Pride in my loner, seeker, wanderer spirit had led me to believe that I didn’t need community.

How do you feel about community? The separation of us and them isn’t unique, but a common experience across humanity. One that I hope is healing in all our hearts, together.

To be fair, this belief also stemmed from growing up with broken relationships, in a society that praises individualism and competitive gains over the well-being of all.

Only really focusing on the negative and dark side of what a community can become, I saw them as restrictive, forcing beliefs, expectations and ways of living that only had space for individuals if they conformed to certain ideals. I didn’t want that! I am referring to Community as any group of people that identify in a way that brings group cohesion/ a shared identity and ways of being. This idea came from a view that community meant religion. Community meant racial or nationalist identity. Community meant sacrificing my dreams, desires and identity for conformity and silence.

I had dark opinions based on what I had seen, experienced and heard about the ways communities abuse power and individuals.

The funny thing is, I conformed in many ways, inadvertently. Internalizing what society, my family, friends and people around me wanted (or what I thought they wanted), alongside wanting to protect myself from harm, embarrassment or discomfort.

Ways I Conformed Anyways

• I shut down my sensitive, intuitive, energetic gifts. I quieted my anger and depression and put on the mask of competency, responsibility and sweetness.

• I was never too loud, too emotional, too confrontational, too energetic, too confident, too outspoken or too brave.

• I was helpful. But not because I was a part of a community that took care of each other, but because I was nice.

• I went to school and then got a “good”, stable, acceptable job with a pension and benefits. I got married to a person of the opposite sex (even though I didn’t have a wedding) and we got a house. All things that I am grateful for, especially my relationship and my home which have helped me to heal traumas and insecurities with abandonment and stability. Yet they are forms of conformity where I followed an acceptable path that mainstream society would approve of.

Even though my heart and spirit desired stability and safety, it also desired freedom, adventure, discovery, exploration, belonging and deep connection. At the time, safety and stability won out, because that is what I needed most.

Somehow, even though I assured myself I was free from the confines of belonging and identifying within a group, I still conformed to the dominant rules and lifestyles around me, making my world smaller.

What Changed My Relationship With Community

Recently, because I have been interacting with groups in a different way, opening myself up to being vulnerable, authentic and included, my view of community has been challenged. In fact, my view of what it means to be in a community has helped me see the pain of that broken link. The need to be accepted in and the realization that being in community makes me both uncomfortable and happy at the same time!

While yes, many communities are controlling, toxic and restrictive, the point of community was never meant to be a separation of us versus them. Dynamics within a community can be harmful, but that is not the true essence of connection, far from it. The community was how human beings and many animals and insects have survived and evolved over centuries.

Community is how human beings care for children, pass on stories and knowledge, survive hardships and practice spirituality. This aspect specifically is one that I have struggled with.

All of us, no matter what ancestry or heritage we come from descend from the same people. The early humans of our shared history relied heavily on the support, safety and security of their community. Together, our ancestors took care of each other, just as they took care of the land, animals and water that sustained them. The communities of our ancestors gathered together to watch the stars and cosmos come alive each day and night, finding meaning in the connection between all things. These relationships were reciprocal and integral to the health and well-being of all.

I have always believed that we are all interconnected. And yet, I somehow separated that from community. I took my spirituality and kept it protected, closeted, hidden and secret. Interconnection with all yes, but in practice, it was between me and Mother Earth, me and the Universe. Happy to be secluded.

Wounds and Triggers

Once I started practicing my spirituality in a community I was triggered by religion. I didn’t grow up in a religious family but I held many wounds around religion. As I grew up, my earlier practices with spirituality were within Buddhist temples and groups. They did nothing wrong, but I was uncomfortable with some of the doctrines and rules, resulting in me going back into my secluded practice.

Many years later, as I started studying shamanism and womb work, I was put back into a group setting and realized how afraid I was of opening up, being seen, and sharing myself with others.

This difficult fear has been a line of wavering contraction and expansion in my studies, as I have gotten closer to certain groups and shared spiritual practices, ceremonies and heart-sharing.

What underlines the fear is the idea that there will be tension, betrayal, hurt and the ultimate disappointment of not being accepted. As these worries heal, I find awakenings, humour, growth and change.

How I See Community Now

What I have learned is that true community, based on mutual understanding, openness and the joy of seeing others heal, grow, expand and journey in their life is a much-needed and missed support system that many face. I know I am not the only one with a broken link to the nourishment, belonging and support that community can offer.

Community sees the importance of providing what one has, to those that do not have it. When everyone is safe, when everyone has their basic needs met, we are all freer to explore, learn and grow. In our human history, many groups took care of each other’s children, seeing it as the responsibility (and the joy) of the community to support them.

Our ancestors fed each other, slept close, dreamt together, moved together, and watched the sky and the stars together.

In this way of being in community, all people had value inherently. The Earth, animals, plants and water were treated with respect, as they sustained life, provided medicine and offered beauty. Our elders were storytellers and knowledge-keepers. Our connection to the cosmos was present in daily life and wisdom was found in the land, within each other and through our dreams.

I may not be fully comfortable yet, sometimes I feel a need to draw back. And I am still happy to retain my sovereignty, nourishing my home, and my relationship with myself; always listening to my internal wisdom first. Yet I am also not pushing away my need to be a part of a community that values me. I can be independent and still rely on others, while also sharing what I have to offer. No longer separate.

I believe we are interconnected, and through this journey of healing what has been broken with others, I see the loss more clearly. The importance of being a part of a community is a loss that is affecting many of us. We see it in the way we treat each other, the land and animals and even in how we view people halfway across the world.

The separation isn’t unique, but a common experience across humanity. One that I hope is healing in all our hearts, together.