Moving to an Ecovillage
By Kassandra Brown
Intentional community and ecovillage living are not for everyone, but if
your heart is longing for more connection with other humans, more
sustainable ways of living on the planet, and challenges to your idea of
reality, then it might be right for you.
On April 2, 2012, my daughters and I moved to Dancing Rabbit Ecovillage
in rural northeastern Missouri. We came with a U-Haul full of stuff, hearts
full of dreams, and some sadness about what we were leaving behind. Nervous,
excited, and tired we tumbled out of the truck into our new home. We were
met by friends we remembered fondly from our visit six months prior. They
were ready to help us unload and proved that many hands do make light work.
I tried to get my bearings on where to put everything in our new
two-hundred-square-foot home and the additional fifty square feet of storage
space in another home. Needing a break, I suggested a swim at the pond. We
took advantage of the unusually warm day to jump in. While playing, I
remembered why we were bothering to make this big move that required
learning new skills, giving away most of our possessions, traveling nine
hundred miles, setting up a new home, making new friends, and learning a
completely new culture.
It’s about freedom and connection.
Intentional community and ecovillage living are not for everyone, but if
your heart is longing for more connection with other humans, more
sustainable ways of living on the planet, and challenges to your idea of
reality then it might be right for you.
If you think community might be right for you, where do you begin? Start
your own? Join an existing community? Where? How do you find the perfect place
for you? You may realize you don’t know which one and you don’t even know
where to find one. Before you feel overwhelmed or helpless, read through the
following steps that will help clarify your vision and give you concrete
places to start.
Step 1 – Identify your ideals
You want something different than standard suburban or urban life with
two cars, two kids, a mortgage, and relationships that never get the time
they need to be as solid as you’d like them to be. You know what you don’t
want.
Now you need to identify what you do want. This may be harder than it
sounds. Most of us have more experience talking about we don’t like or
what’s wrong with a situation and less experience expressing what we truly
want and value.
Now’s your chance to practice. Use these questions to get your creative
juices flowing.
- What do you like to do? How do you want to spend your days?
- What comforts (running water, electricity, tempera- ture control)
are essential to you and what are you willing to do without? What about
movies, sports, and other professional entertainment?
- How much time do you like to spend with others? Alone?
- How do you feel about checking in with others before you make a
decision? How willing to compromise?
- How urgent does sustainable living feel to you?
Each community is different and the better you know yourself and what you
are looking for, the easier it will be for you to find the one that is right
for you.
Another tool to help you know yourself better is identifying hopes, fears,
boundaries, and possibilities. I first learned this in a workshop with French
author and teacher Margot Anand and it looks like this.
- Hopes. What are your hopes? The sky’s the limit.
Say what you want, no matter how unreasonable or farfetched it might
sound.
Example: If you want to live in a shared house with six other adults and
kids as family, this is the place to say, “I want to create supporting,
loving family with six other adults and their kids.”
- Fears. What are your fears? What makes you say “no” or hesitate? What
awful thing could happen if you go for your hope? No matter how unlikely
these fears are to manifest, this is the place to say them. Example: “I’m afraid no one will want family with me. My kids are too
messy and my relationship with my husband is rocky. I’m afraid no one else
in the world wants the lifestyle I want.”
- Boundaries. What are your boundaries? What are you
willing to do or able to do? Boundaries with others include things like
building codes and wedding vows. You can also have personal boundaries.
What agreements have you
already made with yourself or others that you want to keep? Example: “I want to make sure I keep $3,000 in savings and have someplace
warm to live this winter that can shelter me and my family.”
- Possibilities. Given all of the above, what are the possibilities you’d
like to move into? How can you create a container that is safer for moving
into your hope, helps address your fears, and respects your boundaries? Example: “I’d really like to live in community so I’ll research and visit
communities. I’ll make a vision board to remind me of what’s important. I’ll
talk to my partner and get support for our relationship.”
"Many of your friends will say you are crazy. Being able
to talk with someone who understands the longing to live
cooperatively and sustainably is invaluable." |
Now that you’ve clarified your values, you may wonder “Where do I find
this amazing place?” There are so many options. Many of your friends will
say you are crazy. Being able to talk with someone who understands the
longing to live cooperatively and sustainably is invaluable. This coach,
friend, or communitarian will have experienced the stresses – both joy and
disappointment – of the journey from where you are to where you want to go.
It can be very helpful to have someone outside your circle of family and
friends to talk to about community.
Step 2 – Find Communities
Now that you know you’re interested in community and have identified some
of your values, it’s time to look at what real live communities are out
there. A great way to begin is with the movie Within Reach: Journey to Find
Sustainable Community. The filmmakers take us with them on their bicycle
tour through one hundred different communities. Watching it is a great way
to get a visual snapshot of many different ways of living communally.
The Internet is a great way to make first contact with many communities.
I just did a Google search for the phrase “intentional community” and was
impressed with the results. The Fellowship for Intentional Communities
website is a great starting point to find a community near you. Dancing
Rabbit Ecovillage and Twin Oaks both have good websites on their
communities, what to expect, and how to visit. A good book to read is
Finding Community by Diana Leaf Christian. (See “Learn More” at the end of
this article for info.)
Pick a few communities that look good to you on paper. Then reach out
with an email or a phone call. It will often take longer to get a response
than you expect. Remember that a great deal of community work is done by
volunteers who are also building their own homes and businesses while living
full social lives. Be patient and persistent.
Communities also have varying degrees of excitement for visitors and that
excitement is often seasonal. During colder months, most communities work on
building closer relationships with existing members rather than courting new
people. Winter is a great time to research and outreach. Your visit is more
likely to happen in the spring or summer.
Step 3 – Visit
No matter how wonderful a community sounds on its website and through
correspondence, nothing compares to an in-person visit. You must visit a
community, I suggest for two weeks or more, before you decide if this is the
right one for you.
Please remember that this place you are visiting is home to the people who
live there. While this is an exciting new adventure for you and a window into a
new way of living, you are also coming into people’s homes. Respect, courtesy,
asking permission, and other social graces will help the visit go well for all
parties involved.
While there, immerse yourself in the lifestyle as much as possible. Learn
what life is like in that community. Bringing too many of your own comforts
with you may mask the authentic experience, whether for positive or
negative, and either makes it harder for you to know if that community is a
good fit for you.
When you visit, you’ll want to bring with you the insight you learned
from identifying your values. Make sure you check out your ideas and stories
and find out 1) if you really do want what you think you want and 2) if
other people really live that way in this community. If the answer to #1 is
no, then you can feel blessed that you learned that lesson and go back to
asking yourself what you want. You’re doing valuable learning. Trying
something new and finding out that you don’t like it after all is not a
failure. It’s growing and learning.
If the answer to #2 is no, then you can either look for another community
where people are already more in alignment with your values or create a
sub-culture in the existing community where you continue to advocate for and
create situations that support your values. Either option is a valid
response. Both present challenges.
As long as you’re in the community, immerse yourself in your visit. Talk
to as many people as you can, including ones you immediately like and ones
who are less appealing. Get a feel for who lives there, how decisions are
made, and what the underlying tensions are. This is not Utopia. This is a
real place with real people and real issues.
While visiting, do your best to realize that living there is different
than visiting. The real experience of living there and doing the day-to-day
things that sustain life will be different than any visitor period. Talk to
people about the differences, how people deal with the transition, and what’s been
found to be helpful in the past.
Step 4 – Move
Jump in the U-Haul and go. At some point, you just have to jump into the
change and do it. For me that looked like climbing into the U-Haul friends
had loaded, taking the keys, strapping my daughters in, and starting to
drive. My husband stayed behind to wrap up loose ends, including the sale of
our house. The step to drive myself, my daughters, and a truck full of stuff
nine hundred miles was a big part of the transition for me. I was the
responsible one and the one making decisions. For better or worse, it was
all me. And I did it.
That’s the sort of challenge and triumph you get to have regularly living in
community. You will be challenged. You will have others reflect back to you
aspects of yourself that you like and aspects that you don’t. Either way,
living in community is an intense growth experience and sometimes seems like
a never-ending self-improvement workshop.
Save the World? By definition, ecovillages are trying to create new ways
to live. In many ways we’re trying to save the world. This is a full-time
job and not to be undertaken lightly when you join one. Devoting several
hours a week to volunteer work is common. Some communities have quotas for
how much a member is expected to work for the community. It’s good to get
clear on those expectations and your enthusiasm for meeting them before you
join.
"It’s
awesome, great, and wonderful. It’s also challenging, frustrating,
confusing, and complicated." |
Get a liaison. This may be part of the new resident program or you may
have to ask someone informally to be your mentor, helper, and person you
initially come to with all your questions and concerns. Very rarely will you
visit and then immediately start living in the community. A liaison can help
you bridge from your current home and lifestyle to your new home in the
community. As you get more acclimated to the community, you will build other
friendships and may or may not stay close to your liaison, but it’s
invaluable to have someone you can go to for that beginning help.
Why Community?
It all comes back to freedom and connection, for me. Dancing Rabbit is,
hands down, the favorite place that I’ve ever lived. It’s awesome, great,
and wonderful. It’s also challenging, frustrating, confusing, and
complicated. Both experiences exist for me here, sometimes simultaneously.
I love that environmental concerns are universally accepted as valid
reasons to do or not do something here. No one is pouring weed killer on the
fields or cleaning the floors with ammonia. Permaculture, cob, straw bale,
passive solar, and off-grid are all phrases commonly heard and understood. I
love living with intelligent people who share many of my values.
Outreach and education are important to me. I love that we outreach to
others through visitor programs, biweekly tours, our annual open house, and
workshops. We let people see and experience for themselves that there is
another way to live and relate to the planet, resource use, and daily
interactions with fellow humans. We embody sharing and simplicity in ways
that many people find inspiring.
Do you find this inspiring? Perhaps we’ll see you in an upcoming visitor
program or workshop. Wherever you end up, enjoy the journey of exploring
community. It changes lives. Will it change yours?
Learn More
Dancing Rabbit Ecovillage
Finding Community by Diana Leaf Christian (New Society Publishers, 2007)
Ecovillage Living: Restoring the Earth and Her People by Hildur Jackson,
Karen Svensson (UIT Cambridge, 2002)
Kassandra Brown lives at Dancing Rabbit Ecovillage where she
works over the phone and by Skype to support people through a variety of
life transitions, including moving to community. You can find her online at
http://parentcoaching.org.
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