard things we experienced with that for Jesse, especially was that we never got to choose what was for dinner. So dinner is whatever whoever was making decided, and that was usually based on, again, organic produce or budget. And so we ate a lot of lentil stew. So, okay, that was the literal flavor of hard that went with shared communal meals was lentil stew. And now we have a different flavor of hard. We choose to cook our own meals, but we get to pick,
oh, what are you in the mood for? We have access to whatever we want. We can choose to. You know, I'm in the mood for pizza, let's make pizza. That's a very different, it comes with different challenges and sacrifice. It means more time, it means it's all on us, it means that we do the cleanup and we carry the burden and the cost, but we got to choose what it is we eat. And we're really conscious that when we make that choice that that's the
hard we're choosing at the expense of the gain that we get. I think a lot of people aren't maybe so aware when they choose independence that they're doing it to choose a particular, obviously a particular gain, but also maybe to avoid a particular loss.
And so there's an element for me, when I think about re-engaging aspects of community, and when Jesse and I have these conversations about how we can extend our experience of community into our everyday now, or when we look to the future, we have a real consciousness about what are the particular elements of challenge that we call in with that gain. And a lot of it is this element of, I'm not necessarily as in control or in charge of who I'm interacting with or where my energy goes.
Somebody I might get plunked sitting next to somebody that is like, wanting to talk about a thing I don't wanna talk about. Do I have the skills to navigate that, to, you know, whatnot in those experiences. And we're aware of that. And so it factors in more consciously when we think about visioning or making those decisions moving forward. That was really good. Yeah, that's having me, that's like a really valuable reframe, I think, for the ways I've been focusing on my heart. and.
Yeah, and I really am aware of the skills I don't have yet, right now, you know? It's very humbling, because it's like I have the yearning, and I have like some skills, you know? And some of them are innate, and some of them are from my family system, and they were modeled for me, and some of them I'm building slowly. And then. One of the skills that I really, really want to call in for myself, and sort of the last point
I wanted to discuss with you is navigating conflict and community. As someone who grew. Up in a conflict avoidant, harmony focused family who, I mean, I feel like I am strengthening that muscle slowly and slow is sustainable, so I'm fine with it. I find that that is one of like the fears that comes up in me, like when I envision this future that Tim and I are like basically dreaming in very slowly and intentionally, that's where I get caught up.
And that's when the spell of individualism, or you're saying independence, sort of comes into play where it's like, well, we can just choose what we agree, and Tim and I have enough rapport that we can navigate conflict, and that's safe, and that feels like I can handle that, and I don't know if I have the energy or the capacity to navigate this in a community setting,
And yet, I want it. I want to be able to do it. And so, anything you want to say for folks who feel similarly, because I find this is a big thing, I'm sure, in your work, too, where people are like, wait, but how? But how? Because I've also seen communities completely implode, or
I work more in systems of like circling. I teach circles. I have people circle. I am in circles where it's like, it'll blow it up if we can't work on that skill of being with it and moving through it with grace and trust. So what do you have to say about conflict? Can I press in with a question first? Yes, please. Okay. So you mentioned that you can do conflict with Tim because there are two things I heard was we have rapport and it feels safe.
So what makes for you it feels safe to access conflict with Tim? We have built tools up with the support of like therapists and then we have the shared history of having navigated that and gotten onto the other side to have trust that we could do it again. Yeah. So I think a lot of the time when we look at community and especially even just friends circling, for example, we are afraid of conflict maybe for two reasons. One, we don't necessarily
have established agreements and or shared tools or shared language. And B, we maybe haven't done it together before. And so it feels scary to do it for a first time. I think there is also an added element, oftentimes people feel like the easiest people to have conflict with are either family or a spouse. And the things that I think are unique about those relationships in a lot of people's contexts is there's some sense of security that that relationship's not going anywhere.
Family is blood, or my partner and I have made a commitment to each other,
and that commitment will hold us strong as we move through the conflict. And what's different with a a lot of folks for friends, with friends or neighbors, is they don't necessarily have an established foundation of some form of commitment with each other that makes experiencing a conflict in that relationship feel more terrifying, because, well, if it blows things up we could just go our separate ways, and there's a lot at stake. I could lose this relationship.
I even think workplace conflict often feels safer for folks than a friendship conflict, is there some shared commitment to the work or some sense of shared security in their work? Not always, obviously, these are all complex, nuanced things, the same is not always true for people in their families or their partnerships, but with a broad stroke here, there's some shared element of feeling secure maybe in a workplace that allows people to say, well, we'll figure this out, we'll get through this.
And maybe worst case scenario, there's less at stake because maybe that's not a close friend or whatnot. when it comes to... Again, friendships or neighbors or like a looser community context that hasn't brought in that intentionality to establish what are shared agreements and how will we address things when we disagree and how will we make decisions if we want different things or if you need to have a boundary and it makes me feel uncomfortable, will we talk about that? How will we do that?
If we don't have any of that, it certainly does feel less stable to enter into those conflict spaces. So, I mean, I don't think conflict is ever easy, necessarily, and it depends so much depends on our history and our experience with such things. But I do think there are some key things that set us up well, to do more communal ways of life and navigate conflict. And I would say, the first piece is some sort of shared agreement, even something quite basic or broad.
One of the communities that was quite connected to Hrasha, there was a living community, another farm where families share land and live together that was connected with Hrasha. And those families share an agreement to expect goodwill, which just means assume positive intent, assume the best of each other, expect the best of each other. That's their baseline tagline for how they hold their community, expect goodwill.
Okay, here's an agreement that says, I'm going to assume the best of you and expect the best of you and therefore I'm going to bring the best of me. Those sorts of moments are established. Agreements allow us to point back when things aren't going well and saying, hey, remember how, we committed to this together? We agreed to this together. It's not feeling like that's
happening. Can we talk about it? We have something to point to as a reference that allows us to enter into those conflict conversations, I think, with more ease and with more security. The other piece is shared language or shared tools. And absolutely,
you mentioned having a therapist. I think the same is true. If we really want a deep dive in a community-type way, having opportunities to bring an external, unbiased, unattached, third party into the space to equip us or to support us can add huge value to the longevity and the sustainability of those relationships. Yeah, I love the connection you're making. With like a long-term partnership. And that's really what it is. It's a long-term relationship
were desiring with each other. The nosy part of me is like, have you ever navigated big conflict in community before? And is there anything you can share about that? Or watched in awe as something
was worked out? A couple things come to mind with that question. One was my own experience, so I'll speak to that one first, which was maybe less of a conflict that came to head in the way we classically think of like explosion or loud voices, but more almost internal conflict where, when we were establishing ourselves at the Arasha community, I recognize now that I brought with me
some expectations about what community meant. And for me, again, as a person who goes deep fast, and as a person who wears her heart on her sleeve, who likes to be vulnerable, and having come out out of a community context where we were all each other's people, quote unquote, I came into that context, I think having significant expectations of who these people would be for me, what I would be for them, and the kinds of conversations we would have and what it would look like to live together.
And there was a couple individuals, but one individual in particular, who was not meeting my expectations. In terms of depth and intimacy, who was much more of a private individual. Who was more reserved than I am, and who engaged in very different ways. Very service-oriented in the community, but not very open in terms of kind of that intimacy, relational intimacy aspect. And I found myself really frustrated by that experience, grappled with that quite significantly.
And I remember walking with a mentor and I was expressing, you know, like, I'm facing this frustration. Like it felt like a conflict, even though it hadn't kind of expressed itself that way yet, was more of an internal expression. And she said, well, was there any point in time where you've asked this individual, what it means to them to be in community what their expectations of being in community are, what they expect a community-based relationship to
look like, or what they're needing or wanting out of community. And it's really a sense of like, oh shoot, I have just absolutely brought all of my own expectations and put them on this person of how they're supposed to show up in community and been walking around feeling frustrated as if I'm in conflict with this individual when it actually wasn't a pre-established, pre-committed thing that we never signed agreements that we'd spill our hearts to each other at every meal,
you know, like that was not necessarily the thing. So actually, you know, that's, unfortunately, not a big drama story for you, because really, in the end, it resolved itself with me doing my own inner work around it. Beautiful. And of course, like initiating where I could to.
Draw that individual in or, like exploring ways to navigate that differently. So that I think, and oftentimes I think when we are in community or in relationship in general, it's great to have that question as a first place when we feel like something is a conflict to check in, is there something here that I'm bringing an expectation? Is there a piece that's mine to work through before I bring this to a relational head? So that as a piece of advice, wherever you
lie in terms of community and relationship. You know, and then there have been some, there were some unique experiences that we went through in that, in our time in community with people having different priorities, really, I think one of the things that was, again, unique for our situation, was this working element, because we also had work hats and work roles, that was really important to
navigate with nuance. So, you know, I might have a neighbor who, their kids babysit my kids and I might be supervised by... You know, one of them, but they might supervise my partner, and I might be coaching one of them. Like, there's a lot of different hats that we might have worn. And there would have been times, absolutely, where it's like a work decision got made, that it was like, okay, there's conflict
here, let's like hash this out. I don't agree with the decision you made, or I felt undermined, or, you know, we had a lot of hard conversations about how things made us feel. And yet then being able to say, okay, now let's go for dinner and sit down and have dinner together and say, so that issue aside, how are you doing? How's your heart? How are things with your kids? To be able to move between roles that we wear with each other, again, takes skill,
a learned skill, I think. I don't think very many of us are born with that skill, a learned skill. To be able to almost in some sense compartmentalize where disagreement was happening. And I think we do this when we're skilled in our close intimate relationships too, right? With a partner, we might disagree on, I don't know, something that happened with parenting, but we can still, hopefully at times, set that down so that we can still navigate this next decision or go
through this thing. And then we'll circle back over here and address this. It's not that we we shove that under the bed and ignore it forever, but we also try not to let that seep into every element or every interaction that we're having with each other. The same was true in our community context, because in some ways it is a bit like a marriage, not in an overly culty way, but there is, right? There's like, you see each other every day, you see the best and the worst of each other.
There's a vulnerability inherent showing up to dinner with friends that have also seen you lose your top, or have also seen you ball your face off, who've also seen you lose it at your kids, et cetera, et cetera. There's an inherent vulnerability there that bears some similarity to our most intimate partnerships. Yeah, it's really landing for me hearing you speak to that.
As someone who often sees conflict in, quote, community. I use quotes because I wonder if we we can actually call like an online group, a community, but yeah, online. I think so. Or in spaces where you just don't have that like relational ability to like attune to each other, you know, to each other's bodies, to each other's nervous systems or have that like, you know, and then we all get burritos or whatever it is afterwards.
I've been thinking a lot about that as someone who used to speak to the spaces I held online as communities and I've stopped saying that term. I'm calling them groups or councils or whatever it is, because it's community to me and to many, it means something so different. It's what you're talking about, I think in a lot of ways where you're... Not just there for one thing, and then you duck out. There's like a holding of the whole human that feels really important.
The other thing that came up for me listening to you as someone who's seen withholding of truth for fear of causing conflict, I am someone who's done that. Actually, that is my tendency, especially in like circles or communities that I hold very dear. It's like I have a scarcity mindset of like, I might lose it, which is what you were speaking to. And so then I withhold boundary crossings, things that need to be cleared, feelings of, you know,
confusion or hurt or harm. I find that to be a thing, and I'm naming it here for myself and for folks who are curious about this as well, as like those of us who feel a scarcity of community, of intimacy, of vulnerability, and then we get it. There could be a fear of losing it, and then there's a withholding of truth, and that can create actually conflict is what I've learned over time. And so, I think you speak to such beautiful tools and reframes for how we can.
Grow through that. And of course, the first thing you talked about, attend to your own inner teacher. That's an agreement through the circle of trust framework, which is what I learned in my death doula program with A. Lua Arthur, and I use those agreements at the beginnings of all my gatherings, which is like the first thing we do is we attend to our own inner teacher because often in group settings, I believe in mirroring.
I believe what one person is activating in me is a mirror for what's within me. And so, I think it's beautiful to be in groups where people... Uh, have that agreement and can listen to that within themselves first. And then it's not a Real Housewives, you know, drama of throwing things, which, um, I assumed wasn't happening for you. Um, but I'm just always curious about how people navigate any level and form of these things that naturally come up with human beings.
Yeah. And I think this is where contexting is also really important for ourselves. I use this language of like right-sizing conflict. I don't know if it's like language I use with my kids,
right? Or like, are we right-sizing the reaction to this situation? Which is to say there are different degrees of intimacy we have, different degrees of quote-unquote community that we have in our lives and observing a thing through that lens of how, feels maybe trite to say how important is this in the grand scheme of things, but is this something that needs to be addressed in the container of this relationship now? And what's that in service of? Is that in service
of the relationship? Is that in service of my own growth, their growth? What is the intention or the. Need behind the instinct or the desire to address this in a relational context versus is this a thing for me to address internally. And some of that is best discerned when we can place things well in the container of context. I think about our experience at Arasha that had, I mentioned, these kind of nested experiences of community, the intern community that was there for three
months, but they lived in a house with us. For the first three years we were there, we shared a house with the interns. So things like doing dishes, yeah, they were only there for three months. There was a degree to which I had to discern how much am I going to kind of house mother these folks into adhering to our shared agreements, and how much am I going to let things go, but also how
much does it impact me, how does it impact the other people. These are all things to factor into the discernment around addressing something relationally versus, you know, the relationships. That were with folks long-term over our time living there, you know, five years and those relationships have extended beyond since we've moved. Is there something more heart-centered here that needs to be, have I felt disrespected or unseen? Is there some element where I felt
misunderstood? Do I really need to address that relationally? Or is it an example like the example I shared earlier where it's like, okay, here's me projecting a bunch of expectations and this is a thing for me to sit back with and work through on my own. We've absolutely had moments where I've been like, okay, this person is leaving in three weeks' time. What is most important here in terms of this relationship and what's most needed to support this relationship? And to
support. Again, it's not actually... Grace or love if we are letting something go, but inwardly harboring resentment for it. That is not the same thing as saying, you know what, I'm going to place the wholeness of this relationship ahead of this nitpicky thing that's driving me crazy and actually do my work to let it go. Those are,
two different things, and one masquerades as the other. Often I cannot count the number of of conversations I had with interns over the years that was like, such and such is driving me insane, but I'm just like practicing grace and like not dealing with it. That just sounds like avoidance. It's not grace, it's just avoidance. So watch out for those two because they can be sneaky in one representing the other, but they're not the same.
Yeah. Oh my gosh. Don't I know it. Okay, I have one final question for you, which is what is on the horizon for your family system when it comes to village and community? Like anything you want to share about that? That it's an ongoing, daily, almost daily conversation that we hold in our family. I think, you watch your kids grow up and you recognize the things that influence them is more than just your immediate family unit.
It is the broader community that they're a part of. And we're very conscious of cultivating an environment for them that supports their growth and development, their exploration of the world and their sense of self. And so it's important to us to be thinking beyond just like, how are we raising them? And what are we choosing to do at home? But also like, who are the people we're calling in? And
what are the ways of life that they're experiencing? And, you know, again, I mentioned our move away from a community context was very much to support Jesse's need at the time to step away from the intensity, the social relational intensity of that experience. And as we've stepped away. And as he's had some space and time, that has also allowed space to reimagine.
One of the things we think about a lot or talk about a lot is a more shared land ownership, maybe our own home dwellings with some shared rhythms together, maybe a weekly meal or. Bi-weekly meal, some shared chores and responsibilities and agreements, maybe shared ritual, and yet separate jobs. Not so much immersion of life and work in the everyday.
So that's certainly one expression. But the other is really tending to what we've been cultivating here in our neighborhood, which is food growing, it is... Child-tending, it is all kinds of, you know, shared meals, weekly cold plunges, with friends that are. Doing life in a lot of ways literally alongside us down the block. And so there's a lot of
curiosity about how that will evolve and change over the years. And we are very intentional about having conversations of how do we weave in and expose our kids to community-type experiences, even if it's not there lived every day anymore. And so that for us does include visits back to Russia, stay in the guest house. It also includes consistent time with groups of friends. We have
like an annual camping trip with certain friends. So there's lots of ways that we are looking at doing that and really open to allowing that to evolve and just choosing one next step at a time and trusting it to evolve and unfold and for our own vision and desire for it to evolve and unfold over time. I have such, yeah, it just, it's nice to feel kinship around these things, and yeah, you have such leadership and wisdom to share.
And I'm in this moment before we hit record where I was just talking about dealing with existential despair as a mother in this world, in this time, you know, that for whatever reason, like, this was my time, this is my lifetime, and you really linking that to like, this is why we're talking about these things and making these choices and moving with the rhythms of life is because we're navigating these things for not just like, for our, not
just for like our family in this moment, but for like, the land, for the legacy we're leaving, and I just really appreciate the frame you take and the work you do, and thank you for for chatting with me about this.
Yeah, thanks for that, Becca, and for the reminder to all of us that, you know, we don't necessarily make the choices we make because we know the result they'll have or because we're trying to cultivate or create some specific outcome, but rather to make choices that are in front of us that feel whole and aligned and right at our core.
And to choose those things, believing and trusting that they unfold a goodness, not even necessarily knowing exactly what that is, or knowing that we can't control all of the outcomes, but yet choosing anyways, those next right things. Yeah. Well, thank you for being here. We will put in the show notes at belongingpodcast.com links to your work as a leadership and Relationship Dynamics coach to our comment, to your Instagram, to all those things.
So check out Sarah in the show notes if you wanna know more, cause it's pretty good stuff. And thank you again for being here. Thank you. Thanks for having me, Becca. Music. Thank you so much for joining me in a time when our attention is being pulled in so many different directions, it means a lot that you took time out of your day to spend it with me and in these important conversations. For show notes and links and more information about my guests, you can head to belongingpodcast.com.
And if you'd like to hear more from me and get access to my free newsletter called Slow and Seasonal, you can head to beckapiestrelli.com slash subscribe.