Margaret Critchlow 0:01
Who’s there? You know, to give you a shoulder to cry on once in a while, who’s there to laugh themselves silly with you? Who’s there to walk with you and listen to bird songs? Or the sound of the waves? Who’s there to talk out a tricky issue in social relationships, who’s there to clear with you, that confrontations that you get yourself into that kind of social connection? Who’s there just even to look into your eyes, you know, and help you find the speck that got in there.

Rebecca Mesritz 0:42
Who is there indeed, I just had to start this episode off with that gorgeous quote from Margaret Critchlow my guest today, because I think it really hits on that longing inside each of us to really be seen and to live in connection with others. In today’s episode, we’re going to talk with Margaret about finding that connection as an older person, and building communities where elders can thrive emotionally, spiritually, mentally and physically. I often hear people entering their 60s Maybe even into their late 50s. Thinking about the future and wondering what the next chapter of their life will look like. Like people of many ages, there is a deep desire to find connection, mutual support, and continue living a vibrant, balanced and stimulating life. In this conversation, we will examine how to create community that both celebrates, and addresses the unique needs and challenges of elders and community. This was going to be our interview for July, but we’re releasing it just a little bit early because Margaret has a course upcoming with the fic at the end of June and I wanted you guys to get dropped into some of these topics before that started in case you were interested in signing up and joining along for that course. So I hope you enjoy it. Here’s a few words from our sponsors and then we will get started. For more than 50 years communitarians communities seekers and cooperative culture activists have been sharing their stories and helpful community resources and communities magazine communities has visited the topic of aging and community many times over the decades. And today’s guest Margaret Critchlow has herself written four articles for the magazine, including two about senior cohousing you can gain access to all back issues in digital form. Plus receive current print or digital issues by subscribing at Jen hyphen us.net/subscribe. A complete Article Index community index and issue theme list are all available online to help you find what you’re looking for. koho us is the hub of the cohousing movement, convening individuals and organizations with a shared vision for intentional community living. expert led courses and forums on the cohousing Institute, provide the skills and expertise to build and sustain your community available both live and on demand. Join koho us for the commons a monthly gathering space for the cohousing curious the 10th of every month at 10am Mountain learn more@www.cohousing.org.

Rebecca Mesritz 3:37
Margaret Crichlow PhD, taught anthropology at York University in Toronto, Canada for 25 years before retiring to Vancouver Island. She loved learning from villagers in the South Pacific islands of Vanuatu and from residents of Canadian housing coops. She has written or co authored more than 50 academic articles and seven books. She was a founding member of the first senior cohousing community in Western Canada harbourside cohousing, where she has lived with her husband since it opened in January 2016. Margaret enjoys sharing her enthusiasm for cohousing with people of all ages independently and as a community building facilitator with cohousing development, consulting her online courses planning for aging and community and is cohousing for you have supported people to better understand what they’re getting into when they join a cohousing community. You’re listening to the inside community podcast. I’m your host Rebecca Mezrich. Thank you so much for joining me today for this interview with Margaret Critchlow Margaret Critchlow welcome to the Inside community podcast. So nice to have you.

Margaret Critchlow 4:52
It’s great to be here, Rebecca. Thanks for inviting me.

Rebecca Mesritz 4:55
Absolutely. Well, I usually start my Interviews by asking my guests to tell me a little bit about their community. So can you tell me a little bit about where you live and what it’s like?

Margaret Critchlow 5:07
I’d be happy to I live in Harborside cohousing, which is a community of 31 households oriented for people of retirement age, but with no age restriction. And we’re located on the territories of the South nation here in beautiful souk, British Columbia on Vancouver Island, which is just north of the Olympic Peninsula in Washington State. It’s a great place to live living in a fully accessible, compact and not that I particularly need mobility. I don’t have mobility challenges at the moment, but I so that I won’t have to move again nor my husband who lives here with me. We live in a 960 square foot, spacious yet compact home and condo type home, all on one level, looking out over the sukkah harbor and the Strait of Juan de Fuca to the Olympic Mountains beyond that. So a very beautiful place to live a really lovely community to be living with. And yeah, I’m delighted to say that we found a way to make this work. And not only that, there’s a second cohousing community in our little town. Our town is only about 10,000 people. Maybe it’s grown to 13,000 by now, but we have a second cohousing community, and it’s a really short walk away from us just a few 100 yards along the shoreline of the harbor. So there’s a lot of interaction between the two communities and that one, which is called Westland harbor cohousing. So that’s the context in which I’m joining you from a small town with two cohousing communities, and a beautiful island in the Pacific Northwest. What do you Americans would call the Pacific Northwest and what we call the banana belt of Canada.

Rebecca Mesritz 7:05
Can you tell me a little bit more just about what life is like there? And and I’m also just curious about, you know how it was? How you started it?

Margaret Critchlow 7:16
Oh, yeah, I’d love to talk about that. We started it was me and a friend named Gail Abernathy, who’s a British osteopath. So someone who treats the whole person, but through and through the body for health and wellness. She and I were talking about putting our mothers in care. I think I was probably there because I, you know, thrown my back out lifting stuff to reorganize my mother’s many possessions in order to help her to downsize and move into a home. And Gail was in a similar situation. And we talked about how we neither of us wanted what we saw as the options for our aging parents. That is the retirement home. If you’re lucky, as a nursing home if you’re less fortunate. We didn’t want it and the kind of care that we were arranging for our mothers we couldn’t afford either. My mother was in a care facility in Maryland that ended up costing a church run but private care facility ended up costing something like $11,000 a month, which was simply just not I couldn’t foresee ever being in a position where that would be possible. And if I were that wasn’t the way I wanted to spend my final days nor use the money. So we did some investigation, and very quickly found a book that had been published. This was 2011, let’s say maybe late 2010. And it was a book that have been published the year before by Charles Tourette called the senior cohousing handbook. I got a copy. We both read it, Gail and me. And we said to each other, he’s written the book that will allow us to do exactly what we want for ourselves to create it for ourselves. And we’d been talking for some years about maybe starting a co op, maybe buying land in the country, maybe you know, eco village and then meanwhile we’re all getting older. So working in the fields is less and less attractive but still kind of compelling because we are not not really coming to grips with getting older. So even as we’re putting our mothers at home so we’re having trouble imagining really we’re getting older too. We read this book the senior cohousing handbook and it changes everything because it’s step by step. So, Gil’s husband is an architect to Andrew. Andrew Moore and he Gail says you and Andrew should go to California and you should take Charles Tourettes course on Create starting the study groups. He has a study group called wo imaginatively study group one to help to prepare for coming into a senior oriented cohousing. So that was all it took. I had been teaching about cohousing back in Ontario. I had relocated to Sook and then about 2004 then teaching part time at York University, from then through 2010. And in my courses about cross cultural housing housing around the world I talked about because I like to teach about our culture as well as all the so called exotic cultures, because we’re all pretty exotic really, and the exotic ones are actually more familiar than you would think. So in teaching a course on cross cultural forms of housing, I taught about cohousing and I had done that since Tourette’s began publishing in the late 80s and brought brought cohousing in fact to North America. And cohousing in the sense that they use it isn’t intentional neighborhood design. That is a design in which each household has its own private accommodation, and it’s complete. It includes a kitchen full kitchen and living and sleeping quarters for whatever you define as a household. cohousing also includes common space, and usually the common space is collectively designed by the people who will be living there. And the whole project is designed by those people working with the professionals that they need. So the professionals that they need part escaped me on the first pass. Andrew and I trained with Charles Tourette, we did learn how to offer the study group one with direct we, after teaching that course twice over a 10 week period in 2011. We realized that was not sustainable. If we were to go into offered on a regular basis to everyone who might come into our cohousing community. We couldn’t offer courses that were 10 weeks long, we couldn’t sustain it and work with the people taking the courses. So with working with Chuck a week, I created really a new curriculum for it based on his that spanned a weekend. So we began to offer what did we call it? Aging, something like aging well and community. We began to offer that in affiliation with Royal Roads University here in the Victoria area, British Columbia. And we offered that maybe maybe 12 times in the building of harbor side, we required that every buddy who became what we called an equity member of the community, that is a shareholder in the development company required that each of them take the course. So devote devote one weekend of their lives to looking at aging well and community and what that could be like for them, if they chose to become a member of the senior cohousing that didn’t have a name at that point. What and we did we require that and everybody who came in during the development period took the course, a lot Matt, half the people who took the course did not continue with the group. So it was a very good gatekeeper. I wish we still had the ability to let people know more fully what they’re getting into when they join our community. But now we’re simply a condo association or strata title. So it’s an willing buyer willing seller. We don’t have that ability to select members as carefully through self selection, actually, which is what happened during development. We never kept anybody out. People decided for themselves if they were not a good fit, and it worked really well. Now, the missing piece, as I mentioned before, was that in reading Chuck’s book and then in teaching the course. It was easy to overlook the fact that the book is a great start, but it is it doesn’t include everything you need to know Not surprisingly, to develop a complex RS was $13 million project I think it was and the ones that I’ve I’ve worked since in the field as a consultant and community building consultant in a cohousing capacity, and those projects were many more millions of dollars. People like me and anthropologist by training have no capacity to provide the didn’t even know what the professional advice is that you need to create a cohousing community. So we quickly learned that we needed to enlist the aid of a project manager familiar with and successful in CO housing. And we hired Rene Matthew of CO housing development consulting in the Vancouver area Burnaby Burnaby was just adjacent to me and Cooper, and she led us through all of the steps and we created harbourside with wonderful architect, who has done a lot of cohousing with all of their requisite engineers and the insurance advice, the financial advice, the legal advice that we needed to make the project work. So it took about five years from start to finish, and that’s a little longer than many cohousing communities take. But four years is not unusual. So we were, we were really pleased with how it all turned out. And that we didn’t lose any money. And that we got really lovely homes to live in and a lovely community that that I continue to be involved in harbourside, I do a lot of facilitation, a good bit of work on the on the website behind the scenes sort of stuff. But the community is really carried by the energies of all the other people who, some of whom have been with the project from the very beginning like myself, and some of whom joined row last year, and now contribute hugely to the success of this place. So it’s a real mixture of people who’ve been in for the long haul. And people who joined more recently, and and people who have a tour coming up 12 people on Sunday, which may include some people who will eventually become our neighbors. So that’s a long winded answer to your question. But as you can see, I love to talk about what it’s like to be here.

Rebecca Mesritz 16:38
Well, I think that’s really lovely, because it hopefully will give people listening who are interested in something like this, some framework for what what to expect. I’m curious, you know, for the people that are living there, you know, I’m my I have an aunt who’s living in a senior housing development in Baltimore, actually also a church run. And I’m familiar with sort of the setup there and how for them, they they they buy in, they own their place. And then once they’re in they can basically hers is set up so that they could never get kicked out if something happens, and it has sort of a graduated care if they become ill or when their health declines. And I’m wondering how your community helps people or supports people who have declining health. Is that is that a part of what you do? Or do you have an on? Is there some staff there that supports with health care?

Margaret Critchlow 17:48
Yeah, it’s a very important question, I think to clarify for your listeners, the difference between a cohousing that’s oriented toward people my age, and the you the care facilities such as your, your family maybe in and what we’re much more familiar with is what you’ve just described, if you can get into one that provides kind of a kit, they often call it a campus of care, where you come in to independent living, you can come and go as you please. You can cook for yourself, if you want to often but meals are provided is a meal plan that you buy into, you may, as you say, buy your home. But some some facilities like you’re describing I think Rebecca require that you sell the that the community will buy the house or the unit back when you die or you move out of it, and then they find the buyer and so on. So we don’t do anything like that. And this what we’re offering is much less secure, if you like, then what your relative has, that is not less secure, and that nobody’s going to throw you out of harbourside. But if if my needs increase substantially either in terms of my mental health or my physical health, then I will need to enlist my family or my friends or both to find a good facility for me to get the care that I need. What we agreed to do when we started harbor side was to provide neighborly voluntary, neighborly mutual support for each other to age in place and to flourish the rest of our days here if possible. Now, that’s just not always possible. And we’re very clear that we do not offer assisted living. We have no staff. We are just volunteers, neighbors who care about each other, and through the relationships that we’ve built with each other and continue to build. There’s a lot that we’re willing to do for each other It mostly manifests in food, food is, you know, something we do really easily. And I’d have to say quite well. So if someone has had surgery I had, I had two hip replacements, the first year that we lived here, two different hips, you be glad to know. And it was very successful. And even so, we, my husband, and I were really grateful that we received lunches and dinners every day for a week on trays hot, because you don’t have to get in a car and drive anywhere to do to deliver that. So that’s the kind of care we can give. We keep people company we’ve been knitting with one member for that’s been very beneficial. We’ve supported people here through cancer treatments, we’ve driven which still do drive people to visit loved ones who are in the hospital or drive people to to their appointments. But we do not provide personal care. You know, unless we’re such good friends with somebody that we do that. And then we, you know, I don’t know what people do for each other privately. But there’s no obligation to provide any kind of care. And we do it because we love each other. And we do what we’re comfortable giving. So it’s quite a limited palette, if you like, of the colors that we’re willing to sort of paint on to the care structure this community. And we are fortunate to live in a town that’s pretty well served medically. And it’s pretty well served in terms of assisted living in an L, what do you call it continuing care or longterm care. But there are waiting lists, and there are challenges around all of those things. What how this will work out, I don’t really know sometimes I think it’s we’ve got more people with increasing needs than we can possibly support. And sometimes, we think we can find a path through it quite easily by simply encouraging people to bring in the care that they need. So a number of the age range here is from the 90s. To maybe we’ve got some people in their late 50s, more likely 60s. So it’s about a 3035 year age range. We have multiple generations with people living here who have other members of their family living in the community are closely connected to the community. So it’s more diverse then in terms of age than it first appears. And so for the people who are older and frailer, that’s very possible and they have succeeded in bringing in care. So daily care, even personal care help with getting dressed help with bathing, help with medications. And the family members who live here also provide that for each other. It’s proven to be a really good structure for people supporting each other of different ages to live multi generationally, but with privacy, so they’re, the limits are around. Mobility to some extent because we’re on a hill. Strange choice of sight, one might say for a senior cohousing community, but the what we our vision and values work suggested so strongly that we will wanted a good water view. And if you look on our website Harbor side.ca You’ll see there’s a video tour there as well. You’ll see how important the waterfront location is to this community. So we picked it for that we picked it because we had easy water access, we have a wharf. Our sailboat is tied up and our war of other people’s are two. We have lots of kayaks. We have a gazebo on the wharf where we can have picnics, barbecues, we can catch crabs from the wharf. And our neighbors are our professional crab fisherman. So that’s been beneficial to us too. So the location kind of chose itself for us. And we’ve used the slope to advantage with seven buildings 31 units, and each of the units has a view of the water most of those all but three I would say are unobstructed south facing water and mountain views. So pretty fantastic. And it isn’t the best site for access to the waterfront. Really. I mean, if you’re in a walker, it’s pretty challenging to go down that hill and then back up that hill. That said we have at least one probably two members of our community who do exactly that who are quite elderly. Every day, but the Yeah, the site didn’t make an awful lot of sense for the cohousing thing. But one of the things that it did lend itself to was thinking about bringing in a caregiver and bringing in more care as we as we age in place. So we bought a resort. We bought a small resort called So Sook Ocean Resort from Captain Ralph Hall, who remains a senior member of our community. And that resort building included what was at that time, his living quarters, the Owners Suite, and it’s a fully studio apartment basically fully self contained with its own entrance. And when we, when we envisioned harbourside, we envisioned that space as a caregivers suite, where we could have a caregiver, maybe even a couple, if we were lucky, provide living care, and maybe, maybe the guy would be a trained nurse and could provide care for those of us who needed it. And maybe the woman would be a landscape gardener and could do all the maintenance on the property, we have about two and a half acres, and including a woodland. So that dream hasn’t materialized nor have we actually gone looking for it yet. But we have reserved that suite for always for its care purposes. So you can book it for a family to visit, for example, but if it’s needed for care reasons, like somebody’s coming to provide care for a friend who lives here, or if a caregiver were needed, and they would live there, then the guests have to have to find another place to be. We do have other guests base, we have two other guest rooms and all sweep as in the resort building that has become the common house. So that remains a possibility to support us better to age in place. Hmm.

Rebecca Mesritz 26:58
Well, I mean, there’s so much that I want to talk with you about and thank you so much for sharing about harbor side. I just want to hear before we move on, because I’m just so curious, a little bit more about kind of what, like what daily life is like in your community? And what what people I mean, it sounds like people are walking down to the water are people It sounds like most of the people are active. But can you just paint a little bit more of a picture of you know, how does the community interact with each other? And yeah, what how are people involved other than, you know, providing meals, if someone comes back?

Margaret Critchlow 27:44
Sure, that’s a be a pleasure to answer that. So I’m in the, I’ll just sort of imagine it at this time of year in the winter, we do a lot more indoors things. But right now, we start by the newspapers delivered down on the entry, floor like but by our parkade. So people often meet as they go down to pick up the newspaper in the morning, they then have the opportunity to share coffee at 10 o’clock. That’s usually out this time of year, there’s a covered patio, which we’ve has assumed the name of sages corner. So they go down to sages corner and have coffee with the with friends. Many of us will meet for a walk and talk in pairs or threes or, you know, whatever, and, and walk down to the waterfront there’s a way to obviously to access the waterfront from our own property. But often we will go down and walk a boardwalk or books to the municipality, which is quite lovely and right now that the Eagles are desperately feeding babies. So they’re fishing, fishing, fishing. So there’s lots to watch and lots of chances to observe nature together. It’s one thing I’ve learned from my neighbors is how to how to better seal the richness of nature around us. So we spend a good bit of time looking at flowers and birds and talking about that and educating each other. There often is the opportunity for casual and informal encounters in the gardens. So we have some vegetable gardening. Two major places where vegetables are grown on their property. One is has the opportunity for individual beds and that but then we all can help each other with that and learn from each other and the other is a plot for growing community food. So we often meet there there’s a gym that’s used quite a bit in the early morning and then less throughout the day. It’s the gym is equipped with really nice equipment that people have donated. People meet in the library to which is full of books that are curated from donations. meaning, things get tossed out from time to time and they get organized. And new things come in and get sorted. The maintenance team meets once a week after, I think it’s once a week after coffee, and does the routine maintenance that we require. The only person we’re hiring right now is a janitor. And she comes in a couple, few hours a couple of days a week to clean common areas. She also does private cleaning for a number of us here, so and then other people bring in their own cleaners, but the members are doing the work. So we’re doing Yeah, all of the maintenance and Night Patrol brings people together. We have we’ve just stopped this for the summer. But we have had up until this week, Wednesday, soup lunches, where people get to couple of people make a big soups, and usually a vegetarian and non vegetarian and we get together and share a meal at least once a week, not as much as some other communities do. But at least once a week. And then we’ve often had Sunday brunches. And, and then potlucks have various sorts of things like that. We have a monthly community work be and we always have a lunch after that. Where everybody gets together, you sign you sign up or just show up for different jobs around the property. We have one this Saturday, it’s two hours, from 1010 to 12. Excuse me, and we get a huge amount of work done. It’s amazing. If you get 20 people out, we have about 40 Something people living here, and even half are able to show up. You know it’s 20 people to us. 40 hours of work done right there bang on a Sunday, Saturday morning. So we celebrate that with food that some of the work be people prepare. We have talks. So tomorrow evening, we have a report from one of our members who just spent two weeks in Slovenia, assisting with the investigation of war crimes on behalf of the as a delegate for the Canadian government. fascinating to hear about I’m really looking forward to that. And that’s one of our own members will also bring in members who have interesting things to share with us, or the community hosts and participates in an elder college and has a film Night international film class I should say once a week for a period of weeks. We have a legal finance team that gets together regularly as well. And they use our office in the former resort now common house building for their files and paperwork. There’s a movie night once a week. There’s bridge night, but sorry. There’s another game. Oh, my gosh,

Rebecca Mesritz 32:59
I just found so robust. It’s fine. Yeah, no, there’s a lot. There’s a lot going on. I’m exhausted.

Margaret Critchlow 33:09
Not everybody. Not everybody goes to everything, right? No, you couldn’t possibly I’m pretty selective about it myself. Oh, and tonight is drumming is drumming every Wednesday and a common hands. So and all of this Rebecca is self organized. So the really cool thing about it is it doesn’t take the fun squad at the retirement home to organize this. There is no cruise director, right? We do everything by consensus. It’s all voluntary. If people don’t want to come they don’t come. If there’s like with soup, it became clear that people were running out of energy for producing soup in the summertime, and other people were still willing to come and eat it. We ran out of cooks. So we close that down for a while. And then we’ll try it again. You know, so it’s a very organic way of of living together and of of my theory is that by not having everything taken care of it supports us to be more robust and more engaged with life and more active. And we’re always hoping to attract people who are drawn to that sort of thing. You know, we’re really careful if somebody says I’m looking for a place for my mom. I’m really actually not interested. I want to meet your mom

Rebecca Mesritz 34:32
thank you for sitting in on this conversation with Margaret Critchlow. I am so thrilled to be able to bring you conversations like this and I hope that they are meaningful for you and useful and helpful for your life. If they are please take a moment to visit ic.org/podcast and support the show with a donation so that we can continue to bring you thoughtful guests with loads of it experience to talk about tough issues and things that can be hard and challenging so that we can all learn and grow together. And thank you so much for your support, and for supporting my other sponsors.

Rebecca Mesritz 35:19
The inside community podcast is sponsored by the Foundation for intentional community. fic has over 35 years of partnership with hundreds of intentional communities around the world. Our mission is to champion social, ecological and economic justice and resiliency, through the support and growth of cooperative culture, and intentional communities. We do this through our free directory of intentional communities, online events and courses, a free forum space for discussion and connection, and many other tools and resources for creating starting and living in community. As a thank you to our podcast listeners, go to the shownotes to find a coupon code for 20% off fic is books and workshops. This is a time when people need community. When most of the world is isolated, you can find connection through the communities@ic.org Catus is not your everyday architecture firm. Their interest and regenerative and community supportive design has cultivated an expertise in intentional and cohousing communities, with the focus on rich and healthy human experiences. Design Excellence and pragmatism are at the core of their work, as is an ethic of service to the client and natural or urban environments. caddis is a leader in sustainable design, Zero Energy homes, passive house and delightful neighborhoods. They are experts in grassroots community engagement, and apply attention sophisticated design and creative solutions to every project. If it’s worth building, it’s worth building it well find caddis on Facebook and Instagram. And at caddis pc.com. That’s CADDIS pc.com.

Rebecca Mesritz 37:21
Yeah, so I guess what all this leads me to is like the big question. And the big reason that I wanted to speak with you is really, you know, how can community support each other to age? Well, and I think you’ve touched on a little bit of that, but it’s kind of a big question to unpack. And I’d love to hear your hear your thoughts on that.

Margaret Critchlow 37:45
It’s a very big question, Rebecca. And, you know, I probably can only partially unpack it, because you said how can communities support people to age well, right out each other to age? Well, so that the two levels to it, just to flag at the at the beginning. One is the ways in which within a community we can support each other to age well, and there’s a lot I can say about that. There’s also the ways in which communities plural, like the foundation of for intentional communities does can support communities to age well. And that’s happening across the communities movement. So many communities were founded by people who were young 20 years ago, or 30 years ago, even. And in those communities, people are now older, and they’re having to deal with issues of aging that they were never really maybe intending or the communities were never designed to deal with. So how can communities themselves age? How and that is not something I’m an expert in but I think the foundation has a lot of wisdom around that. And then how can communities support each other to age and that’s something that we are doing with ourselves and Westland Harbor, cohousing are doing like emergency preparedness training together, we’re looking at how we can support the difficult conversations that we all need to have around aging. And so the communities themselves can support each other in talking about the challenges, and how and I don’t know that we will have the answers. But my experience in my face, I think is that communities working people working together are the best way to create the answers to co create the answers. And then communities working together can co create the answers for the communities movement, in fact, so that’s one level of it. Now, within our community, we support each other to age well in similar ways, but a lot of it has to do with companionship, as I say walking together Walking with people who need accompaniment, either for mobility reasons or mental health reason, memory reasons. And, and exploring the limits of what it is that we can offer, and not being afraid to do that. And we’re starting to have the difficult conversations around death and dying as well. As we age and as more of our members become frail or have are hospitalized, for one reason or another. We’ve We’ve, yeah, we’ve only had a couple of deaths here. And in the eight years, and it’s there’s a lot that we don’t know. And that’s still a little scary to all of us. So I recently bought it, I can show this to Rebecca, because we can see each other with the people in podcast land, for your benefit. It’s a deck of playing cards called the Death deck, a lively game of surprising conversations, indeed. And it’s available at to the death deck.com no spaces, no capitals, the death deck.com. Quite a fascinating exercise, which is a series of multiple choice questions. I’ve been playing it with anybody who will play some people find reasons why they can’t or just can’t fight, don’t want to do it. But it’s I’ve been playing it with my husband, who’s quite long suffering about this, and includes great questions about, you know, whether you prefer cremation interment, green burial, or a mushroom jacket in which to be buried, because apparently, that will decompose you. And whether you want your remains shot off into space, or not, if you can afford it, and so on. So some of its silly, a lot of it is really helpful to talk to access the stuff that I can’t, haven’t been able to talk with my children about even, or my partner. So we have the opportunity living here to demystify aging, the death and dying and to support each other by learning together to deal with. Yeah, everything from how to access retirement benefits to how to deal with grieving.

Rebecca Mesritz 42:37
So, you know, I guess as both for your community and for people listening, when you come together, and you start thinking about creating the plan for aging, what are some of the elements that people should be thinking about, including in that plan? And what would a good plan include?

Margaret Critchlow 43:01
And this is something that I teach about in the course that I offer through the foundation for intentional community, which has just been renamed and I’m having a hard time holding on to the name. I think it’s exploring community for aging. Well, right now, it has all those words in it anyway. Aging Well, community exploring. And I think it’s very valuable to create a plan. Whether or not you can flip that plan out exactly the way you create it. You probably can’t, right. I mean, how many plans have you ever made that you’ve carried out exactly to the letter the way you designed them in the first place? And you know, harbourside cohousing turned out pretty much the way we thought pretty much. I mean, it’s it’s a three story apartment building, and it’s six other buildings. But in many, many ways it varied from the plan. And there were these oops, moments where the fire departments didn’t, you can’t do that, you have to give us a place where we can turn the fire truck around. So you know, it led to a redesign of how we would do that. Anybody’s plan for aging is going to be like that as well. But I am a believer in the value of planning in any case. And as I teach in my fic course, I worked with graduate students, I was once a graduate student that I worked with a lot with graduate student research planning. So designing your PhD thesis, right. And in anthropology that involves fieldwork. And that may involve going deep into Toronto, as some people do to study housing cooperatives, or it may involve going to Zimbabwe or find a way out to where I worked in the South Pacific and living in a remote village and really wandering, having no idea what it will be like to be there. So that plan that I developed to research Vanuatu had many moving parts, and they were always changing and always had Having B to be redefined. And it’s in that process of changing developing your plan in the first place that I believe equips you. And this includes a plan for aging. Well, it equips you to revise your plan and to adapt and to be resilient when the unexpected happens, which is what we’re all in for, I’m sure. So your aging well plan, I think begins with looking at where, where I’m where I am now, what my mobility level is, what my family history is, and my life is, I mean, my mother also had two hip replacements, my grandfather would have if they’d been invented yet. So I could see this was likely in my future, and you know, about 2010. And so I wanted a place where I could always have step free living, which I’ve got no problem, my aging plan included, putting in the tracking, it can’t even see it now, inside the ceiling, to put a lift from the bedroom bed, actually, to the bathroom, if that was necessary. So as I said, you can’t see a thing, but the backing is in the ceiling, which would have been, I want to say impossible, or at least very difficult to put in after the fact. And for a pretty reasonable amount, you could put it in during constructions over boom up in the ceiling. So we put in that sort of thing. And the bathrooms of harbourside were all designed to be big enough for wheelchair turning radius. They’re not you know, we have a cupboard where we would need to have a wheelchair turning right now. But if we needed it, we could change it very quickly is nothing fundamental in the design. So I think that’s analogous to the plan for Ageing, well, you know, design it in a way that you can replace the different parts with other things, you know, but that, that the scaffolding or the main structure of that plan will serve you well. And for me, it starts with, what’s my mobility? likely to be? I mean, what’s if we look at family history, what you know, what took you? What took your parents to the home? Or the grave? And, and what is your own lifestyle? And you know, are you likely to fall off a ladder, because you’re picking Apple, apples in the orchard every day? That sort of thing. But then look at your home, what works for you the way you live now? What doesn’t work for you the way you live? Now? What might work better? If you’re living in a single family home? How much space do you really need? Because most people I’m guessing in your listening audience, certainly in the fairly privileged world that I live in. Most people have us who have a single family home have more space than they need right now unless they’re raising young children, in which case they hit don’t have anywhere near as much space as they need. So for the over 50s, I would say look at where you live. Now. Start now, do not put this off, and so easy to put off. And and look at what space you need, what you have now that you don’t need, or that you could share. I do not need a slow cooker. Right? I could share that with my neighbors. I use a slow cooker maybe four or five times a year. Some people use them every day. I know that or an Insta pot. But I know what I use and don’t use. I know what I could do with less of books, paper, anybody the screens this surgery screens in. If any of you see a video from this podcast, you will see that I have carefully screened out my messy bookshelves. So you can do all sorts of things in a small space with a little creativity. The aging plan also includes I think the things that you’ve always wanted to do and if put off doing, why. Why not now, for me, that includes a lot of personal growth work a lot of going on retreats to places or workshops, just because I’m so curious, and I just want to be fully the full person that I can be. For others. It’ll be cruises in the Caribbean. Why not? One of our founding harvests I’d found deer harvested founding members passed away on a cruise, you know, and what a great way to go. She was exactly doing what she wanted to do. Oh too soon, but but do it you know, do it. What don’t delay. So I would say live fully into your life. Look at your house. Consider getting rid of a lot of stuff. Consider what it would be like to grow old where you live now. If you couldn’t drive for many of us in North America. That’s a big, sobering consideration, shall we say? Harvest site is walkable to the whole everything our little town offers, which is not everything. But you know if there’s two grocery stores, a couple of drugstore, three drugstores library or good nice library, nice community hall banks, doctor’s offices, coffee shops, restaurants and so on. And I can walk to a whole array of those not everything, but a whole array of them in 10 minutes, is a bit of uphill. This is good. And many of us walk to the shops or the whatever’s every day as part of just our daily exercise or, and or down to the waterfront and do a loop every day through the woods and the boardwalk. Is your home walkable like that? Is it located? What’s the wall? You know, there’s something called the Walk Score, which tells you how convenient your home is to communities. It’s a it’s an app and look up your Walkscore ours is about 75, I think, but the one that cohousing in Sydney is like a 90. It’s really close to everything and it’s flat. Some cranberry Commons in Burnaby is also about a 95 or something like that. It’s just everything is right there. So consider is what do you want as you get older? And that question, what do you want is one that a Hungarian teacher of mine drilled into my brain, she wasn’t teaching me Hungarian, she just happened to be Hungarian. And so she used to say, what do you find? And so yeah, if I do find, it really makes a difference. First of all, you have to know what you want. And that means you have to think about getting older. So that’s, that’s part of the challenge, I think in creating a good aging plan. And in the course, the next round of it is that starts the 23rd of June and runs weekly on one day a week, I want to say Fridays,

Margaret Critchlow 52:01
in the morning, Pacific Time, that course walks us all together through the various steps to create an aging plan. And you can you can create as detailed as plan as you want. Nobody’s going to collect it at the end. But it’s a great opportunity to workshop it, really take notes and start to delve into what it is that you want, as you get older and what you don’t want. And sometimes knowing what you don’t, I used to teach that. Don’t focus on what you don’t want. Nobody ever gives the taxi driver or the Uber driver directions saying the one thing I don’t want is I don’t want to go to the Empire State Building. Don’t take me there. Nobody says that. Right? So I used to think that you shouldn’t you should focus only on what you do want, not what you don’t want. But a student in my class, the last time I offered the course on planning for aging, well, students said, Well, why do you why do you say that because in fact, if I know what I don’t want, it really helps me to see what I do want. And I thought yeah, there’s a real truth to that. So if you’re a contrary thinker, like that student, think about what you don’t want, and it will help you to visualize what you do want. So however it works for you think your way into a plan that includes a future in which you have less mobility and possibly, but I really hope, not, less mental capacity. So and if you’re in your home, it’s in the country is beautiful, the maybe you designed it yourself, it’s got everything you ever wanted. And the gardening is amazing. And you’re out in the garden every morning and you just love it. Think about what that might be like for you in 10 years, especially if you can’t drive to the grocery store. And the biggest risk for all of us as we get older is social isolation. And the North American pattern of single family living, and I must say of individualism are both death sentences to us and certainly impair our capacity to live well in our later years. So your aging plan, I believe, needs to include a proactive approach to social connection. Because I mean, the studies or the research is out there. The studies show very clearly that social isolation is as big a mortality risk as smoking, heavy smoking, the kind that can kill you. So why do we do this to ourselves? Why do we believe that we don’t need help? We’re better off alone. Don’t really like people that much anyway. I have a I have friends that are just not here. I have lots of friends who are scattered all over the country and we zoom and sometimes we get together. Yeah, and And who’s there? You know, to give you a shoulder to cry on once in a while, who’s there to laugh themselves silly with you? Who’s there to walk with you and listen to bird songs? Or the sound of the waves? Who’s there to talk out a tricky issue in social relationships? Who’s there to clear with you, the confrontations that you get yourself into that kind of social connection? Who’s there just even to look into your eyes, you know, and help you find the spectra got in there? Nobody right? So what, what will serve you better and meet your needs as maybe an introvert but someone who nevertheless needs social connection, we we have occasionally checked with the community and done on one of these continuum where you stand up on two to extremes so you know, far corner everybody who considers themselves a profound extrovert. They never met somebody they didn’t like they’re really outgoing. And this corner over here, all the introverts, well, this corner over here in our community is chock a block full of people actually, they don’t want to get that close to each other would be in that corner if they could all fit right. A huge number of introverts self identify it as attracted to cohousing. And that may be true and other intentional communities as well, I don’t know, but it’s really noticeable in cohousing communities, maybe because we’re, we’re not. I think we are intentional communities. Some people here would debate that. But we’re certainly not communities that share an awful lot of values, we really just believe that living together is going to be better than for each of us than living apart. So that’s our commitment. And we believe that growing old together will be better than growing old in our single family homes. That’s it. But even so, we’re drawn to, to community and connection, and we recognize the importance of social connection, because isolation is not going to serve any of us well. Does that cover what you wanted to cover?

Rebecca Mesritz 57:08
I think so. Yeah. I mean, just hearing the Yeah, I mean, even if there’s not a lot of shared values, the value of companionship, you know, and being seen and being held together feels really, really solid. And all of that. Yeah. Yeah, it is.

Margaret Critchlow 57:33
And it’s, it’s also a sort of an uneven terrain, or difficult to navigate sometimes, because some people here really value authentic connection. And that can mean speaking very, frankly, very directly with each other. And others really value polite connection, and not saying really what I think, but, you know, being a being nice keeping the piece and that sort of thing. So we have quite a bit of work around communications, and the different styles that we have, we’re all pretty much you know, within a 3035 year age range, we’re all pretty. Not Brown, let’s put it that way, degrees of whiteness, degrees of middle class SNESs. So there’s not a lot of visible diversity in our community. There’s a huge amount of diversity that is invisible, in terms of how we think what matters to us, what we think is proper communication and polite, and what we what we think matters in how we live together and community. And that’s fertile ground to work with. And it’s, it’s one of the challenges is where the challenges and community for me come from. And I think that to Rebecca is still more stimulating than the home, then the care facility where everything is done for you. You don’t even have to think about what you’re going to cook, right? If you can think about what you’re going to eat, but it’s from a menu that is laid there laid out there for you. And the rough edges in our community, the difficulties in navigating it, the challenging people who show up and sometimes those challenging people are me. They all give us huge opportunities for growth and connection. And I think it helps to keep us mentally alive and and, and really high functioning. working it out finding ways to make decisions together by consensus is not easy, right? And in the home that doesn’t happen at a dear friend who ended up in a home on Salt Spring Island not far from here. And he was fine. It was in his early 80s at the time and he was so mentally, totally fine. Here’s another also an anthropology professor, which is how I knew them. He and his wife had worked in New Guinea and really tough area to do their field research for many years, same community, they were well loved in that community and loved them back, is named as David. And when David found himself in the care facility, his only problem was he just lost it lost his sight. So he was severely visually impaired, but not otherwise impaired. And he, he said, I’m losing my mental ability, by the minute, he said, because there’s no decisions, there are no decisions for me to make. There’s nothing I have to think about. Everything is decided for me, you know, when I’m going to get up, when I’m going to go to bed, what I’m going to eat, where I’m going to eat it, who I’m going to play. And he said, it was bingo, I think, which was hard for him after playing bridge for many years. It was all taken care of. And that makes it too easy. So I think the struggles that come in, you probably have in your community too. I think that we all have struggles in community. It’s not easy, right? But I’m really increasingly sure that hard is not bad. Heart is actually good for us. So hard is good. And that’s part of what we do on a daily basis is is work through the hard stuff. Well,

Rebecca Mesritz 1:01:25
so I would love to I mean, there’s another side of this conversation that that I want to address, which is, you know, it’s kind of about this hard stuff is that it for our community that’s mostly comprised of elders, people who are in their 60s 70s 80s 90s, hopefully, hundreds. There’s a certain set of needs and a way of communicating, but I’m also aware of multigenerational communities that have younger people in in those communities as well. And even in a community where you have someone who’s 60. And then, you know, they’re still rockin rock in their life. They don’t need extra health care. They don’t need extra support, really, they’re still doing themselves. And then you have someone who’s in their 80s or 90s, who maybe has had a decline. You know, just how can younger people support the elders in their community and what are the I think even beyond cohousing? You know, I’m trying to think of like the big picture for community what, what are the roles and the responsibilities of the youngers? Versus what are the roles and responsibilities of the elders? And how to what are some ways that you’ve learned through both your community and talking with others? That the twain shall meet? Younger people younger people can show up for the elders and also Yeah, be mindful of their own energy I guess. And their own with their with their being asked.

Margaret Critchlow 1:03:16
Yeah, yeah, yeah. youngers and the elders. And that is a whole nother side to this conversation. And it’s, I think it’s a great opportunity. If you have family, living in community, older family, living in community, and you are yourself a younger, either in community or in another community or not living in community at all. It is an opportunity to work with those elders in a new way, maybe for us. And that is making sure that the agency or the ability to make the decisions rests with the elders, and for the youngers to support that with and recognizing that that’s a gift to the younger people, that they don’t have to make decisions for their elders, that they can, that we all make decisions for ourselves. And we can all support each other to make good decisions. And I think that’s true, whatever the age, different sort of, you know, when we work together and community to make a decision, we’re always trying to make the best support each other to make the best decision that we can, given the information that we have, for that moment for that community. So in working with your elders, as a younger person, I think it’s the same thing. We’re all in this to the best possible quality of life for all of us. And the younger people can support that for older people without being either too. Hands off or too hands on. So you’re asked I think as younger people to walk a very The fine line in a sense, or a path, it’s not always easy to discern, that provides support when it’s needed. But hands off when it’s not. And many younger people dealing with older parents will be familiar with raising children. You know, not everybody has children, for sure. But everybody wants was one. And, you know, you can remember back to being a child, if you don’t have children, and that dance between I do it myself, or, you know, help me help me, you know, I want to be lifted up. So that’s what your job is, I think as a younger person dealing with elder people is discerning, when it is that help is wanted or needed, even when the elder person may not be able to identify it. And the In contrast, when you don’t tell them what to do, and don’t, don’t over help, I had an interesting conversation with a friend here recently, in which she expressed concern about kind of over helping each other at Harbor side. And a fear that our children will do that for us, right, that they will move us moves on, when we’re not really ready to move, they will think, oh, that, you know, that Margaret, she needs to be in the home because she’s making some bad decisions these days, and I’m afraid she’s gonna burn the place down. You know, an older person leaves the kettle on once and they’re toast around, you know, with their kids, like, they’re in so much trouble with their kids. Whereas if you ever left the kettle on, you know, we all have. So when there’s that fear that I think she was articulating or concern anyway, that young people will be on us and move us and make us do whatever that is that they think is good for us. So advice to younger people is listen, and, you know, step in when wanted, and, and listen well, because the flip side of overwhelming of moving someone into the home when they’re not, they don’t want to go. The other side of that is under helping and we’re having some challenges with that, from time to time at harbourside, where family for example, or whoever is the next of kin for household. Maybe they just don’t want to see what’s going on with mom and dad. It’s too hard to believe or whatever. They’re not here enough. But there’s a certain sense of, of reluctance to step up. And, and that puts the rest of us in the CO care, part of harbourside in a tricky position, because we’re not, we’re not here instead of family. You know, we’re neighborly mutual support, family plays a key role. So they, the other side of overwhelming would be under helping. And so being just tuned in listening, having those conversations, like really talking to each other younger people and older people. I’ve had some wonderful conversations when I was a young woman with some old people, both in Virginia, and in fun to want to write about what it’s like to be old. And you know, what, and what their advice is, to me, as a young woman, it was to get out there and do everything I wanted to do and let nothing stop me, which I think was what they had done or wish they had done. And, you know, my ability to learn from them was great. And to see that they were still living really vital, full lives, just with less ability to run around fast, or even run around for that matter. But but a huge mental capacity and an accumulated wisdom. So listening to each other having the conversations are both really priceless. And I think also younger people the younger people can do a lot in terms of the latter like round here. We love younger people to come in and do ladders ladder work for us. We really prefer not to be up ladders, we do. Some people here do it. But it’s, you know, it’s not the smart thing to do, in my opinion. We do have one woman my age who still prunes the trees, apple trees, and there’s no changing her mind. But younger people are great for that. The problem is most younger people in our world are working really hard and don’t have any time. And so elders have more time but less physical ability. So trade off in that department, right? Childcare resources, something where the elders can be quite helpful as long as it’s within their capacity. So you know, there’s a lot of that goes on around here we have the sound of children all the time around here because of The number of grandchildren in during COVID, somebody was homeschooling a grandchild here. So that’s really nice. And we’ve we’ve had a three year old living here for quite a period of time. So the the young, the really young, and the old, often are a good combination.

Rebecca Mesritz 1:10:22
Yeah, I mean, I think part of what this touches into, for me as a, as a younger person that’s been in community with people who are older, is that there is a, there’s a difficulty. A lot of people who are aging, getting a little bit older, don’t really want to talk about or look at sometimes the realities or as like a younger person, it’s not that we think they’ve got one foot in death’s door or anything like that. But there appears to be a lack of a plan or a lack of a program or lack of, you know, either financial, having your affairs in order or having your health plan figured out for, for what appears to be an impending health crisis based on everything that you see in that person. And I mean, I think it’s one thing if it’s your I mean, obviously, if, if you’re talking about someone that’s in your family, then there’s a certain kind of pressure to help that person. But if if it’s someone that’s in your community that’s older, that maybe doesn’t have a family, and they don’t want to talk about it. I mean, we’ve been in this situation, I’ve been in this situation where someone that I care very much about but doesn’t seem to be necessarily having a plan for themselves. And it kind of leaves the community to wonder, well, what do you think is our responsibility? What is your responsibility? You know, these conversations are just so can be very difficult. And I’m wondering, yeah, what what your recommendations are for how to talk about these, particularly with someone who is maybe resistant to, to recognizing what a reality that everyone sees around them, but they’re, like, no, nothing to see here. I’m fine.

Margaret Critchlow 1:12:30
I’m fine. I’m fine. Yeah. Yeah. And I mean, for one thing, we started with a community of people here who were willing to get out of denial. One of the striking things in creating harvests I was how few local people join. It was a surprise. In fact, one of the big surprises was local people were not joining harbourside, the people who are close friends, including including the two with whom I got the idea of to hatch, harbourside didn’t join, getting out of denial. It’s really tough, right? about aging. And we have a family doctor who is a member of our retired family doctors, a member of harbourside. And she said, Yep, people are in denial, in denial, in denial, they don’t get out of denial, they’re not ready to move, they’re not ready to make a plan until it’s too late. And it’s a pattern. So I think living in community, we have the opportunity to break patterns and to have insight into our patterns. And so you have the opportunity in that situation that you describe Rebecca to Yeah, it’s hard, but to have those conversations, and if the person in question won’t have them with you to have them with the people that they’re close to, like, who’s their family, have them that we’ve done that recently, here’s to say, you know, this is, this is the care that we can provide, lay it out for you, this is what we can do. And this is all the rest, it’s the big part. And we don’t do that. And, you know, you need to talk to the family doctor, you need to talk we need to find a care facility and find out what the availability is, you need to get a good assessment, you know, caseworker and so on. So one thing that you can do is to find out as a younger member of the community, who the members, you know, what, what, what the what your community offers, not your your community, per se, but the town say, or the rural area, wherever you live, what are the steps that someone can take? So for example, in the early days here, we had a nurse come in, or no, it’s actually the same retired family doctor, but we’re now having a nurse come in and work with us all to complete a document called My wishes, which was end of life care document. This is what I want, if I’m not able to, uh, A 10 My own affairs, I’m designating this person. And then you have legal documents associated that you have to draw up about Power of Attorney enduring power of attorney, there are just plain old things you can pieces of paper you can fill out, that forced the conversation if you like. And it’s something really that you could do as a community with young people too. Because who knows when a crisis will strike? Right? I mean, I It’s a very moving class I went to led by one of the dancing two of the dancing rabbit community members about a death in their community was a 31 year old. Right? They were totally unprepared for this. But you can do this as a as a group. And I think it would raise young people’s awareness of what it’s like to look at death, which we tend to separate our young people out from now. And we’re young people are not exposed to death the way they would have been in the 19th century when the body was laid out on the kitchen table, you know. So it’s a chance for all of us to demystify aging and dying. And to have those frank conversations. I would count on somebody saying to me, I will I do, if I’m starting to lose it, you know, my kids would, I believe would tell me, and they might joke with me about it. But they would also, you know, let it be known Gee, Mom, it seems like you’re being more forgetful than ever. The absent minded professors gone to new levels. And we wonder whether harbourside is going to be a good place for you to stay. We’ve got to be able to talk about it. And your community otherwise is going to be in a very difficult position. You want to throw somebody out after they’ve been there all that time? Because their needs are greater than you can meet? No, probably not. Right? And then it was exactly

Rebecca Mesritz 1:16:49
it. I mean, that’s exactly the feeling is like, we love you. And this is like it is like a family in many ways. And we care about you. And also, there has to be how do you have those like, we need you to have more self responsibility, or there’s only so much that we can do. And I think that puts that weird position where you feel like where you feel like an obligor a sense of obligation. And you don’t want to be operating from a sense of obligation. It’s,

Margaret Critchlow 1:17:32
it’s not joyful. No, that’s right. And then and then it becomes inauthentic. And then that’s a slippery slope right there. So yeah, I think as difficult as the conversations are, they need to be had, and it needs some sort of a plan. I know one community were the first person who grew really old and unable to work because they were dependent, they needed people to all work. The first person who reached that threshold, they were able to get just support financially like to give a bit of a stipend to buy his groceries, that sort of thing. And then they went, oh my god, we can’t do this for other people. And so then there were three or four people at that age and then what so planning it and anticipating it and being real about what you can and cannot offer. Super important because I think in many not cohousing communities but other kinds of intentional communities. It’s not just that the person may become they’re not being self responsible. They’re not able to contribute to the community that where they used to, but the you need people who can contribute to the community, in a people who can do the work the community depends on it. So it’s tricky. It can any village in Vanuatu Can, can get by with a certain number of really dependent on people have for a certain number of years, right? But there’s a limit. And then and then what right? Nobody gets set out on an ice floe in Vanuatu, because, you know, ice flows, perhaps. But they’re, and they’re kind to their elders. But there does come a point where you can see the patients, you can see, oh, God, you know, this is getting hard. And so for us, we have the ability to have a good conversation about it, we have the ability to call in medical support, even free medical, you know, subsidized medical support, at least here. And and I don’t know, it’d be very concerned, where you live if someone didn’t have some sort of health plan, and some sort of plan for the future. So there’s no I don’t have an easy answer to it. But I do believe in the value of the conversations.

Rebecca Mesritz 1:19:47
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I don’t I don’t think there’s easy answers, especially because probably most of this is on a bit of a case by case community by community basis. I think the other thing that we’ve kind of touched on a little bit that I just want to dive into a little bit more is really around this idea. You know, the eventuality for some people have dementia diminished cognitive function, Alzheimer’s. And this is a part of aging for a great number of people in North America, and probably the world. And I wonder if communities should or could support folks if as illness become severe? Or is that the kind of thing where I mean, again, you would want to have a professional diagnosis and professional support. But how do you see communities being able to support people through that journey of diminished function?

Margaret Critchlow 1:21:02
There’s a wonderful podcast. That was a radio show by a woman named Karen wells, k r. I n wells. She did a documentary radio documentary about harbourside, two of them, actually, that was very good. And she did one, I can’t come up with the name of it offhand. But about a community in Denmark that was designed to, to include people living with dementia. And it’s a wonderful exploration of how far you can go in community living to accommodate people with different cognitive capacities. They’re there the Danish approach to dementia, as documented in that recording anyway, which is on its it’s findable through the Canadian Broadcasting Company, CBC is to have a lot more freedom than we would be comfortable with. Yeah, there are people, people with dementia get lost. But they get found in Denmark, and bad things seemingly don’t happen to them. But they speak of a man who just loved his daily walk in the woods. And so they just equipped him with a GPS and off he went. And that, you know, once in a while he would get lost, and they’d have to go find him, but mostly found his way back, it was a very different approach that say, a comfort with risk to what North American society is used to. What can we do in community with dementia, we’re just beginning to learn, we’re just beginning to learn as we live into it. And one thing I think that stands out, in my experience at Harbor side, is the willingness of people to live with their own risk of hurting themselves, and the families of those people to accept that. So we have, you know, a woman who takes a walk every day with her walkers down to the waterfront, going off like it’s pretty rough terrain, some of the places that she goes with that, walk her through the woods, and then down onto the boardwalk in the water and back up. And the family. Like, yeah, we have, you know, we’re letting that we’re not going to stop her from doing that. Because it means the world to her. So this is a place where people who have a heart of people living at Harborside have a pretty high tolerance for risk. I think it’s fair to say, I certainly am seeing it that way. Others might, I don’t want to just put in the disclaimer that if you had anybody else from my community doing this podcast, you get a different story, right? Because we all have our own stories. But my story is that, that the freedom to go up to do the things that someone loves being out in nature is priceless, and that the people who do that are willing to take the risk of hurting themselves. And the families of those people are willing to live with those risks. You know, knowing that mom may crash with her walker in the woods and she might lie there for a while before anybody found her is a risk that I’m sure it’s uncomfortable, but this is bearable because the restraining her to quarters which did have to happen during COVID is not something that is worse. It’s worse. It’s just worse. There are limits though, around what we can do to support people with dementia. It limits around how much companionship we can give. There are limits around how much respite care we can provide if that person has a partner. What we’re mainly doing is trying to support people that situation and their families to access the resources that can support them. Because they’re every, every community has the resources to do this. And it’s it takes that kind of community to come in to the mix, we do worry about the danger of fire, for example. But we’re sprinklered, at least the apartment building is so it, you know, whatever happens, it would be contained, it’s not what we want to see happen. And, and we’re because we care about each other. We’re concerned about how people are like, their mental health, but not just the cognitive mental health or happiness factor, you know, how, how hard this is, for people have really, really challenging it is to be the person experiencing dementia, and to be a caregiver for someone like that. And to provide the kind of community support that we can as friends, but that’s the limit of it. We’re not a locked ward, and we never will be right, we’re very insecure. In that sense, you know, even the whole buildings, parts of our building are locked and other other parts are not locked, and anybody could go wandering off at any time. And it’s a worry, it’s a worry. And you know, people have those necklaces that you wear to call for help and lifeline are something that’s called and are setting it off inadvertently. And so the ambulance is coming. And it’s it adds to the stress for sure. No easy answers at all, but involving the family, the next of kin, and us as neighbors, in the capacity that we’re that we remain comfortable in as neighbors. And knowing when we’ve hit the wall. And using like self responsibility is as something is, I think, extremely important. Being self responsible is extremely important. But it’s it’s it’s often used as a blunt instrument in community, in my experience, it’s like, self responsibility is important that you are not being self responsible. So it’s a it’s a charge, right? Guilty as charged, you are not being self responsible. So I try to work with my own self responsibility, and my own boundaries. And I think boundaries are just as important as knowing well, that actually this is my limit. This is as far as I can go as a member of the CO care team, offering community support. That’s it. And to be clear with family members, particularly that this you know, we love this person to, and we are, you know, we will remain friends. And this is the limit of our helping ability for this week, or this month or ever, right? This these are the lines, and that that those those boundaries are where we meet. And so knowing what the boundary looks like and where it is, and that it’s shifting all the time, but only in these sorts of ways. And beyond this, you all need to find a way to provide the resources that your loved one needs. So your community member must have somebody else in their lives, either in the community or outside the community, who could be involved in decision making. And if they don’t, then I think connecting with the healthcare system, legal system to provide this fine, find the support that they need. And that’s where people often need help is in navigating that system. We’re fortunate to have some community members really well placed to help us navigate that system. And a couple of them gave a talk to the community a few weeks ago about exactly that, is how do you get care? You know, because they had brought in really excellent care for their family member in our community. And so how do we get what you have? Because it looks like it’s working really well. That was priceless. So draw on your own resources, I would say. I love that.

Rebecca Mesritz 1:29:10
Well, I think my my final question for you is like kind of ended a lot of my conversations in this way is you know, who Who do you see out there that is doing this really well. I mean, it sounds like you’ve got some things figured out over at Harbor side. But are there other communities that you’ve seen that are rocking it and and what does it look like when when a community is doing a really good job with supporting people to age? An age? Well?

Margaret Critchlow 1:29:42
Um, there’s a community in Virginia, Abingdon, Virginia, I think it is called elder spirit. That’s been around a long time now. And they, they seem to be rocking it. I had someone from their community in my class last term, aging class, they have a community that seems to work really well both on property, as they say on this on a site or on campus, they may say, an off campus, but in the same town, so some people living in private homes, but they see him from the outside, they have a huge sense of community connection, of mutual support, and the ability to live really well into well, all for the rest of their lives. I don’t know what it is about that particular community, I know it’s been well researched. There’s a researcher named and P glass GLA s s, who’s written extensively about that community. And so if I read that stuff, when we were starting harbor son, she’s continued to write about it. I would suggest if you’re wanting to start a community, or even join a community that’s focused on aging in place that looking at elder spirit, it’s a good place to start. There’s a community I kind of think of as our sister community across the strait of Juan de Fuca from us in Port Townsend, Washington called Quimper village that puts out a monthly I think its monthly or regular newsletter anyway. And they seem to be doing a great job to it and what is what is a great job look at to me, people are enjoying living there, they’re active, they’re staying engaged with life and with each other, they’re doing a lot of stuff together, they’re having a lot of fun together, they’re learning together. And they’re in as much as possible in charge of their lives. They’re not maybe my bias shows here, but like submitting to authority, they’re not letting other people take care of themselves, right, or not letting other people take care of them. They’re taking care of themselves, but with all this, all the support that they need, bringing in getting being proactive for themselves. They’re being self responsible. And they’re also being really connected with each other. And with the larger world. I think harbor side is doing a pretty darn good job, all things considered. We’re still building the airplane while we fly it, which is how it felt during development. And it still feels that way. We could use more active people who want to aid their to engage in active learning and aging of the sort that I’ve been describing. There is a concern that we’re only attracting older people, like at sign up. And, you know, for for succession planning, we really need to have younger people in the community. And we love having younger people in the community having a young man wife and three year old was fantastic. We had that for about six months, she was working a government job from home, he was taking care of the house and a little girl. And it was just a huge boost to the community. And so we don’t have an age restriction. We would love to have anybody living here who wants to be living in and living in and contributing to community. And so I think there’s a huge future for community aging. In multigenerational communities where there’s a willingness to support each other both the the older people supporting the younger ones, and the younger ones with the older ones. There’s some far eco village type farming communities that are doing that quite well too in our area. So there are models out there. It’s but the thing is, it’s each one is different. And it’s living into the peculiarities of your own community. That is the challenge and the opportunity. So as I said hard is not bad. And using self responsibility to make myself better and more responsible rather than accusing other people of not having it and having the hard conversations and developing a plan and then being willing to change it are all keys I think to aging well together in community. Well,

Rebecca Mesritz 1:34:32
Margaret Critchlow thank you so much for taking this time to talk to me about about aging and I’m really looking forward to yeah, having these conversations here in my own community about some of the things that we’ve talked about today. So thank you for shedding light on a lot of this for us.

Margaret Critchlow 1:34:54
Good for you, Rebecca. That’s great to hear and it’s been a pleasure talking with you

Rebecca Mesritz 1:35:04
Margaret Critchlow will be teaching a five-week course starting on June 23. Through the foundation for intentional community, entitled exploring community for aging well, for listeners of the show, you can use coupon code inside 30 for 30% off. I also have a coupon code inside 20. If you want to check out the fic bookstore, there are tons of books on how to start a cohousing, how to build community and all kinds of topics related to community life. So check out the bookstore, you can find links for that. Links for the courses all in the show notes as well as all of the links that Margaret mentioned in the show today. You can follow the show and see inspiring images and videos of community life on Facebook and Instagram at inside community podcast. I would love to hear from you there. Please reach out drop me a line let me know any questions or ideas you have about things that you want to learn about. While I definitely appreciate any donations to the show, you can also support by rating reviewing, subscribing, sharing all the things so please help us to get the word out by taking a moment and sending this on to a friend or someone that you think might be interested in joining you and your journey to living inside community. Thank you so much for being with me today.

Dave Booda 1:36:33
Who left the dishes in the shared kitchen sink? Who helps her Johnny when is too much to drink? How do we find a way for everyone to agree? That Sinsa Can you it’s a podcast y’all

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

Rebecca Mesritz

Welcome to the inside community podcast. I’m your host, Rebecca Mesritz. One of the things that I think brings a lot of people to community. And perhaps this is something that you can also relate to, is a deep desire to be at home in a place where you feel like you truly belong. To feel like you are accepted for who you really are. This desire extends to a lot of different facets of community. And it’s not just about the social, or the intimacy that we build with our community mates. But we also want to see this type of inclusivity and acknowledgement and how we make decisions, and how we allow all of the voices to be heard in a conversation. My guest today has had an interesting journey in certain places and contexts that not only allow, but deeply support the presence of true and authentic self. As a transgender man and sociocracy trainer Ted Rao brings a unique perspective on how to make organizations function more efficiently, while honoring the voices of all of their members. Ted is a trainer consultant and co founder of the nonprofit movement support organization sociocracy for all. He grew up in Germany and earned his PhD there in linguistics, and then he moved to the USA and fulfilled a long held wish to live an intentional community, where he still lives with his five children and 70 neighbors in a cohousing and Massachusetts. Ted’s perspective is influenced by being transgender, by his interest in nonviolent communication and social justice by being part of a global sociocracy organization at work and a parent at home. Ted Rao, welcome to the show.
Thank you for having me.
Well, I usually start my podcast with the same question. So I’d love to ask you if you can give the viewers the listeners a little bit of a snapshot into your community and what your community is like.
Oh, so I live in a community in Massachusetts. We have 32 houses. And it’s been built since 1994. So it’s been a while. But kind of at the edge of a town of a college town. So it’s not urban, but also not super rural around here, which is a good combination. And yeah, we do some gardening, we have a gorgeous common house. Yeah. But that’s I guess the snapshot. I’ve lived here since 2011. The people that really know each other.
So I’m part of the reason I’m excited to have you here is really to jump into ideas about inclusivity and community. And one of the ways that you really bring ideals of inclusivity forward is through your work with sociocracy. But you also have a really interesting personal journey. And I would love if you could share a little bit about your personal story. Give a little context here.
So So I assume what you’re referring to, is that a gender transition the last few years, maybe five years ago, it feels like forever, but I think that’s right. So that all happened in community that was interesting, of course, coming out to 90 people out at once. I also have five children. So that was an additional angle in the in the whole thing. And actually, I want to say that that to me, both transitioning and living in community and the work that I do actually are all, to me, that’s all the kind of the manifestation of the same vision, I want to say. Because one thing that came up for me around around doing the work that I do with sociocracy is that one of the pieces that we care about is people really showing up as themselves, right. And I would say that’s also a value that I hold in community, like I want to be connected to people with who they really are, and not some nice facade. And what came up for me around that is that I just had a hard time showing up as my whole self with this gender thing in the way. So it I see it actually as a consequence that I had that I had to come out in transition because of the community in the sociocracy context. So to me, they’re all They’re all really connected.
And And how was that for you too? I mean, obviously, I mean, I can only imagine that With 90 different people, not to mention, I know that you were living your your former partners also in your community and your kids, but I’m sure everybody has their own opinion and thought about that. Usually when people I think come out in any way, it’s, you know, maybe to their, to their immediate family, it’s not always to such an intimate community reality. So what was that like for you?
Yeah, I know, the irony of all is really that most people were very concerned about the kids. And the kids dealt better with this than any grown up. So I don’t know what that is about. I don’t know. But that says something about it. But there’s something interesting there. So my kids, I mean, they all had different reactions, you know, because they were different ages and different level of exposure with the topic, but most of them are like, okay, that makes sense. Okay, cool. Kind of like that. But for many it was in the community. Now, it was, first of all, for some, it was the first contact with somebody who transitions as a grown up. They had their own morning to do you know, of like, oh, this, you know, mother with five children. I was like, wait an hour. Now you’re telling me your man, like, how do I how do I reconcile that? So we actually do we did this thing that some people in this community do we have done it previously on a different thing is basically, they can Ask Me Anything session, like come to my house, ask me. So we did that there were maybe many people, they also. And I was just trying to explain what it feels like, how the path has been by I didn’t really see any other way than transitioning. And I remember one of the things that was said, for example, and that might help people are listening to kind of wrap their head around it, is that the most touching thing for me, I think was when somebody said, you know, I support you in whatever you do, I just want to also have some space to mourn because I have kind of, I hold you as a particular person, and now I need to let go of that. So that’s just gonna take me a while, you know, that’s, that’s a thing. And I remember somebody that a good friend of mine then had a beautiful response to that. And she said that it’s a little bit like when a child grows up, right? We wouldn’t tell her child and don’t grow up, you’re not allowed to because I want to keep you as a cute little child. Right. But we also have some feelings around, right? Like my my oldest child, just graduated. And honestly, I do get sad when I look at pictures of her as a seven year old because she was adorable. And seven. And yes, I am sad. Would I want to freeze her in time? Of course not. So this both admits right? Of like, Yeah, time, you know, things change. And that’s okay. I also have memories from the past. And that’s also okay. And it all somehow comes later. Now, I guess it all turns out, okay, in the end. So that was the yeah, there were of course, many, many different stories. But that I would say was the big flyover off of my experience was me.
Yeah. Did you feel supported? I mean, it sounds like this listening session was really helpful for people. I mean, it’s interesting, because I imagine I mean, I’m trying to imagine in any case, because this is very new, this I would say, probably for people like me who are operating in kind of more of the mainstream context, a lot of these ideas of transgender issues are very new. Not to say that being transgender is new. And I’m wondering, you know, not just did you feel supported, but did the community feel supported in in navigating, you know, how to be with you and how to be with the children and how to talk you know, like, obviously, you’re using he him pronouns, but I would imagine for your children to go from calling you mom to I don’t know, what they call you now. Might be difficult. You know, how did the community get support to to know how to navigate that in a good way?
Well, I made some clear requests. You know, he him pronouns, my new name, I don’t want to, I don’t want people to use my old name, even if it’s about things in the past. The way I describe that to people is that it would be like putting me back in like, just the name evokes the fear of being put back into the prison I was in pre transition. So that’s not a fun memory to me. It’s not kind of a matter of fact, kind of thing. The impact is actually quite significant to me. So the requests of just people please give it all you have to make the switch because when whenever somebody slips So part of me is like, okay, that will just happen you know, that just happens it just habit and part of me is just in absolute freakout mode about it, actually. So it’s really not an enjoyable thing. And I know people make mistakes. And and just I want to, I want both sides to be in the picture, right, the impact on me, and of course, the people. It’s not people’s fault, right. So my role was a lot educating people. So you ask, Was I supported and I would say, that might be, might be too big of a word, actually, there will be individuals that supported me inside and out of outside of the community, that community as a whole, I would say, was almost busy, like needed education and was busy with itself in a way in, in their own react in their own coming along with that, it wasn’t that it was particularly helpful, because I mean, you know, educating people and kind of explaining it again, and again, has something helpful about it, but near another piece is that I think the people who did maybe the most education work were my kids, actually. They, for example, explain to people that even if one talks about an instance that is 15 years ago, when just doesn’t switch pronouns, and it’s because it was still me who I am now, back, then it’s just that I had this at this persona that I was playing, that doesn’t justify using my old name for a past event. And my kids, for example, is super clear about that. And they explain it to everybody. Interestingly, I never explained it to them to them, that’s just so obvious that they actually a little, like, surprised how that cannot be obvious to other people. So they’re great about it, you know, they completely embody it. And they, they don’t hold back and explain it.
Wow, that is so that it’s so touching to me, and so beautiful that that, yeah, that your children were able to provide that level of support for you through this. That’s, that’s really amazing.
Yes, I continue to be very close with my children, they, when they talk about it, you know, like, is there anything different? They say, No, nothing is different, except it is happier now. And that’s good. And you know, and if pressed, they will say these wise things, people sometimes say, you’re like, wow, how old are you? 95 or 14, because they will say things like, you know, and of course, Ted also taught us, you know, how important it is to be who you are? And even if it’s hard to, to bring that. So, yeah, I guess in the long run, it certainly is. I would say it’s been good for them.
Beautiful. And you’ve done all of this with your former partner, and in the community as well, you know, and I could only imagine that, you know, just living in in community with someone that you were previously romantically involved with, and are no longer romantically involved with is probably a minefield. I mean, most people have a hard time just living in the same town as their exes. So yeah, I did, how I’m if you feel comfortable talking about it, you know, did your Did you feel like that? transition through partnership, you know, I’m just wondering what you learned, and what you would recommend for people that are out there who might be in community and uncoupling or going through transitions like that, but really want to stay in community because I feel like, you know, we come into community in partnership, my husband and I, actually, we started our last community together. And then during, at one point, we broke up for about six months. And it was pretty serious. It was kind of major, because we were co founders and we were both extremely invested in this thing that we had created and people weren’t invested in us as partners. Luckily, we after our time apart, we were able to find our way back together and and find some healing and now we’re married and have a daughter and a little more happily ever after, I guess. But that time of being separate and community was was so intense. And I’m wondering you know, what tips you might have or ideas about how folks can navigate that because that’s, that’s big.
So first of all, when my when my ex and I split up, we I think we were both deciding that we tried to best the best exists one can probably be so we continue to have very warm contact. The things that we were really good at we still do like we were excellent My parents, that’s so weird we do kind of managing things together. That’s what we still deal with the things that weren’t working so much previously, we don’t have to do anymore. So that’s all good. And he was a big support also in the transition. So there was no no hesitation, no issues, no pushback, no nothing. He actually said an interesting thing, I think when we split up, and then also that came up around transition, he said, well now makes perfect sense to me. Because in our time together, he said, I always had the sense that I only see half of you. That’s actually quite touching as a piece of feedback, from my point of view, because I think he was right. And maybe, I don’t know, had we ever talked about it, maybe it would have helped to have his feedback earlier. But one thing that’s interesting in terms of transitioning later in life and with with kids and all, kind of out there connected with the world, right, I didn’t have the luxury of moving. Is that when, for example? Let’s say we had the auto at my kids orthodontist. Okay. And I like they say, oh, we need to schedule with somebody in Sar. Sorry, that’s the other day and how they will be scheduled in that week, it’s going to be the other time for scheduling. And so for me, that’s fine. They know, but for my ex, that’s not necessarily. I mean, it’s fine. He kind of I think he just accepts it, but it does put him into a slightly awkward position. Because Because that’s not necessarily it’s making assumptions about his identity, that that are not correct. And there’s kind of no way out for him around that. So that’s, that’s funny, but he’s, you know, he’s accepting it. And I’ve really very much appreciate that. Because I think that’s a rare that I can imagine many more people that would try and wiggle their way out of those situations. And he just is.
Wow, that’s, that’s really, I had never really considered that aspect of, of this issue. You know, there’s no, like, you don’t really have a say, Yeah, you don’t have a say, in this perception of identity, which I guess, you know, is probably true for all of life, really, like, we think we’re in control of our identity. But in actuality, it’s 90% What someone else’s story is, but wow, that’s, that’s really fascinating. Yeah, so I mean, in terms of maintaining, you know, beneficial relations inside of the community, do you have, you know, coming back to that question of do you have advice for folks or ideas about good ways to do that?
Well, well, I have a few regrets, actually, that I want to share. That would be kind of if I had to do it again, here’s what I would do differently, I think it would. We were kind of planning and then not following through something like a ritual. I think that would have been good for the community and for myself as well. Because it is kind of interesting transitioning. And now, of course, I’m the same person. And then again, I’m not. Because of all the relationships, all of the relationships in my life really needed to be renegotiated. Outside of my kids, actually, my kids didn’t have to be renegotiated because I don’t know if there’s something more back there. That’s kind of not mediated by gender, my relationship to the kids. So that stayed in touch with everything else. Like, for example, again, now, if I have good friends that are women that I typically hung out with now, it’s somehow a little different, it’s, I can’t really fully put my finger on it. But you know, just the perception is different from the outside. I do think that it was holding back on male traits that I have before and now I’m not so much anymore. So now I kind of am more with that. So it does change things. So there’s a renegotiation that needs to happen. And I wish we had made that more explicit. Because since it was not explicit, it was on me to with each person, kind of either bring it up on on, let go of it and just kind of do my own internal V, whatever, recalibrating. So I just wish that would have happened more, but I didn’t make the request. I mean, of course, how would other people have known? So that would be my advice for people one who want to kind of stand on most my shoulders, that would be a place where one could improve it?
Yeah, I mean, I’m a huge advocate for the importance of ritual. And in our lives, it’s something that we’re I think, as a culture as a society were very much lacking, especially with the sort of, in a lot of arenas, and for a lot of people, the decline of religious life, and the ways that religious life provided certain, like marked rites of passage and things like that. And now that a lot of people don’t seem to really identify with that anymore. Yeah, there’s just really such a place for, for ritual, I’d be so curious to learn more about what types of rituals trans people do employ to help them and help their communities? It’s a pretty fascinating area of inquiry. Well, you know, part of why I’m excited to talk to you today is also about your, your take on sociocracy. And before we dive too far into that, I’m curious to know, did sociocracy play in any way into this sort of personal lived experience? Did it inform your community did the values or ethos of sociocracy support this personal journey of yours?
Well, there is a piece of showing up as a whole person, there is also a piece around. One thing that I love that we do in sociocracy, is holding more perspectives without necessarily assuming that they have to converge as much. So one of the values I like until circus is that we have to find enough convergence to make an extent, but we don’t have to convince each other of everything. And that’s something that I learned, both in life and in community and in sociocracy. And in transition, that sometimes things don’t perfectly align. Sometimes there is a little bit of incoherence or kind of lack of whatever full I don’t know what call it I guess, yeah, not everything neatly falls into place all the time. And yet, we can still act. That’s one of the strings of sociocracy of acting, without having to be on the same page 100% About everything. To me, that’s a plus. I know, some people might hear that and think like, what, why would we, you know, why would we not get 100% alignment on everything? Doesn’t that sound sweet? And honestly, to me, that sounds a little, I don’t know, claustrophobic from for me. So that’s just my perspective on No, I don’t think we need to be on the same page on everything. They can be room for us being different, and even being split and torn within ourselves and still moving forward. On some.
Yeah, I mean, it’s kind of a fairy tale, this idea that everyone is going to be completely aligned on all things all the time. And I think that’s one of the things that I really see as a strength of sociocracy, as you’re saying, is this idea that, you know, we’re actually better for not all being 100% on the same page, it helps us to see different perspectives and create better plans moving forward and also to exist in a space of curiosity and exploration. And, yeah, continual growth,
right? Because the learning comes from being different, right? That’s where the learning is, it’s at the edges, it’s where we’re different. So if we all always thought the same thing about everything, if that was even our goal, then we wouldn’t have as many opportunities to actually encounter something new or see a perspective we hadn’t seen. So it wouldn’t be like a monoculture that I wouldn’t that just is not healthy. It’s neither realistic, nor is it healthy, nor is it resilient. So there’s many reasons for me to hold that multitude of, of perspectives. Really, really.
So for people that don’t know it, sociocracy is can you give us just a brief intro?
Sure. So I’m going to give it from the point of view of a community, okay, you can just replace community with organization and then basically have other organizations as well. But for community. We often think that the people’s impulse is to make inclusive decisions, we just get everybody in one room and talk. And yet our experience is that that doesn’t typically work that way, right? If you let’s say in my community have seven people in one room, it’s not true that everybody will be heard quite the opposite. It will tend to happen that some voices dominate and not everybody will speak or we’ll just speak for a minute and then that would still be almost one and a half hours. Right. So one thing that sociocracy does is to give decision making power to smaller groups so that you have a group of five or six or seven people that take care of one particular aspect of the community. And not only do they do the work in that part of the community, but also they make the decisions in that, in that part of the community. For example, we have a circle that stewards the common house, they make the decisions about the common house. And that is policy decisions and decisions they need to make to just, you know, figure out who does what. So all of it, we have a circle, that sort of team of people that to look at the membership, and they make the policies of our membership. So that way in membership circle in those 567 people, they can have much deeper conversations and really understand an issue to make an informed decision, which is simply different than a group of 70. So one of the big pieces of sociocracy is the authority to small groups. And the advantage of having that depth and expertise and the connection in that circle. Another piece in sociocracy is decision making decision making by consent. So typically, the decisions that are made would be made by the circle that holds that artist vote, for example, if it’s a decision about the common House policy decision, that decision would be made in common house circle by the people who are on common house circle. And if there’s a proposal and one of the people of that circle, if they have an objection, that decision needs to be looked at more, because we can move forward. If one of those, let’s say six people on common house circle, as an objection says, whoa, hold on, this is not going to work because this isn’t that. And those two pieces with a few other bells and whistles, those two pieces, create a situation where we have clarity, because we know who’s to say to in deciding what but we also can change those things. For example, the area of decision making can change. And we have a system of how to change that so that we are always flexible and can respond to whatever happens and change our own system. So that we can respond to whatever is important to us right now. And when we input energy. So those are the I guess just to kind of check a few more boxes, we also decide who is, for example, leader or let’s say facilitator of a group by consent, so the group needs to give consent to its leader to its facilitator, and so on. And those are, for example, typically on a term, so nobody’s facilitator forever. But let’s say you get selected for nine months, and then you can revisit it again. So that overall also with policy decisions on a term, you get to a situation where you revisit all the things that you’re doing constantly. So they have that learning, and you have those conversations, again, in the review, to change and improve what we do.
So what do you do when you have, you know, if, for example, I’m on the common house circle, but there’s decisions that are being made in the membership circle that I don’t like, or I feel like, are bad for some reason, you know, is there a space or a place for other members of the community to kind of weigh in on some of these things? Or have a vote or have a say?
Yes, thank you for the question. So first of all, let me say that the, the, the responsibility and the authority that we give to small groups, comes with the expectation that they will get feedback. So for example, if they make a policy about renters and the community but you assume they check in with renters and with landlords, so that we have a situation where we don’t learn it, learn about new information when there’s an outcry in the community when something new came up. As there can also be more, more, I guess, intentional feedback also that affects the whole community. For example, before sociocracy was adopted 11 years ago, 11 years ago, we had those monthly general meetings that whole group consensus run communities do. And we still have those meetings, we now call them full circle meetings, but we had still have all member meetings, where a lot of people show and then for example, membership circle would say hey, we’re planning to change the policy give us input. So the trick, really the magic sauce from my point of view in sociocracy is that both and have feedback. And then decision making in small group feedback, large group, decision making small group because that way we can have those many many opinions and perspectives. And we have a small group of people that can digest all of that. So the information isn’t lost, it’s just fed into. So that’s one thing. And it so far, we’ve always been able to, either with feedback before a decision was made, or after a decision was made with feedback, we’ve so far been able to deal with everything that has happened in our kind of constitution and our governance agreement, there is an appeal process, that to my knowledge, has not been used yet. And I always joke that it’s a little bit like bringing an umbrella so that it doesn’t rain, okay, it’s like that we kind of have it in, in a community agreement, so that people are at ease. If a circle really does, you didn’t add a real thing, there is a way to appeal. And it would be super weird if somebody did use it. Because that would mean that our regular process of talking to each other and working things out didn’t work. And that would really shock me. So I would go at length in kind of mediation and talking and giving more feedback and more listening and so on, to make sure that doesn’t happen, because it would be a total power over movie mode that I wouldn’t want.
A lot of what I’m hearing that you’re sharing right now sounds like it’s successful, because you have a larger community. And I’m wondering, you know, we implemented sociocracy, at the Emerald village, and we had a much smaller community, we had, you know, 10 founders, and including kids, probably 25 folks total, at most, so maybe an additional anywhere from five to 10, or five to seven, I guess other adults on the property working together. And our experience was really that in some ways that we were wondering, are we too small to really implement this, because with the different circles that we needed to have, you know, everybody was on multiple circles? And yeah, I guess I’m just curious, I always thought, oh, it seems like this would be a lot better if we had, you know, 25 more people to kind of spread throughout the circles. How do you see this being able to work for smaller groups?
Yeah, I guess my the short answer, and I will elaborate a little bit is that of course it there is it is easier in a in a larger group. That’s true, I agree with you. And you can not get all the benefits as easily or it’s not so easy to see what the benefits are in this monitor. That said, there are in between sort of really like for smaller communities. So they’re even in a group of, let’s say, 10 people, it is typically the case that there are some of the issues that some are more about and know more about the others. So let me come from the other side, the idea that we’re working towards, and sociocracy is that in any given meeting, every person in the room cares about all the agenda items on the agenda. Right, that’s what we want a circle is made up of the people who work in that area, they should care about everything that goes into that circle. And that’s also what I see. So now in a group of 10, let’s say they make all the decisions together in one big circle, basically, that’s probably not the case that everybody cares about everything equally. So then we’re already in this little bit of like, oh, maybe there should be a circle on this or that yeah, now, because really, not everybody cares about it. But maybe not everything needs to be decentralized into circles, maybe some like more than in my community can stay in the kind of the big blob. And some things can already be be distributed out. So that’s kind of a mix that I do in a way, the circle in the middle that we call general circle is typically just made up of two people from kind of the main circles. And it’s easier to Google that and look up a visual to understand it. But the, the general circuit can also have more people. So they’re kind of mixed forms. And by the way, we did a webinar on sociocracy and farming communities that describes that transition of how they go from a group of eight to 10 to 15, when it’s a tipping point, where organizing like you did is one bigger group that decides many of the things together to a fully distributed community, where the tipping point is in what it would look like how one gets from A to B. So and I guess if one looks at it as a continuum with many of those little in between steps then with a group of 15 people for example, maybe you just stay at a certain point of the metamorphosis and that’s totally fine. As long as you have clarity about where you are and and shared reality with everybody else to me that
how long does it normally take a community to transition into sociocracy? Or how long did it take your community? I guess, I think you said that they were beginning to implement sociocracy when you joined, what was that? Like? How long does it take to actually do it get everybody trained? What can people expect for
that? Yeah, so as I arrived, my first meeting, so when I became a member, I had to attend one of the general meetings. And it happened to be that that general meeting was the meeting where sociocracy was adopted. So by consensus, the decision was made that now decisions will be made by consensus, or by consent and in circles. And leading up to that it’s been, I think, more than a year around here of work of an implementation, circle, learning sociocracy, using sociocracy, with each other, listen to people’s concerns about the transition, and just preparing it really, really well. And then I think it took maybe, I mean, then circles were happily working against, but there were a few bumps in the road that will really just learnings for everybody. So there was more that that came up. And I think some people that are not as involved, for example, they’re still on that learning curve. So it’s not, you know, it’s not that this kind of a before where you know, nothing and then it is after way, you know, everything, right, that’s not the case, it’s the kind of learn from different starting points. And then there is some critical mass you make the necessary changes in the infrastructure and who decides what, and then you get closer and closer to what you want to have over time. So I would say a year before, and then counting, probably another year to really settle there and really arrive where you are. And from then on, it’s just continuous improvement. It’s never done, it’s never complete, they will always tweak things, and learn things and see things from a new angle.
If this conversation with Ted Rao has piqued your interest around sociocracy, I would love to point you towards the five week course that he and fellow communitarian Jerry Cook Gonzalez, are going to be running through the foundation for intentional community. It starts on June 23, which is right around the corner. And it’s going to be a great way for you and your community to deep dive on the ins and outs of this amazing governance model, and find new ways to streamline your communities meetings. If you go to my show notes, you can find a discount code for 30% off this course and a link to the course through icy.org. The fic offers lots of workshops and free events on topics related to community. So check them out today. If you want to get some different perspectives on sociocracy, and start to figure out if this governance model could work for your organization. There are a lot of articles and communities magazine on this very subject. You can read perspectives from Diana leaf Christian, Tina meadows, a rear and John buck, Laird shalbe. And even today’s guest, Ted Rao. This publication of the global eco village network has an amazing online catalog of all of their past issues. And their digital subscription is only $20 a year. Learn more at Gen hyphen us.net/communities.
So how do you see sociocracy really supporting inclusivity? Like specifically, like what are the ways in which this governance model as opposed to other governance models make space for that make space for all the voices?
Yeah, in many, many different ways. So one that I’ve already mentioned is that it’s easier to talk in smaller groups and really listen to each other. So that’s, that’s an inclusivity thing. For example, a small group of six people, five people works much better for introverts. I’m not an introvert. But for people who, who are uncomfortable talking in a group of 50 or 60 people, for them, it’s much more inclusive to really have as a smaller group. So that’s the thing. The other piece is one thing that I haven’t mentioned that it’s kind of a standard thing in sociocracy is talking in rounds. That can also be found in other places. So it’s not unique to sociocracy. But it’s one of the four things in sociocracy that we talk in rounds. And by that I mean the practice of talking one by one by one. So let’s say we have five people in a room number one, like let’s say Person A speaks and then Person B, Person C, Person C, the person D, and then it’s same for Person A again, and that creates a culture where we’re not interrupting each other constantly. That creates a culture where people know they can speak without being interrupted, but also important. And ultimately, it just turns into more of a culture of listening to each other. Because often, I noticed that in myself, when I’m in a, in a situation where we’re talking in rounds, then I settle into a listening mode, because I know it’s not going to be my turn until it is. When I’m in this situation with this mod debate style conversation, I noticed myself going more into internally thinking how that person is wrong that speaking right now, and when I can interrupt them, to tell them that they’re wrong. That’s kind of the energy with which debates or conversations I have. So rounds as one of the ways of being inclusive. The other one is a decision making method, right depends on what you compare to, for example, compared to majority vote, where if you’re one of the 49%, you’re just in tough luck. In consent, you can’t be outnumbered. Just because you’re fewer people doesn’t mean you’re not going to be heard and your needs are not going to be met. If you come here to consensus, that’s kind of a deeper, deeper story. That’s why group size really comes in. And it depends a little bit on how consensus is practice. Because there’s not one way there’s a little bit of a more complex comparison that one has to really go into to distinguish how consensus and consent might differ from each other. It is very close in many different ways. I would say.
Do you think there’s any downsides to sociocracy are things people should be looking out for, if they’re going to consider implementing this as their governance model.
So surrogacy is really hard for people who are not willing to let go of being able to have a say on everything. That’s huge. So if I cannot possibly deal with the idea that a common house circa which I’m not a part of, will decide what color the basement of the common house with to be painted, then sociocracy is going to drive me insane. Because then you’re going to suffer all the time, right? I’ll be be that person that sends circles, angry emails, that’s not a fun position to be in. It’s also not a fun to be, it’s also not fun to be on the receiving end of it. So that that’s, that is a big obstacle for some communities because of the tradition of guess that’s why I’m going to share a little bit of my judgmental side, I think that many people join communities because they have this deep longing for kind of merging into this community experience where we’re all kind of understanding each other blindly. And we’re all kind of on the same page, as we talked about in the beginning weight. And that’s just not a thing, I think. But if we’re really deeply attached to talking to, we all think the same thing, or talking to everything that I have to say is going to be heard by everybody or by whoever the decision makers, that’s not going to work. So circusy is fairly pragmatic. And it’s fairly like, Okay, any input now, okay, great, then let’s go, just go do it, you know, until we find out, it wasn’t a good idea, and then we’ll change it. So it has this experimentation mode to it, which I appreciate. But for some people, it’s really scary, if they’ve been conditioned in kind of, let’s not make mistakes, we should control everything so that nothing goes wrong. You know, when I say that kind of with judgment, and I also know that for some people who are in that space, it’s connected with a lot of pain that comes from previous experiences, so I don’t want to dismiss it. But anyway, if there’s energy like that in the community, that’s something to watch out for. Because then I know many communities where, let’s say, in our two thirds of the people really, really, really want sociocracy because they’re done with a large group meetings. And some people on the other side have really holding on to the values of everybody should be heard on everything all the time.
Yeah, I think one of the places that our the Emerald village, we kind of struggled with sociocracy was around issues that crossed circles. So for example, an event was going to be put on and the events issue, or the event that might be proposed was something that was part of the events circle, but it also sort of crossed over into land because there would be these certain land needs that might need to be addressed or there might be a financing and budget accounting component. And so we’d have these issues that would then be brought to the general circle because they were affecting multiple, multiple circles. And then it would come time to do, for example, a proposal forming process around that. And there would be a lot of resistance to doing these proposal forming processes, because they seem to take up a lot of time, it seemed to take a lot of time to go around, and, you know, get all of the aspects of the problem, and then go around and get all of the possible solutions, and then go in tune it, you know, this process, while in my mind, it was very thorough, it actually helped us to create a better proposal that could really address a lot of the issues that we might run into up front. For folks who were kind of really just wanting things to like, Alright, let’s go come on, let’s just, let’s just figure it out, can’t we just do a different, different way of figuring this out? A different type of proposal forming process would get kind of frustrated by that. I’m wondering what your thoughts might be on that?
Well, with my consultant hat, when I hear those stories, a bunch of questions I have, and actually, instead of just talking about that particular experience, because I would hit need to hear a lot more about it, let me highlight a few of the things that I see in general. Here’s I, I often go back to this to this image of this metaphor, that any kind of organization is, is like a garden, right? So it’s a garden where you attend to all the different things and your garden, you know, how good your garden is doing depends on how well it’s watered, the water situation is the soil, the sun, everything. And some things are beyond our control sometimes are in our control, but stuffs complex as I guess what I want to say. And it’s the same thing in governance, right. So for example, if there is a lot of overlap between things in I’ve circled so and so can make a decision because circumstance also seems to be impacted, then, maybe the way the domains are set up is not is not really helpful, because it’s not fully clear. This should be the idea that we’re striving to have a set of domain sort of circles that are empowered in their decision making in areas that shouldn’t have as many interdependencies. So, another pieces, well, couldn’t have dealt with just feedback from one circle, and another circle takes care of it, those issues, from my point of view, shouldn’t even be in general circles, channel circle should just facilitate that it happens in a circle. So but all of these things that I’m saying there should have should have kind of stuff, to me at different leverage points that I see. And what really is humbling and exciting at the same time is that people’s readiness, for example, to let go of power, but also people’s skill level of making decisions fast, you know, how do you go through process fast people’s appreciation for process, clarity of our aims, and domains, all of those things. All of those things are both the leverage points and points where we might struggle. Just like a garden needs sun and soil and water. It’s the same thing here. And it’s not so much used to just look at one, right? So if now I say, oh, you know, whatever that could have been solved in in the structure or something like that. That’s always just one aspect. Because there’s always many aspects to everything. And the metaphor that I use then with groups is we want to be in an upward spiral, right? We want to be in an upward spiral, which means Okay, let’s look at this and see if we could divide up the the decision making areas better so that we don’t always get entangled. Okay, let’s look at how can we make this process faster? Or let’s look at how can we play more with feedback versus decision making here, like all of these things can help. So I always have a multitude of ideas of how we can address it. But it’s always going to be systemic, right? It’s not all just to that, and then it’s all fixed. It’s always going to be a bunch of things that contribute to an easier flow and governance, or that inhibit that. So it’s never just one thing.
I like that. I like that a lot. I it. It makes me think of, you know, when we implemented sociocracy, we were trained by Diana leave Christian. And here we are. My partner and I, my partners and I are now creating a new community. And we’re looking at our governance model. And we’ve still still are using a version of sociocracy as taught by Diana but we’ve recently been starting to explore s3 sociocracy 3.0 For those of you that haven’t heard about that, and starting to like look at the differences between those models and sort of the spectrum of this more Traditional socio kradic Circle method versus s3, which seems to be sort of based in more of the agile, sort of tech world tech business. And I’m wondering what your thoughts are about that spectrum?
Yeah. So the spectrum to me. Let me start differently. So in sociocracy, from my point of view, everybody who use the sociocracy, or learn sociocracy combines it with everything else they find. So for example, if your thing is agile, you’re going to combine it with that if your thing is non binding communication, your thing is that what you’re going to combine it with, of course, all the things that we’ve learned should, you know, governance is something so dear to our heart, and so around us all the time, because whenever we’re with groups, we’re dealing with governance. So all of those things will flow into that experience. So from my point of view, there’s sometimes in the perception, a little bit of a polarization of kind of, you know, Socratic Socratic method versus sociocracy. Remainder. And to from that, from what I see, the different styles are different enough within one of the groups, and there’s so much overlap, that to me, this polarization doesn’t quite hold water, actually. Because everybody combines things anyway. So that’s going to be a lot of variety already. So given that the differences are a thing, most of the most important differences, to me, besides a little bit of jargon, and a little bit of processes here and there are in whether we assume that people know what they need. So on one end, and that’s where, from my perspective, Diana, good question is, is a side that I have a lot of compassion for. And I completely agree. I also will agree with the other side says a spoiler here. And that is that sociocracy has a system you know, as this ecosystem has its garden, where ever you know, where soil and sun and water and all of it has to kind of dovetail and work together to create this beautiful garden. So to say, Pratik circle method, so kind of the basis of sociocracy was meant to be a set of tools that dovetail and work together in a mutually reinforcing way. So if you take one part out, that’s like, you know, not having seatbelts in the car or not having whatever a cooler and cooling system, it simply is not a good idea. You know, you of course, you can go and tweak it. But is it a good idea? Probably not. So that’s one side of the story. The other side of the story is that they’re hot, hardly any implementations that I’m aware of that are 100%. Because 100% all the time, that’s a tall order. That means being a perfect human being and nobody is right. We will not remember all the things all the time like, oh, I should have asked for around here. If like no, you will, it will always screw up something. And not each organization or each community is willing to do all the things. Sometimes I as consultant have judgment about that, for example, a community that kicks out everything that has to do with feedback, I don’t think is a wise idea. And yet, isn’t that choice to do that? Absolutely. So the other side of that of that spectrum, from my point of view is that everybody will adapt to things that they see some value in, and it might be that they pick and choose, pick and choose is always risky, because you might miss key ingredients where you didn’t see the usefulness of them, but you will fill the gaps maybe years down the road. But then maybe if they’re alert enough, they might tweak, notice that and tweak it and fill the gap. So the question is, how much do we trust that people know what they need to know to hold their own system. And I think one side is a little over optimistic. And one side is a little under optimistic, I trust people a little bit more that they would say, Oh, just do what you think makes sense. But I also sometimes worry when I see people kicking out the seatbelts, for example. That is like the whole feedback system. For example. I’m, I’m skeptical of that. So in sociocracy, for all we’re trying to be the big umbrella that is holding all of it today, if I teach I might sound more than dial in if Christian but we also have I also work together with people in our organization that teach s3 and all kinds of other stuff. And to me that there’s no contradiction to me, these are all manifestations of the different flavors and different contexts that we might encounter, where we need all of it. So to me, there is no competition we need at all all the time. And we need to be good at distinguishing when is consultant might say hey, I think you should adopt more pieces. Or we might say hey, I think you have a good handle on it. How would you go with what you have for now? And that’s like the Serenity Prayer right? Will I always make good choices about that? Oops, always make good choices about that. That’s the question. But we’re all just winging it all the time anyway.
I, you know, it’s interesting to hear you talk about people that leave out feedback. I don’t know if you are if this is a direct experience that you have with groups that are leaving out the feedback, because I personally feel like feedback is probably one of the most valuable contributions of sociocracy. I know, it’s not unique to sociocracy. But the idea of not only are we creating proposals, but we’re, as a piece of our proposal as a piece of the plan that we’re wanting to implement, we’ve actually included evaluation criteria that we’re going to come back to later and make sure that it’s working. And we’re going to have methods by which we ask the community is this working and get their opinion. And all of that, to me feels like such a key piece of the safety of saying yes to something, especially if you have a you know, beef with it, I guess for lack of a better word, you know, if if, assuming that everyone does not always agree 100% with the proposal, knowing that like, Okay, this is this is good enough, for now safe enough to try, we can actually kind of just move forward with it as is. And we know that we’re going to come back to it in three months, we’re going to come back to it again, in six months, we’re going to be revisited again in a year, to make sure that this is actually working. We’ve actually put dates on the calendar that we’re going to evaluate this thing. I think that that’s such a brilliant piece of advice for communities, regardless of whether or not they’re using sociocracy. It’s one of those those nuggets of wisdom that I think really make things work. So I’m curious, how do you even have people that? What’s the what, why wouldn’t somebody want to do that?
Oh, I can tell you, I can totally tell you what they say. And they also have good points. So let me let me play devil’s advocate here. Do we really have to evaluate that? Again, we spend so much time evaluating things I don’t like all this process. Yeah, oh, actually, then there’s then there’s inter personal feedback that you didn’t even touch just now. Like, I remember when I was saying, in my own community, something to the effect of I would want us to have a more feedback rich environment just with with each other’s people, you know, somebody said, Hold on, somebody said, butthead, if we’re talking, if we’re giving. If we’re talking more about each other. Why would you want that? It just means that people talk more about behind other people’s back. I was like, wait, no, that’s not what I said, you know, but that’s where that person was taking more feet or more, you know, more feedback means more gossiping, like, no, that’s not what I meant. But that’s, it shows you where people’s minds go to almost automatically, you know, if like, Oh, more feedback, that means I’m going to hear more uncomfortable thing. And I’m going to have to tell people uncomfortable things. sounds super scary. Let’s not do it. And then you can argue and it also takes so much time, and we should leave when you know, we should rather plan this event, you know, and then people say I explained the event, you know, that’s how it happens. And then and then we’re exactly in the moment that we talked about in that in that in that tension between our let’s just pick and choose versus no. sociocracy is one system do it as it was intended? Because now in that moment, what do I tell the client? What What should the what should the organization do? You know, they’d say, Forget about the client, let, what should the organization, the community think about itself? So now, which way do we go? To? Are we able to say, No, we don’t want feedback? Is that a good idea? Are we are we exercising our right to choose our own system? Or are we making a pretty stupid mistake? No, it’s really I find those things hard to answer.
I mean, I think I think it comes down to the values of the organization and the values of the community is does your community value growth and learning? Is that a goal? Is that something that you aspire to as, as a community, and I think, you know, in the communities that I’m a part of, whether that’s social circles, or, you know, actual intentional community or, or business organizations, growth and learning is, is such a core value of mine personally, that it’s hard for that not to be a part of any organization that I’m a part of. And so the fact for me is that while we You can talk about it or not talk about it. But either way, the issue is there, like someone might not want personal painful feedback about a way that they’re behaving, that’s not prosocial, that doesn’t work for the group. But us not talking about it doesn’t mean that that issue goes away. It just means we’re not talking about it. And kind of the same with with with proposals, like, you know, if we don’t talk about whether or not this is working, then it doesn’t mean it’s working. It just means we’re not talking about it. So I always feel like, are we trying to grow? Are we trying, you know, if you’re a business or an organization, are you trying to continue to provide a better product or better service? Are you trying to learn more and create deeper intimacy with the people that you’re in relationship with? And, to me, if the answer is yes to any of those questions, then you need feedback. Just period?
Of course. Of course, I absolutely. I mean, yes, I completely agree with you. And then I wonder what we do with the people who don’t want longer meetings and don’t want this? And they don’t want that. So yes, I agree with you. And it’s, I guess, one thing I want to bring here, though, is that it’s never an all or nothing, right? So even somebody like you and me, because we’re on the same level, I, you know, I’m where you are on that. We don’t evaluate everything all the time. So even in a way, putting a review date, let’s say nine months into the future, or let’s say 12 months, because like, we just talked about it, you know? So that is almost a compromise, because in theory, if we take it to an extreme, everything should be evaluated every day, right? That’s also not what we do. So when it’s not an all or nothing, it’s kind of like, well, how much? How many things do you engage in feedback? On? And how often do you do it and there will always be negotiation to do around what level you want to be at. I mean, of course, people who are kind of categorically saying feedback, I don’t do feedback. That’s of course, hard. But there’s always feedback around us, even if people don’t want to engage in it. Now, so where do we go with that? And actually, one thing that’s pretty key for me in sociocracy, is just the, the insight that circus is compatible with either, right? It’s super flexible, you can schedule a review every week, you can schedule a review every 15 years. sociocracy is just the pattern language that lets you define that. And the problem almost is that now in sociocracy, of choice, which means I want us to make a choice, like if I’m in a circle, we’re going to make a choice of what the review data is going to be. Which means we now have to engage in that question of how far is how fast do we want to go? How quick and dirty do when do things? Or how much do we want to spend on our process caretaking. And not everybody is ready to be intentional in that area of their life, they kind of are used to that somehow being preset by the system. But in this case, it’s not. So now whether you do so and I noticed that just so often that sociocracy gives you more choice and people are actually used to having and that is a little overwhelming for some.
Yeah, or even beyond more choice, you know, as you were saying you were used to society or the government, creating the metrics. And now we’re saying actually, we’re going to create the metrics. And to me that really speaks to, you know, if people have an aversion to creating metrics or creating criteria for evaluation, it’s like, well, what, what do you need to feel safe? You know, there’s definitely been times when I’ve gone in for personal feedback. And I’ve had to be really clear, you know what, today, I can’t receive critical feedback. Like the feedback I can get today, the feedback I’m open to receiving today really needs to be positive because my mental state actually can’t handle negative criticism right now. Not to say I can never handle it just today. I can’t handle it. And you know, maybe there’s there’s opportunities for folks inside of who might have an aversion to feedback to say, Okay, well, this is the type of feedback that I’m open to receiving today or this is the type of feedback that this project can can bear right now while we’re getting off the ground. But I just I love that there’s a possibility to design it, how we how we want it to be
and you examine It’s beautiful, I love it. And it’s beautiful because it shows both how it is manageable. to design it the way it’s to to fit with where you’re at, but it also shows at the same time The point that it was making about just the level of clarity and inner clarity that we need to have to make a request like that. I mean, most people just shut down and don’t talk at all or don’t come to the meeting, you know, I mean, that is where some people’s if they don’t even engage then with that, so having the clarity about what am I, what capacity do I have right now? What am I needs? What am I? How much learning Am I willing to do today? That’s, that’s, of course, that’s golden. You know, that’s great. And it’s sort of a tall order. So the point that it’s a tall order still stands? Yeah, and I think we can all learn it, it just requires being more in touch with ourselves having more more of a sense of what the tools are that we’re playing with being better at using those tools. So that’s where I go with all of that of like, oh, yeah, if we’re all clear about these choices, these are the feedback systems they are this is how we could do it this time, and good connection to ourselves, where am I at with this? Now? How do we make a choice together, that that meets where we are as a group, that’s the learning to me. And I do assume, actually, that in the next few years, we will all get better at that we just really have to do a lot of learning to get there.
Well, my final question for you really is kind of just to bring all of this full circle, you know, as you think about your journey, and and both personally and with sociocracy. And this value that I see of creating inclusive contexts for people to to thrive. What are the patterns that you’ve noticed in the communities that have been the most successful in creating these levels of inclusivity, either through their governance or through their personal, more interpersonal policies?
Well, I’m very, very fortunate and that this community has done a lot of work, because we’re such an old community right into has been established for a long time. So there has been a lot of learning that has happened. You know, many people got trained in nonviolent communication, and Byron, Katie, and whatnot, all kinds of stuff. And that just created, I think, most spaciousness to really receive each other. More often, in our net, nothing is ever fully perfect, but just creating more space so that people can be who they are. And I do hear from people, I wasn’t there. So I just hear from people who count their blessings that we don’t do those big decision making meetings that used to happen anymore, and how the loud voices were heard back then, and how that all calmed down so much. So I think both about inclusivity. And also about governance. That’s one thing, I guess that I keep going back to. And that is that good process, both around inclusion and good decision making good processes quiet. And it’s so sometimes we have people who were like, Oh, it’s so good a community can we can we come visit and witness you know, your governance system? Like we have these sociocracy tourists and I couldn’t see quite a bit? And my answer is always, you’re welcome to come. And just know that there’s basically nothing to see. Because what you see, what you see is the absence of drama, what you see is the absence of people who are upset because they don’t exclude it. What do you see is the absence of all of these things, you know, not again, not that everything is perfect, there might be people who said, you know, this, and that wasn’t great. And I would have liked to have been heard on this or that. But ultimately, it’s just rather quiet and almost boring. And that’s what I would want. Because then we can focus on the get together that’s that we want to do you know, then we can focus on things. And there are some big things that we’re dealing with right now. So it’s not even as quiet right now as it could be. But ultimately, that’s where I want to go right, just doing things together, and not having to work through so much drama. But I guess people sometimes it’s my sense, they expect something more grandiose and I just expect silence on that silence but quiet, you know, quiet and calm and focus on each other and the work that we do. That’s that’s what I want. So that will then also be inclusive.
Yeah, there are some other pieces that have really served us that we’ve already thought but plenty like the feedback things like for example, I recently learned from a neighbor that she disliked chickens that we do, not the way we do them, but she just dislikes them in general and that was such a good learning from you if like, wow, okay, we found a tweak that worked for her. So having that can do attitude of just speaking whatever you do, really sort of the Swaledale and how present it is consistently and cannot tell. So, all work in progress.
Beautiful. Well, Ted Rao, thank you so much for spending some time with us and sharing your story and your perspectives on sociocracy. It’s been a lovely conversation with you. Thank you so much. Thank you so much for joining me for this episode of the inside community podcast. Ted Rao has a couple of books available through the fic bookstore, I recommend checking out who decides who decides is the essential guide on how to form a group within three meetings and establish shared power and self management. His other book many voices one song is a manual on how to implement sociocracy and is CO written by Jerry Cook Gonzalez, with whom he’ll be teaching the sociocracy demystified course, that’s also offered through the fic. If you check out my show notes, I’m going to have links to all of that as well as discount codes for the class, and the books. And if you’re in an internet mood, I hope you’ll come and check out my website at ic.org/podcast for the show. And while you’re there, please consider making a donation to the show. I love creating this content, but I got bills to pay y’all. You making a contribution helps to keep this thing going. And I really, really appreciate it. You can also learn more about community and community life by finding me on Facebook and Instagram at inside community podcast. I would love to hear from you there. So please don’t hesitate to reach out. Of course reading and reviewing the show and sharing it with your friends is also a great support. So please pass this on to anyone you know who’s interested in community and collaborative culture. Thanks so much for sticking with me and I really look forward to seeing you next time. Take care

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

Rebecca Mesritz 0:01
Hello communitarians, one of our most beloved guests on the show, Yana Ludwig has just finished writing a new book. And in honor of this new book, we are releasing the interview from last season. This episode focuses on creating a cooperative culture when starting an intentional community, finding your people and coming together with the like minded visionaries that will be your co founders. The book building belonging takes this conversation a step further. It’s both a practical guide for how to start a residential intentional community and a collective framework for addressing the racial, social, ecological and economic disparities that affect all aspects of the living experience for the humans, the land, and all of the cohabitants. Building belonging is available now for pre order at ic.org/building-belonging. But you don’t have to remember that just go to the show notes, and you can click the link and get your copy today. If you’ve already ordered your book and are sitting there waiting for it to arrive, you can go back into last season and I also recorded a bonus episode with Yana where I asked a couple of extra questions, and there’s some really great information in there as well. I hope you enjoy this rerelease of my interview with Yana Ludwig. Welcome back to the inside community podcast. I’m your host Rebecca Mezritz. In this podcast I bring you along for an inside look at all of the beautiful and messy realities of creating and sustaining community. In today’s episode, we are going to continue to explore the process of finding your people how to come together with the people you will be building community with. Now there are many facets to this topic, ranging from how to find your ideal community to how to actually become a really wonderful communitarian. But today we are going to focus on the beginning of the process of starting community, how to come together and join forces with the like minded visionaries that will be your co founders. Here to share her insights on this topic is Yana Ludwig. Yana Ludwig is a cooperative culture pioneer, group process trainer, consultant and anti oppression activist who has lived in community for 25 years. She is the former executive director of both the Center for Sustainable and cooperative culture at dancing rabbit ecovillage and common omics, USA and economic justice organization. And she currently serves as the executive director of leadership Eastside in Washington. Yana is a dynamic, compassionate and thoughtful speaker and teacher committed to creating a world that supports the well being and vibrancy of all beings. Her writings include together resilient building community in the age of climate disruption, published under the name may equate Ludwig as well as the cooperative culture handbook, co authored with Karen GIMP Nick, she has spoken on TEDx hosted the solidarity house podcast, and she was also a candidate for US Senate in 2020. Yana, welcome to the Inside community podcast. It is such an honor to have you.

Yana Ludwig 3:23
Hi, Rebecca. Thanks for having me.

Rebecca Mesritz 3:26
That is quite an illustrious bio there. And I know that as I was reading through it the first time I was like, okay, trying to simplify it a little bit. But you have such an amazing breadth of experience and so many realities, it seems like you’ve danced through so many realities. I really appreciate that you bring all of that skill and insight to the communities movement.

Yana Ludwig 3:51
Yeah, thanks. It’s been interesting. I feel like I’m just sort of creating community and 25,000 different ways throughout my life. So it’s really just variations on that theme for me. So yeah, so it’s been interesting ended up some in some places, I never expected IBM.

Rebecca Mesritz 4:06
Well, I hope that we can touch on some of those places. In this interview today. I usually start my interviews by asking the guest to give us a snapshot of the community that you live in. But I know that right now, you’re not currently living in a community. So I’m wondering if instead, you could just give us a little bit of an overview of what your community journey has looked like?

Yana Ludwig 4:24
Yeah, sure. So yeah, so as the bio said, I’ve been doing community for about 25 years now. And I moved into my first formal intention of community, I had done a little bit of like, you know, group houses and that kind of stuff beforehand. But my first formal, intentional community was in 1996, I was pregnant with my son, and really was kind of dragged kicking and screaming into community the first time by my son’s dad who had spent a year on a kibbutz and was sort of like, oh my god, if we don’t do this community thing now I’m never going to do it. We should go do this. And I was kind of like, there’s no way in hell But I’m going to some stupid hippie commune in the middle of nowhere, I want to go home and hang out with my mom. And so it was not a very smooth start for me with community. But I think the first time that I got there and spent a few days in this space, I started looking around and going, like, Oh, these people are actually figuring out how to do the things that I’ve been talking about in my activism work, you know, they’re growing their own food, they’re doing things cooperatively. They’re finding leverage points around like, you know, gender equality and that kind of stuff. And so I community sold itself to me pretty quickly. And then since then, I’ve spent, you know, I’ve been in eight different communities over the years, and four of those were ones that I was in a co founder role with, and I’d say those four were kind of varying degrees of success. spent the longest time at dancing rabbit ecovillage in Rutledge, Missouri, where I feel like community that’s been probably the most influential on me and my thinking about things of the communities that I’ve been a part of. And most recently, I was a co founder of the solidarity collective, which is an anti capitalist anti oppression commune in Laramie, Wyoming. And so that’s been my most recent home, and when that I still have a lot of connections to and, you know, do a lot of support with and I’m sort of cheering them on now from a distance.

Rebecca Mesritz 6:19
So the Can you describe to me the difference between dancing rabbit and the solidarity house? Like how are those the same? And how are those culturally I guess?

Yana Ludwig 6:32
Yeah, well, so dancing rabbit is it’s an eco village, which means it’s one of those communities that’s really focused on ecological sustainability as a core thing. And so that was their starting point. And, and I don’t think that the founders, when that community started, which was 1997, I don’t think that they really understood that they were going to be doing culture change work, that was something that sort of unfolded over time, you know, they were very focused on like, well, we’re just going to, you know, buy a big piece of property and get 750 people to move there and do sort of a sustainable village together. And that was really what was driving them. And, and the communities, you know, never gotten anywhere close to that big, it’s about. I’m not actually sure what the numbers are right now. But they maxed out at about 75 During the time that I was there. And so culturally, everything that has been learned at dancing rabbit has really come out of wanting to figure out how people actually live together sustainably. And so that was their starting point. And, you know, obviously, coming in as a joiner rather than a founder with that I was able to step into really a fully fleshed out system. So they have, you know, car coops and eating coops and, you know, a whole bunch of different sort of social and physical infrastructure there. And it really is a small village at this point, you know, there’s a b&b, there’s a dance hall, there’s a big common house, you can basically never leave the property and have a really full life at dancing rabbit. Solidarity Collective is, you know, it’s a very new project. We started working on it about six years ago, and they’ve now been on the property for a little over three years. And, you know, we bought an existing property, and it was, you know, a bunch of leftists basically, so, you know, really coming more from a political orientation and wanting to be exploring, socialism, anarchism, communism, and you know, figuring out what we can contribute to moving the political ball in the state of Wyoming to the left. And so a very different starting point. And we also recognize that in order to live a good life, inexpensively, you need to be doing things like growing your own food and putting in place, eating Co Op systems and whatnot. And so like, I feel like in some ways, dancing rabbit and solidarity collective have come to a lot of the same conclusions, but from really different starting places. And, and I certainly brought my dancing rabbit influences with me when I came into being a founder for solidarity collective, so that has something to do with it. But I think it’s also just like you figure out there’s certain basic questions you need to answer. As a community. If you want to do serious work on sustainability or culture change either one of those starting places, you end up asking a lot of the same questions, I think,

Rebecca Mesritz 9:15
Yeah, beautiful. I would love to hear you know, when you talk about those same those lessons learned or those those same questions, can you just outline what a couple of those are for our listeners?

Yana Ludwig 9:28
Yeah, well, so I have a lot of influences from the global eco village network. And there’s a curriculum that Jen was part of developing, called the Gaia education curriculum. And the way that that curriculum breaks it down is basically that there’s four sort of, you know, domains or dimensions, I think, is the language that they actually use in the curriculum of sustainability which are worldview, social, economic and ecological. And the curriculum came out of eco village educators from all All over the world who, regardless of the political or social or climatic situation that they were in, really figured out at some point that like you couldn’t make real progress on sustainability without touching on all four of those, like, if you don’t have a worldview, that’s compatible with sustainability, you’re just not going to have the motivation to be making those changes. You need to be doing things cooperatively, you know, the hyper individualism of the United States and a lot of other countries is not very compatible with actual real sustainability. So you’ve got to be asking social questions and figuring out how to cooperate. And then of course, you know, the economic paradigm that you’re in makes a big difference with how far you can get on sustainability. And so I think it’s, you know, really asking, like, what’s our worldview? What are the motivational underpinnings, the, you know, our ways of putting together the world as far as our mental paradigms? What are those? How willing are we to cooperate? Are we willing to get out of our Everybody’s got their own house and their own lawn mower and their own lawn? And that sort of, you know, individualistic thinking and actually move into how do we cooperate? How do we combine our resources to be able to be doing effective sustainability work? And that gets you into economics? And, you know, are we going to hoard money for ourselves? Or are we going to actually, you know, share those resources and be able to be working together in some economically cooperative way. And when you do those three layers of work, it’s actually very easy to put into place sustainable systems, you know, a lot of the resistance that we have to sustainable systems are actually embedded in one of those earlier, dimensions, one of those earlier stages. And so, you know, I think it’s asking questions, like, you know, where does our power come from? And who does that affect how we’re getting our electricity? You know, are we willing to combine resources so that we can afford a solar power system, you know, most people by themselves can’t afford it. And so you’ve got to come together, oftentimes, as a group to be able to really afford that kind of stuff. So I think it’s those sort of looking at those patterns and what actually leads to a sustainable life. I think, I think those are the kinds of things that I’m talking about with that there’s patterns. So the kinds of questions that you’ve bumped into.

Rebecca Mesritz 12:09
Yeah, yeah. Oh, that’s great. That’s so good. I can definitely see that at the, you know, the Genesis points of the different different people and communities that I’ve talked to so far, about, you know, what is the motivator? And it’s like, looking around like, this is not tenable. We can’t do this is not working.

Yana Ludwig 12:28
Exactly, exactly. Problem Solver nature. Totally, totally. And, you know, nobody creates an intentional community, if they’re happy with what they’ve got, you know, if you look around, and you’re like, Oh, my needs are being met by this culture in the society, like, Why the hell would you do all the work to start an intentional community? I mean, all of us are in it, because we’re trying to do some kind of problem solving and something about that wider culture is untenable for us.

Rebecca Mesritz 12:55
Yeah, I guess, on the on the tail end of the holidays, and all of that I’m just really struck by, you know, looking around and seeing how many people it seems, even if it’s not, quote, unquote, working for them believe that it is somehow working for them? Like, we kind of get a what is it bill of goods or whatever that says that if you have X, Y, and Z, you will be happy. And this is what that is, like, you know, this size house and this kind of car and, you know, this many weeks of vacation, and that equals some kind of happiness factor.

Yana Ludwig 13:34
Right, right. Well, it’s a it’s a word in the American dream. Yeah, yep. Yeah. Sorry. Sorry. Go ahead. Go ahead. No,

Rebecca Mesritz 13:41
it’s just interesting to I’m just reflecting on that now about how Yeah, some of that stuff’s getting unpacked, it seems because we’re realizing through these different diversity and equity movements that have really gotten a lot of traction in the last couple years that even if you do have all that those things, even if you do have that, that house and that car and that vacation and those things, that that doesn’t, it’s it’s actually not sustainable. You know, there’s actually a cost, like we think that we think that we’ve paid that price, but we’re not realizing that we haven’t even come close to paying the price for those things because the ecological and social damage that those freedoms have, have run us really kind of puts puts everything in an imbalance. So

Yana Ludwig 14:32
yeah, it does, does and I think we’re at a really interesting pivot point, because I do think that that, like the sort of gloss on the American Dream has rubbed off for a lot of people. And I think, you know, we’ve got a whole generation of folks coming up who are like, you know, my son is 24. And so I feel like his generation and the generation coming up behind him, like, they see through the fact that like, you can’t actually get it like most people are not actually able to achieve the American dream at this point. And so, so then what do you do? And and it’s a really interesting point, because, you know, in the sort of historical moment, because I think we have a critical mass of people asking those questions right now who don’t buy that, you know, having a good job is the ultimate reason to be alive. You know, there’s all these memes out there right now about like, you know, you weren’t intended to work 40 or 50 hours a week, have like three years of a good life and then die. Like, that’s not why we’re here. Like, there’s gotta be more to it than that. And I think that, that’s a really easy, so I think, for young people right now. And so it’s actually a pretty exciting moment to have kind of an eagle’s eye view of the community’s movement and be watching how many more people are going like, oh, there’s some options out here. And we could actually be leaning into those. And that’s been one of the really fun things is working with groups that are, you know, mostly younger people who just like, they never just bought into the bullshit. And so now they’re like, Oh, now let’s try to create something new. And that’s pretty exciting to be watching.

Rebecca Mesritz 16:01
Huh? Yeah, yeah. Um, so I, it’s one of the things I love about being alive right now is that we get to watch, we’re getting to really watch some major systemic changes, I hope start to take take hold. Well, you know, that does bring me to our topic today about getting started with the community and finding your co founders. And for people who are out there who are saying this is no longer a tenable solution. And they’re looking around now you’ve been through this process four times of CO founding. And let’s just start at the beginning. What are you looking for in your co founders? What are the qualities of the traits that you’re identifying in, in the groups that you’ve had the most success with? And also, what are the red flags? Hmm,

Yana Ludwig 16:51
yeah, really good questions. So I think that, like one of the things that I think is important to understand about the founding process is that I think starting an intentional community is different than just about any other kind of startup project that you could be involved with. And I tell people, and this is a little bit snarky, but it’s, you know, I feel like starting a community is a little bit like starting a nonprofit organization, because it’s very mission driven, you want to do something in the world, you want to change something, that’s usually what nonprofits are about starting a small business, because there’s all of this business planning and marketing and legal stuff that you need to navigate, doing a really intense personal growth course, that’s going to last for many, many years. And it’s also kind of like getting married, because you’re making a really deep relational commitments, people, but you’re doing that with the same group of people. And, you know, you can probably think of people you’d be happy to start a business with, but wouldn’t want to be married to and you know, vice versa. And actually putting together that group, that initial founding group is really important to have people that you actually trust on multiple different levels. And it doesn’t mean everybody has to be really strong at business, or everybody has to be like, an experts, like, you know, like relational ninja or something. But it means that you’ve got to be able to find a group of people that for your initial core group, where you’ve got enough trust in all of those different areas. And so I think sometimes people get frustrated about like, well, I thought somebody was going to be a good match. And then they weren’t, it’s like, well, I just want to validate people, this is really hard. And actually finding that sort of magic mix of people can be really difficult. And so if that, you know, sometimes the hardest step is actually finding your and I would say you want three to eight people in your initial core group, you know, three people is enough that you’re going to have skills variation, and you’re going to have perspective variation, where it’s not just what’s rattling around in one person’s head, or the skills that I have as an individual, but you’re actually being able to, you know, get some variation with that. And more than eight people can be too many cooks in the kitchen for the initial phase of things where you’re having to make some really big decisions about what is our vision, what’s our mission? You know, where are the boundaries of what we’re doing? And I think, you know, sometimes people think, well, I’m going to gather together 20 people, and then we’re going to all figure it out together. And that rarely actually goes well, when you try to do it, that many people and so, you know, gathering together about three to eight people who, you know, have enough of the different skills that we’re looking at. And, you know, and there’s a lot of different things that go into it. And nobody is good at all of this stuff. And it’s part of the reason why you need a group rather than trying to just do it as like a sole founder. But, you know, it’s like things like, you know, being empathetic and listening well, but also having like, you know, some good writing and public speaking skills and having a good head for numbers and having the kind of I’m going to do whatever it takes a vibe to things and at the same time being pretty even tempered without being comfortable with conflict. And I’d say in the historical moment that you were in having some savvy about oppression dynamic Next, you know, understanding business planning, understanding legal systems, I mean, all of that stuff goes into having a really good founders group. And you don’t need everybody to have a head for numbers, but you need at least one person who does and who can explain it to other people and bring them along. You don’t need everybody to be an excellent conflict mediator, but you probably need a person in that initial group who’s good at that kind of stuff. And so it’s really a mix of kind of soft skills and hard skills to use kind of the business world language with the stuff that I think you need to put it together.

Rebecca Mesritz 20:35
Yeah. Yeah. So in terms of the other side of it, you know, the, the red flags are the things that you would maybe say, Oh, this, we might have to hold off on this person. For right now, are these people for right now? What are the what are the things you see in there?

Yana Ludwig 20:53
Well, I mean, I think they can take a lot of different forms. I mean, I’d say the biggest one is they can’t share power, you know, they’re, they’ve got a little too much of a control need. And, you know, don’t do well, with other people’s visions also being part of what’s happening, you know, the thing about starting a community as that you’re starting a collective endeavor, and people who don’t share power, well don’t do well in community and definitely shouldn’t be part of your founding group, because that is the group that’s kind of gonna set the tone for the community, you know, at least for the first five years, and probably permanently, you know, I mean, the who you get into that group at the beginning, you know, you’ve got to be good enough at playing well, with others, I would say, you know, the social skills are really important at that point. You know, I’d say that, you know, people who have sort of litigious ways of approaching things, you know, we, you know, I’ve lived in community with people, and have actively avoided being a founder with people who, you know, when something goes wrong, their first urges to sue someone like that is a setup for having like a major crisis down the road. And so people who haven’t gotten out yet have that sort of competitive orientation and the like, Well, I’m gonna protect myself at all costs, kind of thinking like, that absolutely does not work and community. I also think that for your founding group, you know, you need people who are risk takers, and starters. And there’s a lot of people who are going to be terrific community members who actually, the founding process is going to be too stressful into anxiety inducing for them. And so if you’ve got somebody who like, you know, this is just, it’s too much, it’s too complicated, it’s feels too risky, like, you know, invite them to hang around at the edges and actually bring them in at the point that you’re ready to buy lands, but like, let them know, you know, if this isn’t the phase that you need to be in, it doesn’t mean you can’t play with us, but it’s probably not the right phase to be in. So I think having some discernment about, you know, what phase you’re in, makes a big difference in terms of who you actively invite in. And it doesn’t mean other people can’t eventually play and can’t live there. Because at some point, you’re going to want the maintainers. And you’re going to want the people who are, you know, who don’t necessarily have that founders urge in them, but are really solid, stabilizing factors. Once you get to that point, like that’s when you want to bring those folks in. That’s another red flag so much is it’s just a discernment piece about when the right timing is with someone.

Rebecca Mesritz 23:21
What I’m hearing you say is basically trying to find your founding group, somewhere between the three to eight person number, you want to have a range of skills, ranging from hard skills, like legal numbers, actual, like building skills of some sort, organizational skills, as well as the softer skills of relating conflict resolution, mindfulness in some way towards oppression, culture, and a willingness to work together to share power. Yeah, am I missing anything in

Yana Ludwig 24:02
there? Well, I guess I would, yeah, I guess I would add to things that are more about the the group itself, and not necessarily about what individuals bring to it. I mean, I think that trusting each other is really important. And that doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s like your three best friends that you’re looking for. And in fact, sometimes that’s a complete disaster if you’re not really on the same page about what the vision is that you want in the community. But, you know, it takes time to build and assess trust levels with people but I do think it’s important that you have some fundamental like, I feel like this person has my back even if we have our differences. And the other thing is something about expectations management like this is a long term commitment to get something off the ground. I mean, the minimum that I’ve seen a community successfully get off the ground is about two years. Typically, it’s more like five to seven years from the time that you start the process and you Having people who are willing to be in it for the long haul is really important. And also having people who are willing to give somewhere between two and 10 hours a week, to the process for that amount of time. So oftentimes you have people who, you know, would be terrific founders in some way, but like, they don’t have five hours a week to be giving anything and so, so really making sure that you’re that you’ve got a group of people who are going to be putting in the same amount of time that you are, like, usually, if you’re the burning soul that gets the thing kicked off, like you’re in it for that long haul. And you need a few other people who are also going to, you know, embody that in terms of the time commitment both weekly and in terms of a number of years that they’re thinking about what it’s going to take.

Rebecca Mesritz 25:42
Yeah, yeah, I’ll say when we, you know, when we founded the Emerald village, we had five couples, and some of the couples had kids, when we started, two of the couples did not, but one of the things that we noticed was that over the course of time, and over the course, especially the early years, different at different points, different people would step up and and take the reins different people would be the like, the hard charger for that period of time. But staying, whatever the lead goose, you can’t always, you can’t always be the lead goose, sometimes you have to fly to the back and let another person be the lead goose in your in your V formation. And so we saw over time, that happen very regularly, that there would be a big push for an event or a project that would get us to the next sort of level of foundation. And then the person who had led that was then I don’t want to say burnt out. But there is a level, there’s only so much that you can give especially when you are also have a career or a family or your own personal projects or things like that they are also trying to nurture and maintain. And so people would kind of step forward and step back. But we did all have one thing, which you did touch on as well, which I think is really important, which is this quality of really wanting to show up and do the work, really being committed to we’re here to do this, there was no one that was kind of sitting on the sidelines, waiting for someone else to come in and save the day, everybody had kind of that bootstrapping. Alright, let’s we’re doing this, let’s go do it. And it was a lot more fun when we all did it together. But we all had that quality, which I think really helped us to get off the ground.

Yana Ludwig 27:29
Nice. Yeah. And that’s also I love the story. It’s also a really terrific story for demonstrating what I’m talking about, about power sharing, like, if you’re somebody who like always has to be the lead goose, like, that’s not gonna work. Like you have to be able to like step back and let other people step up and support other people in bringing their gifts to the table. Like I think sometimes you see people who have been in like a founding process for years, and like, the biggest issue is ego management, that they just can’t step back and let other people get in there and sort of direct the ship for a period of time. And it really doesn’t work. And so it sounds like you all did a really good job with that, like power sharing and kind of step up step back approach to things which is great. That’s a terrific example of what it looks like when it actually works.

Rebecca Mesritz 28:17
Yeah. Yeah, there is something to about the you know, not just the power sharing, but also support the support, like the support role also feels as important, you know, the whoever’s at the front end is the leader of that project. Obviously, they’re kind of getting their way in that in some way. They’re like, they’re, they’re the ones who are taking charge. But that leader person always was open to hearing the feedback and sort of actualizing manifesting whenever you want to call the vision of the group and the supporting roles of oh, okay, so this person is putting all this time into there. So who’s going to watch the kids who’s going to create the meals who’s going to, you know, do these other less glamorous roles that kind of keep all the wheels turning and greased throughout that process? You know, that’s the real that the power sharing, that’s how I always saw that happening, as well as it’s not one, it was never a one man show, even if a person is sort of taking the administrative lead on something.

Yana Ludwig 29:26
Right. Well, and I think I think there’s this image that people have sometimes of like, everybody wants to be in charge. And that’s not actually true. Like, not everybody wants to be the lead goose even for a period of time. I mean, there’s plenty of people that like, what they want to be contributing is that support role and you need that, like, you’re not like it’s not about, you know, I mean, you use the word glamour, I mean, it’s not really about glamorous roles. And I think if you’re in it for the glamour, you’re in it for the wrong reasons. I think, you know, what, what helps you be able to do that step up, step back thing I think is is having some good ego management and not being in it because you’d like the idea of having the label co founder next to your name, like, that’s not a good reason for doing this, like at all, and I know so many people that it’s like, like, they have these self aggrandizing stories about themselves as founders, and it’s like, gross, like, No wonder nobody has ever actually wanted to live with you. And, you know, because like, that’s not a vibe that actually is going to get the thing done. I mean, you’ve got to have, you got to have a motivation for doing this that’s bigger than yourself, ultimately, and, and I think that’s what allows you to step back and also allows you to weather it when, you know when conflicts happen. And I think you know, and it probably isn’t as true with as large of a founder group as you had, but with, you know, when you have a smaller pool of founders, like, you’re going to be the first person who gets blamed when something goes wrong. And like when that moment happens, which is almost inevitable. If your motivation was self serving, you’re just going to crumble or you’re going to fight back, and you’re not going to actually hear the feedback and be able to grow in that moment. And I think it’s really important that you’ve got that orientation to, you know, service and to something creating something that’s bigger than you and whatever your own ideas are about things.

Rebecca Mesritz 31:13
Yeah. Yeah, you know, that that makes me think about just this whole endeavor of, of founding community? Well, first of all, just say, it’s hard. It’s really hard. So if you can find a community to join that’s already up and running, that shares your values and has cool people in it, you should just go. Go do that so

Yana Ludwig 31:33
much, so much. Yeah, well, and let me put a thing in about that, too, is that like, you know, I think that sometimes people don’t want to do that, because they think they have such a specific vision, that nothing’s close, you’re not going to get what’s in your head right now. Like, you’re gonna put in two to seven years, and you’re gonna get something that’s close. And that’s kind of in the ballpark of what you’re thinking right now. But nobody ever gets the exact picture. And like, given that, isn’t it better to just join something that’s close, where at least you can pick the version of close that you’re going to end up getting? And so yeah, I am, I am very pro joining community rather than starting them, in spite of the fact that I’ve found myself in that role multiple times. I think, I think, unless you’ve got a really, really strong founders urge, it is almost always better to go join somebody else’s project than go through all of that work before you get a chance to actually live together. So, yes, so just seconding that thought, like, why don’t we do

Rebecca Mesritz 32:39
this? Yeah, it’s a lot. It’s a lot. Well, you know, and then I wanted to talk for a second about just the experimentation aspect of it, which is, you know, this whole thing of creating cooperative culture, creating a community, creating these ancient yet futuristic ways of being in right relation. There’s, there’s so many templates, but there’s no one template. And there’s so much experimenting that’s happening along the way. And so part of that, you know, is we’re thinking about who’s the lead goose and who’s the supporting who’s in the back honking away and support of the lead goose, is really the willingness to allow it to be an experiment and to stay in that kind of curious mind mindset. Because I think sometimes people who want to have control are afraid of failure. That’s what I that’s, I, you know, what, I’m just going to name myself in this, the reason that I have control the situation is because I want it to succeed, and I don’t want it to fail. And I might feel like I’m seeing something that other people aren’t seeing or that my vision is the right way. And so having a really good process for whether you’re using consensus or consent decision making, or whatever your proposal forming processes, having really good processes, whereby any concerns can be brought to the center can be talked about, and can you can continue to have the good feedback loops and the curious experimentation type of a vibe in your community that lets it be okay if things have little failures, because that’s how you’re learning and you’re failing forward as, as they say these days. Yeah, I just want to put that out there too, for folks. Yeah,

Yana Ludwig 34:23
totally. Well, and the reality is, it’s all experimentation. I mean, even if you’re creating a cohousing community where there are kind of templates out there, and there’s, you know, there’s a model that I think a lot of cohousing groups sort of lean into. You’re doing something that is off the beaten path for whatever country you’re in whatever culture that you’re in, or you wouldn’t be doing it. And so I think taking that attitude that like no matter how much you know, no matter how many books you’ve read, I mean, in my case, like I had been through three prior startup attacks Um, so before I got to solidarity collective and my work in solidarity collective was the most humble work of those four projects. And you know, because there was a lot of like, this is what I think I know, here’s some training, like, Let’s lean into it, but there was a lot of like, I know enough to know that this thing is not going to look like what I think it’s gonna look like, and that I need other people, and that I want this to be a project that’s really alive for everybody, not just a fulfillment of my, you know, I think my first startup attempt was very ego driven. And, and it failed for that reason, you know, it was too much of my ego in there trying to steer the ship. And so, you know, as I went along in those, the progression of those four projects, like I think I got more and more willing to have it be a community instead of an ego trip, basically. And so I think, I think that is really important. And I think that thing about, you know, having some sort of collective decision making and collective process around visioning and whatnot, I think all of that is really important, you know, to have in place, and to be making sure that the people who are steering the ship, you know, that that initial founding group, that they’re learning those skills and modeling those skills, because it’s not as simple as like, you know, you read a little bit about consensus, and suddenly you know how to do it, it really is very deep culture shift to be able to do consensus process really well. And that’s a lifelong learning process. And so I think the more humility that the founders can have about, you know, we want to bring everybody in, and we know, we can screw this up. And we know that we’re all just making it up. So let’s make something up that works for everybody. I mean, that’s really, I think, what the orientation ought to be.

Rebecca Mesritz 36:45
Hey, friends, I hope you’re enjoying the show, you know, I am so honored to engage in conversations like this, and to get to examine and dream into better ways of living together. And I know you are too, because you’re here, please take a moment to visit ic.org/podcast and consider financial contribution to the show, so that we can continue to create this useful and meaningful content for you. And thank you.

Rebecca Mesritz 37:19
You know, over the years at different conferences, or workshops that have either facilitated or CO facilitated, I’ve met a lot of people who’ve been really deeply interested, genuinely interested in building community and starting community, some of them even have the money to get get it started. But a lot of times, I will hear them say something like, Oh, I just can’t find the people to do it with or I don’t know if that’s something that you’ve run across. But I’m wondering, really, what’s your take on on that? Or what’s the next piece of advice for folks who can’t seem to find their founding group or can’t seem to find the people that they really trust?

Yana Ludwig 38:03
Well, I mean, I think that there’s, yeah, I’d have to know more about what the specific things are. But I think some of the patterns that I’ve seen are, you know, that there’s that ego management part that, you know, they just don’t have a good handle on, being able to do power sharing, and being able to let it be a truly collective project that they’re holding really tight to something I once had a group asked me if I could look at their website and sort of help them figure out why they weren’t attracting people. And the main thing on the website was a literal, 30 page document of their vision that was incredibly prescriptive. And, and it was like, all you have to do in the course of reading 30 pages is find two or three things that don’t work for you. And you’re like, nope, not my group, it was like, you know, you’re holding too tight onto the details a lot of times, or there’s sometimes like a lot of, and this is particularly true among people who have money and have land and have resources, you’re afraid of losing it, you’re afraid of giving that up turning over what is sometimes family property to a group. And so you hold on to ownership really strongly and to you know, the sort of the, all of the capitalistic reasons that you got the money in the first place, and you try to like take that into the project and really protect what you already have, and not be willing to actually share that with other people and have a clear agreement about turning the property over to other people or turning the vision over to other people. And so, I mean, the one word answer to it is ego. I think unhealthy ego. I mean, there’s healthy ego where, you know, you’ve got to have enough self esteem to be able to sort of keep rolling with the punches, but it’s pretty easy to, you know, to have too much of yourself in there and not enough of really being open to a collective. So I think that’s the biggest reason that I’ve seen people not get off the ground when they have been And sincerely trying for a long time. It’s like, are you actually trying to do something collective or you’re trying to do your own thing, and you want other people to come join you?

Rebecca Mesritz 40:09
Yeah, I want to build this big vision, I have the land already. And I want people to come. And I want them to build community on my property and help me build up my vision.

Yana Ludwig 40:20
Exactly helped me build my thing.

Rebecca Mesritz 40:23
I’ve definitely met quite a few people who’ve had Yeah, had their own land and want to build community on their land, but it’s still their land, and it’s still their, their thing.

Yana Ludwig 40:35
That’s right. But even, even if it’s not, so say, there’s a situation and I have definitely seen situations where I feel like the founders were totally sincere about wanting it to be shared with other people, they were willing to talk about down the road, selling the property to the group and whatnot. As long as you are still, the sole owner or a couple is still the sole owner of that you can pull the rug out from under people at any point like that is your legal rights in this country to be able to do whatever you want to do with your own property within like, you know, building and zoning code stuff. And even if you would never do that, simply the fact that you can, is going to make it really hard for other people to get invested, whether that’s like literally like with money or with their energy and their time, people are just not going to really relax into being a community, as long as you’re still holding title to the property yourself. So it’s one of those ways that like, best intentions aside, like, you’ve got a lot of legal rights in this country, when you own property that really undermine the ability to create real community.

Rebecca Mesritz 41:46
Yeah, you know, I, there’s a lot, there’s usually a very high need for capital in the early days of finding founding, rather, to get the projects off the ground, you know, you want to buy the land, do you want to buy the building, you want to, you know, you need to be able to qualify for loans, make down payments, on property, cover legal expenses, all of all of those things. And like you just for saying, you know, sometimes the person already has that, and wants to sort of put that out there as their offering towards that venture. And I, I love that. And I really, yes, yes, we need, we need the people to have the haves to help support. But I guess, knowing that you’re a person who’s really passionate about equity, I’m wondering what kind of strategies you can recommend for forming groups to overcome some of these hurdles with income inequality? Mm hmm.

Yana Ludwig 42:40
Well, I think there’s a lot of different ways to approach it. And, and so there’s an article actually, that I wrote in communities magazine about cross class cooperation and acquisition of land and founding of communities. So this is something I’ve thought about a lot. And, I mean, I think the critical things are that you are willing to put it into the group’s hands as quickly as possible, and whether that means you donate it, and you get some really good coaching on what it means to not attach strings to that donation. Or you enter into a really clean contract with the community to sell the land to the community. And it’s a business deal. And you keep it as a very clean business deal. And you don’t have any more control or decision making rights, because the community is buying a piece of property from you than anybody else who you’d be buying property from, I think the critical thing is like, is like releasing that control from your individual domain into the collective domain and finding some way to do that. You know, I also think that it is possible to get loans from people who have who are closely connected to the community, a note a number of groups that have, you know, solidarity collective got off the ground, that way dancing, rabbit got off the ground that way where they took out loans with people, but again, it’s a contract, and it’s very clear. And just because you’re getting the land, or you’re getting the financing from somebody doesn’t mean that you have some rights of control to that other than, like, if the project fails, you want to be able to get your money back. You know, if the, you know, if the land sells, I mean, that’s a totally fine thing to write into a contract. So I think there’s those things and I think there’s also looking at how you structure the economics of the community internally and you know, income sharing is something that scares the crap out of a lot of people because it is so far removed from the kind of individualistic culture that we’ve been raised in. And if you really want to level the playing field, inside a community internally, I’d strongly suggest seriously looking at income sharing, and I was involved. I know people freak out.

Rebecca Mesritz 44:53
I want to do

Yana Ludwig 44:58
Yeah, Well, and interestingly, so I was part of an academic study a few years ago with Dr. Zack Rubin and Dr. Don Willis, I was the sort of, you know, Content Specialist involved with working with these two amazing PhDs, who study community as part of what they do, especially Zack. And and so we did a really big survey study of communities. And one of the questions that we were asking was about satisfaction levels for, you know, people living in community, and what are the factors that go into people actually have a good experience living in a community and a lot of what we learned, I was not surprised by, you know, having some sort of mandatory conflict resolution works having some kind of egalitarian decision making works. However, the third one that was in the top three was income sharing. And I was floored, like I had had lived in income sharing groups, like I’m a fan of income sharing, but I had no idea that it was actually that potent, and so yeah, so I think sometimes people get scared about it. But there’s actually some research out there saying, like, maybe it doesn’t have to be so scary if you set it up, right. So just putting that out. And that, and that’s really a way to like, you know, if you’re serious about equity, income sharing is one of the things that makes the biggest difference in terms of, you know, gender equity, racial equity and economic equity.

Rebecca Mesritz 46:18
Wow. I’m not gonna lie like I can feel my heart racing, just thinking about that is definitely not in my comfort zone. And I have every intention on doing some more, at least a couple of episodes on income sharing, and what does that look like? And what can that be? And for people who don’t who aren’t familiar who are listening, who aren’t familiar with income sharing, there’s definitely some Reese’s resources out there. I don’t know if you have any specifically that you would like to decide for people if they want to jump down that rabbit hole?

Yana Ludwig 46:52
Yeah, well, I think. So the the, and this is confusing, because we have the foundation for intentional community. And then there’s the Federation of egalitarian communities. So it’s the F, E, C, and their website is just the fec.org. So there’s a ton of resources on that website from and for income sharing groups. And so that’s one of the places where you can like start going down that rabbit hole. There’s also been a lot of articles and communities magazine over the years that have been about variations on the theme of income sharing. You know, I’d love to be part of that conversation. If you ever wanted to do a panel interview about income sharing, I’d love to be one of the voices with that, because it’s something that I I lived in my first full on community was an income sharing group. And then I decided I didn’t like it. And I went off into a whole bunch of other kinds of community for a lot of years. And then I came back around to it and had have actually gotten back to a place of going like, actually, I really liked the model, even though there were things I didn’t like about it when I was in my late 20s, when I you know, decided to leave that initial community. But yeah, I mean, I think it’s, I think it’s also really important to like part of the rabbit hole is that that tension that you’re feeling in your body right now thinking about it, like, that’s part of the rabbit hole, like, what’s there? What is that tension about? And really being willing to spend some time you know, getting clear about like, what’s at the bottom of that, for each of us? And is whatever’s at the bottom of that, actually, the world that you want? Or not? And like really being willing to look at that and ask those questions, because we’re at a place where like, we need to shake things up, culturally and economically. And, you know, I’ve never seen more productive conversations about what internalized capitalism looks like, than the conversations that I’ve had with people living in income sharing communities, and actually, like, going through all of that, like, Oh, my God, this is super uncomfortable spot. And then it’s like, well, so what is capitalism done to our psychology? You know, yeah, that we have all of that in there. So, yeah. Well, it’s

Rebecca Mesritz 49:02
I’m glad that this has taken this. This conversation has taken this turn because it actually brings me to a question that I wanted to talk to you about, you know, the tagline for the cooperative culture handbook is a social media, excuse me, a social change manual, to dismantle toxic culture and build connection. And I really love this because in my community experience building connection has been the major motivating force for for doing communities wanting to feel more connected to people the planet, higher power. But the notion of dismantling toxic culture has only really been alive for me for the past few years. Since my own kind of diving into diversity, equity and inclusion work, and I say this totally naming and owning that my privilege has allowed that to be the case in my life. But now that the A curtain has pulled been pulled back. And I can, I can see. I can see the Wizard back there turning the gears, you know, I see this this capital, the capitalist culture, the oppression, culture, all these things that you talk about, and it’s hard to unsee them. And I, you know, I’m curious to know from your vantage point, what you see is the biggest hurdle or blind spot is for communities in terms of escaping that toxic culture.

Yana Ludwig 50:33
Oh, my gosh, well, obviously, I have a books worth of things to say about this. So and we broke it up into 26 different sort of, we were calling them keys, which are sort of like a particular aspect of, you know, noncooperative culture that we were sort of taking apart and then talking about, like, you know, well, what do we ought to be doing instead? I mean, I think the biggest picture answer to that is, we don’t think there’s a problem, or we don’t realize there’s alternatives. And so I think you can only solve something and start taking it apart, if you’re willing to look around and go, like, actually, this culture is not working and what’s not working about it. And so it’s that thing that you just said a minute ago, and that, you know, I share a piece of this, and you know, maybe, you know, a few years ahead in terms of like, when I had kind of a big wake up call about it, but it’s like, you know, when you live in privilege, I mean, essentially, what you’re doing is like, you’re getting the comfortable parts of the culture that we have right now, that works good enough for you that you don’t really have to look at it, you don’t have to question it. And so I think recognizing that, that we desperately need some cultural shift, I think is part of it. And, and I would say I mean, I’m a socialist, and, you know, which is not true for everybody in the communities movements by any stretch. So I’m definitely putting the IANA hat on, you know, really deliberately right now. But, you know, I think a lot of it is that our culture and our economic system, are so intertwined with each other, that questioning some of this stuff, triggers a lot of survival buttons for people, like you, you know, you have to buy into capitalism, in order to survive. But what does that do to your relationships? You know, I mean, if you’re bought into an economic system, where some people have to stay poor and struggling, in order for other people to be able to have the American dream. And we’re not questioning that because we can’t, because it means you won’t have healthcare, you won’t have housing, you won’t be able to eat. That’s a really big motivation to not look at this stuff. And so for me, I’ve gotten to a place where I can’t separate my community work from my politics, like, like being able to be a political is also a form of privilege. Like, you can bet that like big business people and your landlord are not a political, like they’re in there, like making sure that the system continues to serve their interests, rather than yours. And so at what point does it become worth actually starting to take some of that apart and taking the risks that are involved with that. And so, you know, we were just talking a second ago about income sharing about how the body clenches up when we think about doing that, and that clench is that same clench that I think we all have around like, you know, I have to keep running the treadmill in this economic system. And so I think that that’s like, for me, I think that capitalism is the thing that has it pinned in the most tragically and intensively and that it’s racialized capitalism in this country. I mean, you can’t really separate racism, from our economic system. You know, we’re on stolen land. We all interact with infrastructure everyday that was built with labor of enslaved people and continues to be sustained by, you know, things like migrant worker labor, super cheap, you know, like all of our systems, our social systems are really, really wrapped up with our economic system and questioning that stuff is scary as hell. And I think that’s really the thing that has a lot of it pinned down. And again, that’s the IANA hat. Definitely not this is what the community’s movement believes about anything. This is where I’ve gotten to through 25 years of being changed and challenged by living in community has radicalized by politics.

Rebecca Mesritz 54:42
Oh, there’s there’s so many layers in there. Like, I wish you did a whole other hour to like, just talk about that because or maybe five.

Yana Ludwig 54:51
I’d love to I would love to just talk about that for a while. So yeah,

Rebecca Mesritz 54:56
it’s been it’s, I mean, on a personal note, you know, This has been a really big topic of conversation in my reality for the last for the last several years. And I have a sister who’s living with us who’s a part of this project that we’re doing now, who’s extremely passionate about equity and who’s always turning the light on in rooms that I, you know, was kind of totally oblivious to the fact that they were the room was even there. And it is a really painful, it can be extremely painful, you know, it honestly, it brings tears to my eyes, sometimes to think about, like, the depth of some of the, you know, it’s not to point a finger or cast blame, but just to say, Wow, I have these beliefs because of a system. And giving up these beliefs would mean giving up so many other things in some way. But I just want to encourage listeners and people who are here to to just, you know, one of the benefits of being in community, potentially, is that you have the opportunity to have a support network, as you unpack some of these things, if you as founders, especially create a culture that says, you know, what, one of the things that we want to do here is just take a look at it, we, we don’t even have to say that we’re going to change anything, let’s just agree that we’re going to take a look at it. Let’s just Let’s just agree to open our eyes and have honest communication and just talk about how it makes us feel. And I think for especially for people that are of a certain level of privilege, which I think, you know, my understanding of the demographics of a lot of the communities movement is that it is a lot of people of privilege are choosing this this way of life. And so we have the option, we have the opportunity really, to use our privilege to start making these, these deeper levels of cultural change, if we can come together and agree to do it together as well. It’ll have all the more all the more power.

Yana Ludwig 56:57
Yeah, and I think I think it’s great that you’ve brought it in that close, you know that you’ve got somebody in your life who’s really, you know, as you say, pointing out the rooms, and then asking the questions in the rooms and that kind of stuff. I think that’s really important. And I think the other thing that community gives us, and the thing that has really sold me on getting into community and then staying at it is also seeing well, what’s beyond those standard ways of doing things. And just like how good of a life it is when you are being able to create different systems. And so it’s not just about what we give up. And I think, you know, that’s the scary part for people who have a lot of privileges, well, what am I going to give up? What am I losing? But there’s also the like, what am I going to get out of it. And I think that that’s really what has driven me to get deeper and deeper into this work over the years, it’s just that we have more to gain than we have to lose. And you have to take a leap of faith, I think, to some extent with that. But you know, being able to live in a place where I have deep, authentic relationships with the people around me, and I’m actually living with a really low carbon footprint. And so I feel good about my life on a fundamental level, that I don’t feel good about it, when I’m living by myself. And when I’m using a lot of resources to support my more individualistic lifestyle, which is what’s happening right now in my life. You know, it’s that kind of peace of mind is pretty invaluable, actually. And being able to know that you have somebody to go to like, for me a big part of it was, you know, my, my son had seizures when he was a baby. And had I not been living in community where I could literally wake up another mom at four o’clock in the morning and go, I am freaking out. Can you just be with me? Like, like, what is that worth to be able to actually do that and to have the level of connection and mutual support that you get in those moments? I mean, that’s the kind of stuff that, like, you know, being a billionaire doesn’t buy you that, you know, it’s like, doing the hard work of creating community gets you bad. And so, you know, so I think it’s important to look at the other side of the scale to about like, what do we have to gain by doing this really important work? And you know, I said earlier that I tried to talk people out of starting communities, I really don’t want you to not start communities, I want us to have a lot of them want you to know that it’s really hard work, but man, is it worth it? You know, when you actually get in there and are able to actually like have that kind of support in your life. It’s huge.

Rebecca Mesritz 59:35
Yeah, you know, I’m hearing this kind of theme of the intimacy and the connection, that is the real win that you get from this way of being. And I know that in your handbook, you have a lot of activities who are that are designed to kind of build that intimacy and build that connection. And I am the kind of person that really really loves that. I was on I was on our human, that human relations circle and my last community and I will be probably always, but we would play communication games and do things to kind of build that intimacy. But I didn’t notice. And I have noticed that not everybody is designed that way. Not everybody likes to build intimacy, there are people who are going to be a lot more reserved. And also, you know, I know that you kind of speak to different abilities in the handbook as well. And I guess I’m just wondering if you have any advice for listeners, especially as they’re, they’re in the founding process, and they’re trying to build that trust and build that intimacy and build that connection? That if they aren’t a group with someone who maybe struggles with vulnerability, or struggles with some of those things? How can they? Do you have tips for them to start to generate that meaningful connection? Despite maybe different comfort levels with intimacy?

Yana Ludwig 1:01:07
Well, I think I mean, I think that there’s a few possibilities there. I mean, one is some forms of community require higher skill level than others. I mean, there’s, there’s some versions of community where, like, somebody has to be okay with sharing what they think about things, and they don’t necessarily have to be in more intimate connection with each other in order to have it work. And so, you know, there’s a big relationship between what your vision is like, what are you trying to do as a community, what your membership process is, and what your decision making system is, like, those three things should be really tightly connected to each other. And, you know, the more radical meaning non mainstream, the more cooperative culture oriented, the more serious sustainability work you’re doing. And the more intimate meaning things like you’re using consensus, you’re doing income sharing, you might be doing spiritual work together, you know, the more you have those things happening, the more you have to be careful about who you let in the door, because you want people who are down for the work. And it is really hard work. And so, you know, I think that there are some forms of community that they’re basically like, you know, a nice neighborhood to raise your kids in. And it’s like, you don’t have to be that intimate with people to be able to do that. And you don’t have to be that careful about who you let in the door. But I think, if you’re doing more serious work than that, then you are going to have to be careful about it. And I think there’s like some really core social skills that you want to be sorting for in your membership process. And, and I’ll just name those really quickly. And those are, you know, things like, can you accurately hear what other people are saying? Or do things tend to get garbled? Can you communicate well enough? Both what you think and what you feel about things? How do you handle feedback? Like are you okay, hearing feedback from people? Are you comfortable talking about oppression dynamics, particularly somebody who’s in a dominant group? And do they have some kind of personal process that seems to help them in times of tension, and you don’t have to worry about what that process is, for some people, that’s I have a really good therapist, for some people, they have a best friend that they can go to who isn’t in the community and isn’t involved with stuff. For some people, it’s a meditation practice doesn’t matter what it is. But having something I think, is pretty important. And so you know, I think that it doesn’t necessarily help if you’re already living with somebody who doesn’t want to do that kind of work. But I think those are the kinds of things that you should be looking at in your membership process, and making sure that people have at least some minimal skill level with that, and are willing to build more. And so I think, you know, we, part of what we wanted to talk about today was membership process, I think that’s one of the more important things is that you’re checking for social skills, and you’re checking for vision alignments. And, you know, if you are already in a community and you wish you’d been stronger about that stuff, and you’ve got people who are already living there, I think the key with that is to work at building systems around them, that can support them and feeling safer about doing that work. So having good conflict resolution systems, starting to do matter of fact, things like have check ins at the beginning your meetings where and where you get real, and you share what’s going on with you and and you let people have some time to kind of ease into meeting you there. Rather than trying to like force it on people I think is pretty important. And so, you know, I saw some really good stuff. You know, I mentioned dancing rabbit earlier, where I lived for, like, gosh, almost a decade between the different stunts that I’ve been there. And for a long time, there really was no attention on social skills at all. And one of the things that started happening Putting is that people would try to get the whole community to like start doing something, they wouldn’t do it. And then a subgroup of people would just start doing it. You know, it worked with NVC, it worked with reevaluation, counseling stuff where somebody would just start doing it. And they’d get a group of people together. And then those people would start showing up differently in the community, and then that would start rippling out. And then eventually, people who weren’t comfortable with that shift left, and the people who were starting to come into the community, were more interested in doing that kind of work. So you can shift a community’s internal culture over time, without having to get everybody currently in the community to like, agree to something that they’re not ready to agree to.

Rebecca Mesritz 1:05:44
That list was just worth the price of admission. I love that. That’s great. I love that. So good. So so good. What do you wish you had known before you had started this community?

Yana Ludwig 1:05:59
The thing that I didn’t know, that I think got me on the trajectory that got me where I am now, is just how important the social stuff is, you know, I didn’t, it didn’t really understand how hard conflict was how hard real inclusive decision making was. And, you know, at some point, I decided that I needed to learn facilitation and like committed to becoming a facilitator. Because, you know, most, not just intentional communities, but most groups doing worthwhile stuff, period, that fail fail, because we don’t know how to do that basic getting along stuff. And so I think, you know, recognizing, you know, that there are those cultural change pieces, recognizing that we just need much better social skills than we have. At this point. I think that’s the thing that I wish I had been better at when I went into it and wish that I had been willing to acknowledge was actually like a real need, because I think I was pretty dismissive of it for the first few years. And then, at some point, I went, oh, oh, this is actually the thing that is not working, and that we need to have work better.

Rebecca Mesritz 1:07:15
Jana Ludwig, thank you so much for being here with me today and for sharing all of your wisdom. And I feel like we need to talk 10 more times.

Yana Ludwig 1:07:25
That would be Thank you. This has been really fun. Rebecca. Thanks so much for having me.

Rebecca Mesritz 1:07:33
If you’d like to learn more about Jana and her work, you can find her online at Jana Ludwig dotnet. You can find her books, the cooperative culture handbook, and together resilient at the icy.org Bookstore. And if you go to our show notes, we’re going to have a 20% off discount code for podcast listeners when you purchase both of those books together. I also want to mention that Jana has an online course called starting an intentional community that’s just been made into a self paced course that’s really perfect for people who are just getting started with a community project, or who are dreaming about starting one. You can find more information about all of that and learn more about this podcast hosted by the Foundation for intentional community at ic.org/podcast. If you’d like to see inspiring images and video of community life, come find me on Instagram at inside community podcast. I would love to hear from you there. And as always, if this content has been meaningful or useful to you, please subscribe rate review, share with your friends and any folks you know who are curious about living inside community