Community: “a feeling of fellowship with others, as a
result of sharing common attitudes, interests, and goals.”
Google has defined what I
feel with my mama friends well. We are a
community. We are parenting with similar
principles albeit different styles. We
share love for our own children and the children of our dear friends. We have a shitty morning and then meet at a
park in our yoga pants and suddenly, everything is better. We teach our children how to share and
collaborate with one another. We push
another mama’s toddler on the swing so she can nurse her baby. We share snacks. We swaddle and bounce a newborn on an
exercise ball so her mama can take a break.
We love. We give. We all do it.
No one is exempt, and we ebb and flow into different roles, supporting
one another. We are a community. One of the best I have ever known.
Sometimes I wish we were a
true community. That we fell into
Google’s second definition: “a group of people living in the same place or
having a particular characteristic in common.”
Sometimes I long to be living in a different time. One where we women could sit around our fire
stirring porridge, sharing stories, and calming the young. Where we could offer our breast to our best
friend’s babe if she wasn’t able to without society calling us crazy. Where we could birth together, celebrate
together, mourn together. Like really
together. In this place, we could find a
kind of support that nowadays we can only dream of.
But
here we are, and it’s 2014, and we’ve created a beautiful community that fits
within society’s social norms. We celebrate birthdays together and actual birth days. We laugh over our parenting mishaps and the
fact that our 3 ½ year old still craps his pants daily. We cook each other meals: rich Indian
curries, tangy gazpachos, buffalo chicken sandwiches on buttery biscuits. And, we love on each other’s children. We hug and kiss them and celebrate them. We correct their wrongs with compassion, and
open our homes to each other, learning, growing, doing this together.
But what happens when
crisis hits a community like ours? When
it digs its sharp claws into the safe bubble of love we’ve created with each
other. What happens when someone falls,
loses, crumbles? How do we pick up the
pieces?
I don’t know if I have the
answer to this question yet, but good heavens, we’ve been tried and will be
again. I
know other communities out there fighting a similar battle, and I look to them
to find answers. I know what I went through with my dad and how my community united. Thoughts, prayer,
meals, texts, cards, flowers, gifts, words, moments. None of it feels like enough, does it? I find moments where I literally feel like I
could reach inside my chest, yank out my heart, and give a piece of it to my friends
to sustain them through tragedy. Here you go, my dear. You need this more than I do right now.
I love my mama friends and
their big hearts. I love how they
care. They care deeply, and it is
steadfast. I don’t know how a community
like ours endures through heartache so raw, but I am finding this out. And in the end, we will survive and support
and share in celebration once again because we must for the sake of the little
ones who’ve brought us together. We will
stand by each other and offer the best support we know how to give, no matter
how simple it may seem. And in doing all
of this, we will create something we never knew possible. I promise you, we will dropkick Google’s ass
out of the park with our definition of what it is to be a community, and to be
a part of something like that – that’s special.
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