No one person can meet all of another person's needs. We need a village not just to raise a child but also to raise ourselves, be ourselves, heal ourselves, and see into the depths of ourselves.

(The closest one person does come to meeting all of another's needs is in the relationship between a mother and her new-born, the "mamatoto¹.  But even a mama--especially a mama--needs the support of her family, and her family needs a village.)

So what is a "village," and why does every human being need one?

What is a village?

My definition of a healthy "village" in a modern context is a group of people who work together to meet each other's psychological needs.

Ideally, our village would consist of families -- parents and children, and also uncles, aunties, grandparents, and friends - all the diversity and treasure of the human experience. In various times and places, our village members would also work together to meet each other's needs for food, shelter, etc, in a reciprocal ways that build and cement relationships.

Sadly, a village now rarely includes of all these different age groups. And the growth economy has replaced the need for us to rely on one another for our practical needs. So, we just have to build our villages with what we have.

But a village is not a nuclear family.

A village is not a couple.

It is not two friends.

It is also not a small group of close friends, although that's a step in the right direction.

And why do we need one?

We're all familiar with the saying, "it takes a village to raise a child." We know that the needs of babies, children, and adolescents are beyond what parents alone can meet. That's all obvious, especially if you're a parent.

But I think there's a gap in our understanding that we--each of us as human beings--need a "village" whether or not we have children.

There's an assumption in our culture that a couple, or two close friends, can be everything for each other. In my opinion that simply is not true.

To begin to illustrate why, here's a personal story about my past tendency to put myself in situations that invariably led to what felt like a betrayal of trust. 

What happens when we try to make one person into a village

I said "felt like," because in the experiences I'm thinking of, my friends had no intention of betraying my trust. The situations I got myself into came about because without realizing I was doing it, I had tried to make a single friend into an entire village.

I had a pattern of doing what Kelly Brogan calls "looking for eggs at the hardware store" -- going looking for unconditional love and support where it isn't available.

I'm sure you can guess how that went.

A healthy village can meet most needs

I've come to the conclusion that it's neither possible nor desirable for one person to love another unconditionally and without boundaries (duh)².

But a village full of people is another matter entirely. A healthy village can nourish the hungriest of hearts³.

In simple terms, this is possible because different members of the village can be available unconditionally by turns. When one person is offline or needy or temporarily dysfunctional because their own shadow material--their own unmet needs--have been triggered, somewhere else in the village there is another person who is fully present in this moment and able to step into the gap. 

When there are enough stable and resourced adults in a community to meet the practical needs (childcare, logistics, etc) and the mental/emotional/spiritual support that people need from each other, everything gets so much easier.

Good villages are hard to find

I read Jean Liedloff's The Continuum Concept when my first child was a baby. That's when I first began to understand what a village is and why I needed one. I spent the next 7 years searching for my "tribe," and you probably don't need me to tell you that good tribes can be very hard to find. 

Eventually I found the homeschooling community that my family and I have now been part of for around 10 years, but even then I continued to struggle with feeling lonely and unsupported for many more years.

The reason for that had to do with my assumption that once I found a village -- tadah!! all my problems would be solved.

Alas, it doesn't work like that. The reason that good tribes (or villages) are hard to find is because actually you don't find them, so much as build them. And you build them from the inside out.

Because the thing is that even if a village already exists for you to find it (and that's rare enough), you still bring yourself--your patterns and burdens--along with you. And that affects your experience of a village, whether it existed before you came along or not.

What we, as adults, receive from the village reflects what we bring to it

The function of a village in caring for babies and children is to meet their needs, no strings attached and no debt accrued. 

But adults both receive from and give to the village. We need a village in order to experience the connection that all humans need to thrive, and, as adults, we are the village. 

There's a paradox here: we are the village for each other, and for ourselves. The better we are at showing up for ourselves, being our own internal village, the better equipped we are to find/build and participate in/help maintain an external village.

The more we can give to ourselves, the more we'll have to give to others

Dr Kristin Neff, researcher and author on the topic of Self-Compassion, says

What do you need, right now? Can you give yourself a small dose, even a micro-dose, of what you need?

I know. You can't drop everything and go on holidays. But you can (for example) put your hands on your heart (or one on your belly and the other on your heart) and take 30, 60, or 90 seconds to just. be. with. whatever you find inside there.

If, while you're doing that, you find yourself wanting to sigh, yawn, fidget, lash out, numb out, cry, or hurry to do something else -- you'll know that that micro-dose of care and attention was sorely needed.

This is how you build a village.

Or perhaps it's how you lay the foundation for a village.

Whatever. 

The point is that a village is made up of people who can behave like adults at least some of the time -- and you can't do that (at least, not consistently) unless you're pretty good at putting your own oxygen mask on first before trying to help others.

Putting on your own oxygen mask means being able to turn inwards to be with your child parts when they need you. It means giving the same unconditional love, acceptance, and support that you would give to a child in your village, to the child inside you. Even (especially) when s/he is face down on the floor, kicking and screaming.

Learning how to identify and meet your own internal needs does not feel natural at first to anyone who has grown up in our culture. It's hard. But it's worth it. YOU are worth it.

And self-compassion practices gradually work to stabilize you internally⁴. so that as time goes by you'll have more to give externally.

***

So much for the unseen, inner work. What about the practical, external stuff?

Three practical village building tips

In "Finding Your Tribe," Teresa Pitman says that once you've found at least one other adult with whom to begin building your tribe (or village) there are three rules of thumb that will help:

• spend a good deal of time together
• work together 
• try not to be too picky

Here's some of what she had to say about each of these (edited for brevity):

Sometimes it just feels SO HARD

Things like time constraints, geographic isolation, lack of resources, or cultural barriers are all really good reasons why it might just feel impossible to build or access a village.

I know firsthand some of the barriers to meaningful connection that can seem utterly impassible. My childhood was so isolating, on so many levels, that loneliness was the air I breathed until long after my children were born. It was only when I looked at their childhoods and realized I wanted something different for them, that I recognized how lonely I was.

From the time I realized I needed one, it took me nearly 7 years to find a village. We moved across the world and then from one end of Queensland (Australia) to the other end, to set up house in an area that had a large, long-running homeschooling and LETS⁵ community. The only reason we moved to where we live today was to avail ourselves of the support we knew would be available in those two groups. 

So, we "found a ready made village." Tadah!

Well.

As a parent, the homeschooling community certainly helped me give my kids a better deal from the first time I attended one of the get-togethers.

But for me personally it took many more years to begin to feel that the hungriest inner parts of me were being nourished by the group -- and that didn't begin to happen until after I began to learn ways of effectively tending to my inner needs myself, first.

Don't wait to be rescued before you begin giving yourself the care and attention you need from others 

The moral of the story is this: don't make dramatic life changes or wait years before (or instead of) beginning to give yourself the care, attention, and support that you're longing to receive from others.

We made our big moves for a variety of reasons. The location we ended up choosing had to do with finding community, and I have no regrets at all about the choice we made. But it's still a work in progress.

Finding a community is one thing. Learning both how to serve, and also how to receive support from, a community is another. This is the work of adults--to serve and to receive--and it's ongoing. 

For me, in spite of finding a large, long running, like minded community "ready made" for our family, it didn't look like working out until after I finally began to learn to address what was going on inside of me rather than fruitlessly hoping for someone from outside of me to come along and rescue me. 

Only you can know if you need to pursue dramatic life changes in order to find your village, but I do have a suggestion: before you do anything drastic, think long and hard about the probability that if you take your inner dynamics with you, unchanged, you'll likely find the same external dynamics recurring in your new location or relationships as you were experiencing in the previous ones. 

The paradox of the village-building process

This is the paradox of the village-building process. The better we are at building our internal village, the more we can contribute to an external village that in turn helps us raise our children and ourselves.

I remember at least three occasions while my children were young, of being approached by other mothers of young children who were as lonely and needy as I was. My heart went out to them because I knew what they were going through, but I was unable to help them. A drowning person cannot help another drowning person.

So by all means reach out for the help you need. But don't wait any longer to begin your village building internally with self-care and self-compassion, in micro-doses if necessary, and to seek help if you need to.

In my experience, when the Universe (or God, or whatever you want to call It) sees you building a village internally, your prayer for an external village will then be taken seriously. After the internal village building is underway you'll begin to experience the synchronicities and opportunities that can to lead you toward your external village.

Related reading here on A Real Green Life

Where Am I Locating Power – Inside or Outside of Me?

Reconnecting Can Change Everything

The Power of Hindsight

Resources

Self-compassion for parents - PeacefulParentHappyKids.com

Self-compassion for everyone - Self-Compassion.org

Self-help for everyone using energy psychology (also sometimes called "Tapping" or "EFT"⁶)  - EnergyTapping.com 

Basic/beginner EFT (Emotional Freedom Technique) instructions and resources - EFTUniverse.com ⁷

Tapping: Self-Healing with the Transformative Power of Energy Psychology, a book by David Feinstein PhD and Donna Eden

Support for adults impacted by crappy childhoods - CrappyChildhoodFairy.com (she has lots of great YouTube videos, webinars, and a book, with another book on the way)

Finding Your Tribe, an article by Teresa Pitman

In the Absence of the Village, Mothers Struggle Most, an article by Beth Berry

Rain, rain, rain... and more rain

In December last year a tropical cyclone crossed the coast north of us and dumped a huge amount of rain. After the cyclone, the sun shone for a week and then the rain came back. 

That was nearly 6 months ago, and since then we've probably had about as many sunny days as I have fingers -- on one hand.

(I wrote the draft for this post in late May, then got sidetracked by other things and left it sitting in a drafts folder. It's now mid June and the sun is, thankfully, shining again at long last.)

Needless to say, during that 6 months our garden got wet. Everything was boggy. There was a swamp outside my kitchen window where there should have been a pasture.

Even the ducks were avoiding the puddles.

The supermarket is so much easier than growing your own in conditions like these.

Which is why, if you want to keep the homegrown food thing going, it's a good idea to grow some edibles within easy reach, and also some edibles that will keep right on growing when your region throws its worst at them and when you yourself can't or don't want to get out in the garden. 

Grow food within easy reach

The picture at the top of this post is of okinawa spinach (left) and sweet potato greens (the leaves of sweet potato plants are edible and very nutritious).

Both of these greens can handle dry weather and thrive in wet weather. I have them growing right beside our porch, where I can harvest them without going out in the rain.

After this experience, I'm planning on finding ways to bring a lot more food plants closer to the porch.

Above, left to right, you can see cocoyam, okinawa spinach, sweet potato greens (in the blue tubs), and celery (brown tub). At the base of the tree -- turmeric. 

(And yes, mingling throughout there is a healthy crop of weeds. I like to tell myself that they're contributing to diversity, insect habitat, soil health...)

Grow things that will thrive without attention

Besides growing things where they're easy to access, it's also a good idea to grow food plants that don't need much of your time and attention to thrive.

Because, well, Life happens and the garden gets bumped to the bottom of the list. 

When we first set out to learn to grow our own food, we grew lots of "proper" veggies -- which require gardeners to be a lot more conscientious than I'm ever likely to be. We don't grow many proper veggies now. Instead, we grow what can survive a brutal wet season or long periods of complete neglect, and still be productive... 

Below is an armload of mulberry leaves, a green pumpkin, a choko, an overripe bunch of bananas, and some more okinawa spinach -- all collected in a ten minute ramble during a break in the rain.

None of them look very fancy but all of them, once established, grow with zero effort or expense on our part. Here's how I might use them...

• Green pumpkins make a fair substitute for zucchinis. Which is a good thing because there is NO way zucchinis would have survived this wet weather. 
• Our dragon fruit have finally started producing and they are so much better than the supermarket ones. They never last long enough for me to wonder how to use them other than scheming to get my share whenever some ripe ones make it into the kitchen.
• The simplest way I know to use chokos is to cut them up, skin, seed and all, and add to stir  fries, early in the process along with other hard veggies like onions or carrots. Older chokos whose skin is too tough for us to eat go to the pigs. Very small ones can be copped and added to salads. Here is a recipe for winter soup made with chokos, or read more about other uses for chokos, here.
• Ripe bananas can have the yucky bits trimmed off (put them in the compost or worm farm, or give them to the chickens or pigs) and then be frozen with or without their skins. They make great deserts as is or combined with custard, yogurt, kefir, cream, or dipped in homemade chocolate. (Freezing them with skin on means they don't stick to each other in the freezer, but are fiddly to peel later. If freezing without skins, place them in the freezer in a bag, cloth or plastic. Then get the bag out and toss it around a bit when the bananas are almost frozen, to prevent them from sticking together.)
• Young, tender mulberry leaves can be cooked and eaten like any other leafy green, or dried to make tea. (They're very nutritious; more details here and here.) The ones in this picture are older and will be going to the pigs, who love them. Mulberry leaves are a very useful high protein fodder for pigs, goats, cattle, and horses. Not to mention silkworms. 
• Malabar spinach is a reliable leafy green for tropical and sub-tropical gardeners who don't actually spend all that much time in the garden (me -- guilty as charged). Read all about it here.

Below are three more edibles that thrive on neglect in the tropics and subtropics, and can handle any amount of rain (ginger does need reasonable drainage; the taro plants are happy with wet feet).  

At the bottom left is ginger. At the top is celery stem taro, also called tahitian spinach (Alocasia esculenta), and at the bottom right, taro tuber (Colocasia esculenta). These two taro plants are closely related; one grown for its stems and the other for its tuber.

Here's how I might use these...

• Celery stemmed taro needs peeling, then you can slice it into salads or cook it any way you want (CAUTION: this is the ONLY taro plant or taro plant part you can eat raw; all others must be cooked). It's crunchy and full of little hollows, so works well with salad dressing.
•  Taro tubers need to be peeled thickly and can then be baked, steamed, or boiled. Use as a satisfying, filling side veggie in a multitude of ways or cool your cooked taro and look for a taro cake or desert recipe online. Recently Alain and I went out for dinner and were served taro chips -- fine shavings of taro tuber well rinsed in several changes of water then deep fried. They were delicious.
• Ginger - you know how to use ginger. My favorite ways are to grate it and add to sauerkraut or salad dressing, or to make ginger honey.
  

So there you have it, some of what we're eating in spite of 6 months of very, very wet weather and almost no gardening other than quick visits to harvest, between the rain showers.