9 months in a hippie commune.

Blessed and also deeply challenged I was, with the privilege and expansion of living with almost 30 humans for the duration of winter’s last on a 5-acre farm on Salt Spring Island off the coast of Vancouver. 

A most whimsical palette of beings embodying all archetypes, textures, colours and patterns. A masterpiece of family we weaved painted together with brilliant highlights and dynamic shadows that brought the dull grey west coast winter alive and saw us through the longest, darkest nights.

Daily feasts of perfectly seasoned squash, by the hundreds, all grown from the fertile soil of the land we shared. (Honestly I STILL can’t eat squash after such frequency… many months later.) Each meal opened with a joining of hands, gratitude for the food and the love we shared and an aaaaallllllloooooohaaaaa!!! Spreads of sauerkraut and pickles fermented with love in which we topped our plates, joyful and sometimes heated connection as we filled our bellies and our hearts in the ever-warm communal kitchen. The kitchen was the hearth of our community, the place of clean-up dance parties, belly laughs, heart to hearts, oxytocin hugs and the odd breakdown (that would often be me, breaking down.) 

Up steep stairs was the sanctuary in which I primarily called home, painted in colourful lights, moving and undulating through the emotions that encompassed my coming into mother from maiden while navigating life in the ecosystem of community. The medicine of creation and expression reverberating off sloped barn ceilings and colourful mats infusing our world with the muse. Inhibition-less ecstatic dances, open-mic heart shares bringing one another to tears, ceremony and ritual, art jams, gooey yin yoga, music, community practices and meditations, kirtan, plant medicine and cuddle puddles. The place in which we came together through the soma, where bodies spoke more profoundly than words.

Never could I flush my cells of the memories made in sister circles, sweaty saunas and the solstice blackout. Nor would I want to. I hold each moment and the medicine it offered dearly in my palms and my heart. 

There’s a rapid acceleration in connection and relationships when you are living every facet of a regular human experience with one another, a comfort and vulnerability I’m not sure could be found elsewhere. A specific kind of intimacy emerges when you are holding and leaning on one another through the extremely mundane, ecstatically beautiful and the excruciatingly painful. The full spectrum, shared and intertwined. And deeper ever-so in a safe space to be fully expressed and to bare your humanity, with nudity being commonplace and normalized. A month in community equates to at least six months, and six months together forges a bond and connection that feels like family even when you find yourselves worlds apart.

At the time of our parting my daughter had spent a third of her short life in community, arriving at a crucial point in her development of language and mannerisms around 18 months. An eternal  gift, her being surrounded by adults who cherished her, and mirrored to her the whole, brilliant human being she is was a rapid acceleration in her emotional intelligence and understanding, and language and communication. Her expression unbridled, as she witnessed so many talented and creative individuals who were devoted to their individual artistry— dancers, musicians, herbalists, medicine women, yogis and visual artists.

Our family expanded greatly, and until she’s older she won’t fully grasp how fortunate she is to have family and people who will support, care and love her through time and space. Figures of strong masculine energy and strength and of wild embodied feminine nature creating early imprints. 

When we I arrived I was a mother in the early years dancing in the liminal space between maiden and mother, never having experienced the support of a village and wildly uncomfortable asking for the help that I needed. Desperately clinging to maidenhood, I felt the pains of isolation that is collectively felt in mothers when the community was gathering but I was tending to a toddler who was having trouble sleeping. How many gallons of tears have I cried, while navigating the unique and challenging experience of being a parent living in community. Of desiring to show up more fully and engage with the land and be more helpful, the guilt of feeling like I could never possibly do enough to contribute because my energy was needed in mothering and in caring for my needs to stay afloat as a sensitive human. There was great beauty, and significant pain in allowing my fullness of motherhood to be seen, through my emergence of rage and depression, explorations of love and the healing processes of my traumatic birth. And yet it wasn’t enough, this lingering feeling of not being fully understood remained as conversations that felt like projections were raised around my parenting and desire for womanhood simultaneously.

I can’t speak to the exuberant delights of community without noting the other, just as significant side of the coin. Inevitably when you have one person who owns the land & what could potentially be described as abuse of power dynamics, there is bound to be moments of trigger if you struggle with authority or father wound like many do. To those that found themselves drawn to community, who were mostly young seekers, in my integration of this experience I began to question if we were akin to a source of energy in which a potentially darker entity working through certain figures could feed.

Learning to co-exist in harmony with your fellow human however, for most of us is a brand new experience and can only be approached imperfectly. A collection of dozens of very different people with their own inner worlds, experiences and traumas is a playground for triggers to arise, and infinite opportunities for reflection and healing of our own. The four agreements upheld a container for self-inquiry and self-responsibility when we inevitably brushed up against another’s wounds. The cultivation of radical compassion and ability to hold nuance a cherished parting gift, I no longer walk amongst society taking personally what I once did.

And now it’s been nearly 11 months since my departure from community, though remaining closely entwined with the magic AND the drama as I stayed on the island through subsequent months. I continue to slowly unravel and examine the ways in which this experience shaped me, new insights consistently revealing themselves to me. Rather paradoxical it is to both deeply grieve the connection and feeling of belonging, and to be wildly relieved to be out of the society it was, complete with it’s own politics.

For now I am cherishing in the remembrance of who I am outside of community and integrating all it’s gifted me, though there’s a longing in my heart to belong and co-exist with other human beings that this type of living only, might fill. So open I remain, to the possibilities of future co-creation and the future soul family connections that await, while feeling deeply nourished knowing there are people I adore with every ounce of my being sprinkled around who will always carry a piece of that feeling of “home” we shared.