This post made has many good points. I'd argue that most people escaping city life to 'homestead' don't wanna live in the middle of nowhere lol, rather a community oriented town. It's really hard building community in an urban enviroment ironically because everyone is on their own world. It's also rather disappointing that cottagecore has been co-opted by the far right, when it started as a leftist queer movement.
Hard agree on all points. I think there's a lot of other language to explore to more accurately describe what so many of us are longing for or trying to do. It's definitely hard building community in so many different settings for different reasons. I was frozen from doing so in my area for a long time because I live in a very conservative area and felt unsafe reaching out to some neighbors, but one conversation led to another led to another led to some organic emergence. I pray that so many others find their way to connect.
And I soooo agree about cottagecore, I think part of me writing this was wanting to share more of my daily life in all of its quaint and lovely earthy slowness but again feeling frozen because of not wanting to be lumped in with tradwives. I think now that this has gotten out of me I feel some more freedom in claiming the authentic aesthetic and expression of my life even more.
I pray we all can reclaim softness, interdependence, beauty, slow living and self expression in our own ways.
Leftists don't call gay and lesbian people "queer."
If we're going to foster a better relationship with the earth and one another, we should probably start by eschewing anti-life, anti-reality ideologies. (I'm not anti-abortion; that's not what I mean by "anti-life." Sex denialism is anti-life. Stop it.)
Yeah I wasn't feeling like giving this any energy. But for the record, I'm queer, and a mother, and there are just a lot of statements you're making here that don't hold water. Yes there are pregnant people who don't ID as women and clearly you're denying the realities of trans people in a very ardent way, but if you took a moment to consider the complex and (ever increasingly) marginalized position of trans men in our world you'd realize what a ridiculous statement your last sentence is. The rapidly diminishing social safety net for women is a terrifying and urgent thing. Can you take a moment to see how the patterns you are seeing are also targeting and scapegoating trans people in an alarming and increasingly violent way? Can you open your heart to that?
I get what you're saying, but your projection that people who acknowledge that trans people exist and want a culture that embraces them as beloved within the family of life as "anti-life" and "anti-reality" is, again, ridiculous and pure projection.
Transness exists in so many different forms throughout human cultures and throughout the more-than-human world, and to deny that is, to me, a sad and narrow way to live. I prefer to love and care for and seek to understand everyone I possibly can.
P.S. The "people" who face pregnancies in the United States with a rapidly diminishing social safety net are WOMEN. If any men could get pregnant, abortion pills would be sold in street-corner vending machines.
I appreciate this post and to find you--I'm also new here--where are you located? I have been working on a villaging project as you call it on 111 acres 80 mi north of my hometown of New Orleans in Mississippi since 2018. We have encountered the line between homesteaders and villagers many times--what I find is that it doesn't necessarily fall along political lines. There are leftists who don't really have an interest in villaging perse; or they are only interested in doing so with folks that align exactly with their worldviews. There are folks in my town who voted for Trump who are as community oriented, into gift economy/sharing/mutual aid as any leftist you might find in a bigger city. What does get in the way of these bonds deepening is all of the trauma and taboo that is wrapped up in people's stories about money, resources, and ultimately safety in the world. We have a beautiful community that I love with all of my heart, and we are fed by it in some beautiful ways, but ultimately the extent of the dream that I hoped for in terms of getting folks to really commit their lives to this way of living, and in doing so exchange the safety nets that capitalism offers us for the safety net of this alternative paradigm, thus fully investing their resources as we have into the same dream---feels very elusive and challenging. It's hard bc even though with every fiber of my being I have wanted this to be a villaging project, at times it is me and my partner doing something more like homesteading, or really closer to just owning like a family business that is community oriented. There is just so much ancestral trauma wrapped up and in the village as a way of life. I want it so badly and have been crushed a few times already...but it's heartening to read this and all the interest in it. I really want to engage in dynamic, honest discussion with folks who are yearning for this way of being and willing to face all of the shadows that will arise when we go towards our dreams.
There’s a lot of wisdom in this, and the political piece is something I’m meeting my own edges with, I really appreciate how you articulated this.
I’m on the east coast of Florida, with maybe some similar demographics to your area (maybe some more retirees/transplants). I’d love to connect more and learn together, it sounds like you’ve got a lot more experience in this journey than me so far and I hope we can be a source of support and grow a meaningful network together!
yes wow!! it's so cool to learn you are in the south as well :) I look forward to connecting more and learning together, these topics are just on my mind constantly these days.
Thank you for your comment. You are doing great work for generations to come. I hear your longing for deep, emotional bonds and a shared identity between your villagers and how hard it is to watch the vestiges of trauma take center stage. Your post, however, fills me with hope. I imagine the kids who are growing up there, telling a different story. I imagine them telling stories of community gatherings where the elders grumble about politics while the teens and young adults laugh and joke while setting up the potluck. You are creating a space for something you might never see. That is the ultimate act of faith and generosity for future generations. Keep going!
Wow, thank you for articulating so clearly what has been an angry seed in my relationship to homesteading… I started my journey with it 15 years ago as an urban homesteader on the west coast of Florida, but having a baby blew everything apart when she required more than I had to give her and my land. I could make bread and tend the garden OR I could tend my daughter - I didn’t have the capacity to be Mama and a homesteader, and I collapsed when my body drew a hard line.
And we had no village to hold us. People loved to come enjoy the oasis and the eggs, but city folks weren’t ready to make time to help tend the land or my family.
I love how you’re digging into this - in my work I have seen a lot of wounded people wanting to flee to the country to escape… their problems, and lack of emotional intelligence and relational skills.
After spending a few decades working in public policy and environmental education I realized no amount of change in policy would make a damn bit of difference if people didn’t know how to feel their own heart and truth of what was truly important to sustain life. We all need connection and kinship, and “villaging” with space and devotion for solitude, rest, and renewal.
Thank you so much for this really meaningful comment. I'm curious where on the West Coast you are / were? I went to New College (before it was a front of the culture wars) and helped to get the Food Forest going, and have a very tender place in my heart for that area. I'm also curious how long ago you became a mother, and where you are now in this process. I look forward to getting to know you and your work better as we navigate this complexity together.
I lived in Sarasota for a few years, and grew up in Bradenton, I know New College well! I was in Gulfport/St Pete and ran the Urban Agriculture Coalition that helped pave the way for urban food gardening back in 2013. We were on the permaculture garden tour the day before I gave birth to my daughter at home in 2014, wrapped in the smell of our Meyer lemon tree blossoms. I’ve watched a number of idealistic “communities” implode from lack of interpersonal skills and individual self-awareness/accountability, so your discussion around how to learn/practice the skills of nourishing and supportive community while honoring boundaries is such a rich one to explore!
Since then, I’ve also had my son, went back to school for herbalism/holistic wellness/shamanic energy healing/dreamwork, gotten divorced/learned how to coparent, and after Hurricane Milton moved to western NC. I’m building towards community up here and having a holistic, immersive nature-connection healing retreat space to host my work. I’m also finally leaning into my passion for wild horses and learning the stories they have to teach about learning to live and communicate in a group.
Where are you building this wonderful neighborhood model on the East coast? Florida is such an interest place to garden and be in community with the unique mix of ecosystems and cultures.
This piece sings with the truths I’ve been carrying in my research, in my bones. The longing for interdependence, for villaging rather than individualistic survivalism, is not just a reaction to the failures of colonial modernity—it is an ancestral remembering, a return to ways of being that have sustained life for millennia (without romanticizing the past!)
I’ve been thinking a lot about how trauma—when expanded beyond the biomedical model—reveals not only individual wounds but also the ruptures in our relational landscapes. The severing of the commons, the privatization of care, the dismemberment of our belonging to land and each other—these are all collective traumas, ones that manifest in bodies, in communities, in ecosystems. And yet, I keep coming back to this question: What happens after the break? After we’ve made cracks in the dominant world?
Villaging, as you describe it, feels like one answer to that question. It’s not a utopian vision of escape, but a commitment to repair, to tending, to re-embedding ourselves within networks of reciprocity that have never truly disappeared. The commons have been stolen, yes—but not erased. They are still alive in the quiet exchanges of care, in the rewilding of small plots, in the ways we hold space for each other’s solitude without letting each other slip into isolation.
So I’m asking myself: What does villaging look like in a world that has made kinship a scarcity? How do we keep the cracks open long enough for something new—not just new, but deeply ancient—to take root?
Thank you for weaving this thread. I’m listening, and I’m digging in.
Looking back at my childhood is like looking back and watching my mother discover the very real truth of everything shared here. On our humble homestead, the garden was the place mom went most often to be with God, but as an adult I realize she also spent a lot of time in isolation there. I think a part of it was that she was never able to reconcile, for herself or with her church friends, that communion with the land felt alive, while taking communion in the pews felt as stale and sour as the sacraments.
My point is not to belittle anyones traditions, but instead to highlight something crucial shared here- this idea or this sense of belonging.
I'm loving this quote, thank you Ganga:
"The ability to be alone without being isolated. The ability to belong without losing oneself."
Yes to all of this. I feel it so viscerally in my being. Thank you so much for weaving my recent post into this.
After my dream of the community chicken coop the other day, I was presented a potential opportunity to bring this dream to life just down the street. It’s on an old farm that is now in a land trust with a nonprofit that wants it to become a more vibrant community space.
It feels like the energy is shifting to really begin building these types of interdependent community systems. 🥹
I love that that opportunity is emerging for you! There's a process of self-inquiry I learned in my studies with Regenesis that moves through the restraining forces we're feeling in our lives, the visions that activate us to meet those restraints, the person we are becoming to reconcile these forces, and then we kind of sit back and observe the opportunities that come to us in part because of that energy field. Everywhere I look I'm seeing people who are making choices and commitments to a different, better, more interconnected world meeting beautiful opportunities, and it brings me great joy. And the more we share this with one another, the more we expand our sense of what is possible, the more opportunities flow.
Also to add… that solitude piece is really crucial for me, too. I used to think I wanted to live in community, but it became clear in my attempts I want to be in community, but I also need deep, regular retreat. I love the avenues of building community within neighborhoods and a city, rather than forcing really close, constant contact (I.e. living situations with nightly community dinners and weekly meetings are too much for me!). It’s a real trial and error to figure out where we each fit in in the world.
Yep, it's a nuanced dance for sure. I think when all you know is one thing, it's easy to romanticize other ways of being, but it's through experimentation and learning that we find the right balance.
I grew up on an Ashram, and in college I lived for a semester in a Buddhist communal house in Boulder while I was studying Tibetan translation, and I really deeply value community obviously, but before I had my kid I could go weeks and months without actually encountering anyone outside of my small tight knit household. With my husband and I both working from home however, and being guardians of each others' solitude, I find myself needing to get out of the house in the afternoons while he's working and that's become a way that I've found a rhythm of connecting with neighbors and going to the nearby parks with my toddler in the stroller, and that's how I balance the interdependent solitude piece. Solitude in the mornings, connection in the afternoons, but always keeping our house itself pretty private because one of us is always in solitary focus mode it seems.
We’re going to start trying to get pregnant next month. I’d love to hear more soon about how you’ve sought to balance life and participation with the outer world while tending to a babe! Especially as someone who needs a lot of alone time to feel grounded and inspired, I’ve been curious how that will go for me since I need so much retreat time as it is.
This comment has been on my mind, and I apologize for the delay in responding! I suppose that delay is an indication of the nature of the response–everything takes it's own pace more than ever.
I will say that from my own experience and from what I gather from others, I would consider the first two years after birth to be a distinct time of your lives in which executive functioning, finding time for solitude, and operating out in the world are all particularly challenging. It's a magical time, but challenging in ways that nothing could have prepared me for.
Having people around that you can lean on, ask for help, and trust with your baby is a game changer. Don't assume the village will show up without clear asks and invitations. Postpartum for me was a massive mirror showing me the gap between my awareness of my needs and my ability to voice them.
That said, I think that pre-conception and pregnancy can be a powerful time to proactively shape this. It's an honor to be invited in to someone's pregnancy and early parenthood experience and I think that inviting people in to the process can open their hearts and support the villaging journey in a deep way.
You know it’s interesting, because while I’ve been in hermit mode for years I’m now emerging into this much more active energy. It’s like I was hiding for so long that now I have all this stored up energy to use! And after being down and out for so long, having this feeling of normalcy brings upon a different fear—I’ve just found this new type of freedom… will a baby take it away?
More often than now I hear parents (or watch parents) slough through those first two years. Occasionally I glimpse that rare breed that isn’t slowed down as much. One thing that stands out though is definitely how much community one surrounds themselves with.. and how much personal time they can build into the fold.
Some make sure that happens, while others forget themselves in complete ode to the sacrificial role they play. I hope when the time comes, I’m able to find a balance!
I feel that also, I feel like I'm coming out of a hermitude that I honestly entered during covid and am just emerging from. And the first two years of motherhood were definitely a hermit calibration time as well. I think that for me, nurturing the village is what's making it feel viable to have another child. I couldn't do it without a growing network of hyper local people. Today, this morning, during my working hours, I'm going to a neighbor's house for tea and yucca bread. Something my nervous system even just a few months ago would never have let me consider because "I need that time to be productive."
Seeing this instead as the best investment in my future, these relationships, reframes a lot for me and helps my body know I'm a different kind of safe.
The first two years are a very specific kind of initiation for sure, but I really really really think you're asking the right questions, you're living a life where your business has the word village in it, and I am so excited for the beautiful life that wants to come through you!
What an absolute dream. Thank you for sharing your words!
I wonder how this concept can apply to those who aren’t as well-resourced, who often rent in urban areas, hold multiple jobs, have multiple major life stressors — perhaps those who will suffer the most at the hands of our current administration. In my state (CT), living in more rural areas with access to space and land often means sacrificing diversity and risking personal safety. So I wonder how the folks who don’t feel they have the access to this lifestyle can also benefit? (This is where I get all fired up about poor zoning policies and modern segregation, which are alive and well in CT!)
I’m holding those questions with you Ruth! And though I am very much a proponent for fair taxation and participatory budgeting that would fundamentally change the calculus of poverty and inequality in this country, I think expanded definitions of different kinds of capital is a key step, along with normalizing conversations where we can be honest about what we have and what we need with those around us is an important step.
As someone in western MA, I find that living this way requires finances that most folks who need it just do not have, and the folks that can afford to buy land and live on it are not “villaging” folks but “here for my summer home” folks. Mutual aid and villaging probably looks more like community gardens, ride shares, meal trains, time banks, and co-ops for us here. (But also I am now obsessed with this concept and will be referencing this always!)
I appreciate a deep difference between villaging vs homesteading. In my writing I am contemplating the ways our ancient ancestors lived with a deep reverence for life and Nature. It is significant to note that Old Europe - like 8000 years ago - had highly technologically advanced societies- agriculture, art, writing- that were guided by communal attitudes about sharing resources. Villaging feels deeply kindred to this wisdom that also was pre-warring male god culture! I see a reawakening of the feminine in this notion of cooperation and mutual aid! This is, IMHO, an antidote to how estranged the present dynamics are from being on common ground and caring for each other and this exquisite 🌎! Thank you 🙏🏽
I absolutely love this and will check out your writing! I feel this awakening too, and feel such a deep responsibility, and joy, in reconnecting with this ancestral way of being as a woman of European descent. Grateful for the resonance and how widely and decentralized this work is taking root!
I feel we of European descent can forget we do have our own indigenous roots. There have been very recent archaeological discoveries revealing (by way of further confirming) matrifocal community structures in ancient societies (meaning the males joined the female’s clan). It is already evident matrilineal societies were normal in Neolithic societies, which I quickly want to point out does not equate to matriarchal cultures as the evidence also strongly points to societies that were focused on shared wellbeing not hierarchical systems of ranking! It gives substantive hope that somewhere deep in our DNA memory we know how to live cooperatively and dare I be so bold - love-centered! If you imagine cultures focused upon Mother as divine then the fundamental caring and nurturing nature of the human mother (and wild creatures too) would suggest the values of caring for each other would be centered! If we can - as women and men - respect our gentler inclinations of caring and loving then I feel we can activate our innate capacity to collectively shift the tone of our present conditions! It’s exciting to consider all the tiny shoots - like villaging- giving rise to this shift in consciousness!
I started with something as small as being the first to ask my neighbor across the street for a cooking ingredient that I needed for dinner one night. I didn’t have time to go to the store. Now we regularly depend on each other for that last minute something that we ran out of, and we share extra baked goods, etc.
I love that! It's such a simple human thing that we've gotten so disconnected from. We don't have so much of a daily/weekly rhythm with our neighbors, but when hurricanes are coming there are many ways we help one another out and that has definitely brought us all closer together.
This is such a beautiful post. I think you are spot on about the need for interdependence. The whole homesteading/prepping movement always rubbed me the wrong way with its hyper focus on individualism. And with the rise of online tradwife influencers, many are buying into an ideal that doesn’t exist outside a screen. Community and collaboration are the real way forward. Thank you!
I’ve been worried about the left turning away from the “back to the land” and “crunchy” type ideals as they become more and more centered within the conservative communities. It feels like a potential convergence where some good common ground work could be done, but I fear instead that some are distancing themselves due to the tribalism of our current politics. When I was first into these topics 15+ years ago it felt more balanced as far as political associations. It’s nice to see others exploring the topic.
I agree entirely with you regarding building villages, not isolated homesteads, and it’s amazing what you and your community are building. We’re trying to do similar work here, although we aren’t in town anymore so the work looks different.
It’s also nice to see other folks referencing The Great Simplification! The bioregioning round table was an excellent one.
Ahh, I love making this connection with Solar Punk Farms! One of my colleagues in the Regenesis Institute was passing through your area and went into a bookshop where I believe you have a little area curated around the Solar Punk ethos? She told us all about it when we were in Santa Fe last summer. Beautiful to connect and weave here. I'd love to visit y'all one day, and look forward to reading your book!
Ahhh so amazing, what a small world. Yes we curated a little Solar Punk Library at our local bookstore. Hopefully can show you the farm sometime! Let us know if you’re ever in the area.
Love these thoughts.. wondering how we can scale villaging as more people become interested in this but may not have the land or money for the big investments themselves
Yes, I'm very interested in this as well, though I always want to be cautious about the word scale because it's such a strong impulse of late stage capitalism to scale everything, but in this case I see it as finding stories, frameworks, and models that can be shared widely to inspire deeper connection, mutualism, reciprocity, resilience, and regeneration for everyone wherever they live.
I think for some communities, a major initial project may need to be the creation of a renters union. For others it may be petitioning their government to make it illegal for HOAs to restrict the growing of fruit trees and vegetable gardens.
But getting to know your neighbors and learning what one another needs and what one another has to offer doesn't cost anything. It doesn't require any land. And no matter what the bigger goals are, the bigger projects, that's always going to be the starting point.
I'm going to be exploring this more with a wide range of guest contributors on my new publication Neighborhood Produce, in case you haven't checked that out. It's in it's infancy, but I think it will be a space where a lot of these questions can be explored by voices with many different circumstances than my own.
This resonates very deeply with me. While my children are grown, I am still villaging - weaving my small part of the web of re-learning how to live sustainably, abundantly and cooperatively on Mother Earth. I wish my adult children and their children would join me and maybe someday they will. Meantime I'm looking for people to join me in co-creating a permaculture based ecovillage where we work together to relearn and regenerate and support our local community to become more resilient and earth conscious.
Thank you so much for this essay. So many thing you mentioned echo the frustrations I have when I mention the changes I've made in my lifestyle and immediately hear, "Oh like a homestead/tradwife." There's no tone I can take that will make, "No, I just don't feel secure shopping somewhere that relies on almost daily shipments of goods from the other side of the country" sound polite and friendly.
And I know of so many people who take the idea of homesteading to describe their desire to get away from all the 'crazies' in the city. They really just want to self isolate rather than learn from their neighbours. It's hard when they think they've found kinship with you. I want Ecotopia, not to hide from the world and refuse to support my community.
I'm so relieved to see these feelings to well spelled out. And we do need to regenerate the commons. I think that itself is the biggest difference between what we want and homesteading. Some people truly want to privatize every space, so that they don't feel threatened by the presence of those they disagree with.
I love this! I was raised in communal living. Many aspects I miss. Gathering together, cooking together, cleaning together. Just doing everything together.
I am a single 55 year old female that lives on 70 acres by myself. I have never heard of a trad wife, but I can assure you a trad wife has not influenced my decision to live in harmony with nature. Lol
Of the numerous “neighbors” I have in my community, we all the same goals of not relying on a government system to help us. We like to rely on each other. We all barter, trade & buy from each other. Max has a backhoe, I don’t. Max needs money for animal feed. I need part of my land cleared. Jerry knows alot about solar, I have nice new tires that I am not using, so he hooks up my solar- I give him new tires. Marge brings me 2 dozen fresh laid eggs every 10 days or so- I help her with her checkbook & record keeping. Bob hauls water from our community well & I give him several home canned meals in a jar.
Anyone that thinks they move out to private land and are self sufficient will have a true awakening very quickly. Nobody that lives this lifestyle would ever call themselves self sufficient. We ALL know it is community that makes people thrive & it takes effort to build that community. Whether you are on 70 acres, or a small apartment in the city, we all need each other- regardless of who is in office or what laws have been administered. The closer we get to community (villaging), the less we need to worry about what decades of corrupt elected officials are doing. They hopefully will no longer be needed because we will all be in harmony with each other.
This post made has many good points. I'd argue that most people escaping city life to 'homestead' don't wanna live in the middle of nowhere lol, rather a community oriented town. It's really hard building community in an urban enviroment ironically because everyone is on their own world. It's also rather disappointing that cottagecore has been co-opted by the far right, when it started as a leftist queer movement.
Hard agree on all points. I think there's a lot of other language to explore to more accurately describe what so many of us are longing for or trying to do. It's definitely hard building community in so many different settings for different reasons. I was frozen from doing so in my area for a long time because I live in a very conservative area and felt unsafe reaching out to some neighbors, but one conversation led to another led to another led to some organic emergence. I pray that so many others find their way to connect.
And I soooo agree about cottagecore, I think part of me writing this was wanting to share more of my daily life in all of its quaint and lovely earthy slowness but again feeling frozen because of not wanting to be lumped in with tradwives. I think now that this has gotten out of me I feel some more freedom in claiming the authentic aesthetic and expression of my life even more.
I pray we all can reclaim softness, interdependence, beauty, slow living and self expression in our own ways.
Leftists don't call gay and lesbian people "queer."
If we're going to foster a better relationship with the earth and one another, we should probably start by eschewing anti-life, anti-reality ideologies. (I'm not anti-abortion; that's not what I mean by "anti-life." Sex denialism is anti-life. Stop it.)
Ok TERF
Yeah I wasn't feeling like giving this any energy. But for the record, I'm queer, and a mother, and there are just a lot of statements you're making here that don't hold water. Yes there are pregnant people who don't ID as women and clearly you're denying the realities of trans people in a very ardent way, but if you took a moment to consider the complex and (ever increasingly) marginalized position of trans men in our world you'd realize what a ridiculous statement your last sentence is. The rapidly diminishing social safety net for women is a terrifying and urgent thing. Can you take a moment to see how the patterns you are seeing are also targeting and scapegoating trans people in an alarming and increasingly violent way? Can you open your heart to that?
I get what you're saying, but your projection that people who acknowledge that trans people exist and want a culture that embraces them as beloved within the family of life as "anti-life" and "anti-reality" is, again, ridiculous and pure projection.
Transness exists in so many different forms throughout human cultures and throughout the more-than-human world, and to deny that is, to me, a sad and narrow way to live. I prefer to love and care for and seek to understand everyone I possibly can.
She's a proud terf. Who says , "I terf it up in other people’s comments."
Definitely don't waste your time on her, she's not interested in realizing anything except her own vile musings.
P.S. The "people" who face pregnancies in the United States with a rapidly diminishing social safety net are WOMEN. If any men could get pregnant, abortion pills would be sold in street-corner vending machines.
I appreciate this post and to find you--I'm also new here--where are you located? I have been working on a villaging project as you call it on 111 acres 80 mi north of my hometown of New Orleans in Mississippi since 2018. We have encountered the line between homesteaders and villagers many times--what I find is that it doesn't necessarily fall along political lines. There are leftists who don't really have an interest in villaging perse; or they are only interested in doing so with folks that align exactly with their worldviews. There are folks in my town who voted for Trump who are as community oriented, into gift economy/sharing/mutual aid as any leftist you might find in a bigger city. What does get in the way of these bonds deepening is all of the trauma and taboo that is wrapped up in people's stories about money, resources, and ultimately safety in the world. We have a beautiful community that I love with all of my heart, and we are fed by it in some beautiful ways, but ultimately the extent of the dream that I hoped for in terms of getting folks to really commit their lives to this way of living, and in doing so exchange the safety nets that capitalism offers us for the safety net of this alternative paradigm, thus fully investing their resources as we have into the same dream---feels very elusive and challenging. It's hard bc even though with every fiber of my being I have wanted this to be a villaging project, at times it is me and my partner doing something more like homesteading, or really closer to just owning like a family business that is community oriented. There is just so much ancestral trauma wrapped up and in the village as a way of life. I want it so badly and have been crushed a few times already...but it's heartening to read this and all the interest in it. I really want to engage in dynamic, honest discussion with folks who are yearning for this way of being and willing to face all of the shadows that will arise when we go towards our dreams.
There’s a lot of wisdom in this, and the political piece is something I’m meeting my own edges with, I really appreciate how you articulated this.
I’m on the east coast of Florida, with maybe some similar demographics to your area (maybe some more retirees/transplants). I’d love to connect more and learn together, it sounds like you’ve got a lot more experience in this journey than me so far and I hope we can be a source of support and grow a meaningful network together!
yes wow!! it's so cool to learn you are in the south as well :) I look forward to connecting more and learning together, these topics are just on my mind constantly these days.
Thank you for your comment. You are doing great work for generations to come. I hear your longing for deep, emotional bonds and a shared identity between your villagers and how hard it is to watch the vestiges of trauma take center stage. Your post, however, fills me with hope. I imagine the kids who are growing up there, telling a different story. I imagine them telling stories of community gatherings where the elders grumble about politics while the teens and young adults laugh and joke while setting up the potluck. You are creating a space for something you might never see. That is the ultimate act of faith and generosity for future generations. Keep going!
Wow, thank you for articulating so clearly what has been an angry seed in my relationship to homesteading… I started my journey with it 15 years ago as an urban homesteader on the west coast of Florida, but having a baby blew everything apart when she required more than I had to give her and my land. I could make bread and tend the garden OR I could tend my daughter - I didn’t have the capacity to be Mama and a homesteader, and I collapsed when my body drew a hard line.
And we had no village to hold us. People loved to come enjoy the oasis and the eggs, but city folks weren’t ready to make time to help tend the land or my family.
I love how you’re digging into this - in my work I have seen a lot of wounded people wanting to flee to the country to escape… their problems, and lack of emotional intelligence and relational skills.
After spending a few decades working in public policy and environmental education I realized no amount of change in policy would make a damn bit of difference if people didn’t know how to feel their own heart and truth of what was truly important to sustain life. We all need connection and kinship, and “villaging” with space and devotion for solitude, rest, and renewal.
Thank you so much for this really meaningful comment. I'm curious where on the West Coast you are / were? I went to New College (before it was a front of the culture wars) and helped to get the Food Forest going, and have a very tender place in my heart for that area. I'm also curious how long ago you became a mother, and where you are now in this process. I look forward to getting to know you and your work better as we navigate this complexity together.
I lived in Sarasota for a few years, and grew up in Bradenton, I know New College well! I was in Gulfport/St Pete and ran the Urban Agriculture Coalition that helped pave the way for urban food gardening back in 2013. We were on the permaculture garden tour the day before I gave birth to my daughter at home in 2014, wrapped in the smell of our Meyer lemon tree blossoms. I’ve watched a number of idealistic “communities” implode from lack of interpersonal skills and individual self-awareness/accountability, so your discussion around how to learn/practice the skills of nourishing and supportive community while honoring boundaries is such a rich one to explore!
Since then, I’ve also had my son, went back to school for herbalism/holistic wellness/shamanic energy healing/dreamwork, gotten divorced/learned how to coparent, and after Hurricane Milton moved to western NC. I’m building towards community up here and having a holistic, immersive nature-connection healing retreat space to host my work. I’m also finally leaning into my passion for wild horses and learning the stories they have to teach about learning to live and communicate in a group.
Where are you building this wonderful neighborhood model on the East coast? Florida is such an interest place to garden and be in community with the unique mix of ecosystems and cultures.
This piece sings with the truths I’ve been carrying in my research, in my bones. The longing for interdependence, for villaging rather than individualistic survivalism, is not just a reaction to the failures of colonial modernity—it is an ancestral remembering, a return to ways of being that have sustained life for millennia (without romanticizing the past!)
I’ve been thinking a lot about how trauma—when expanded beyond the biomedical model—reveals not only individual wounds but also the ruptures in our relational landscapes. The severing of the commons, the privatization of care, the dismemberment of our belonging to land and each other—these are all collective traumas, ones that manifest in bodies, in communities, in ecosystems. And yet, I keep coming back to this question: What happens after the break? After we’ve made cracks in the dominant world?
Villaging, as you describe it, feels like one answer to that question. It’s not a utopian vision of escape, but a commitment to repair, to tending, to re-embedding ourselves within networks of reciprocity that have never truly disappeared. The commons have been stolen, yes—but not erased. They are still alive in the quiet exchanges of care, in the rewilding of small plots, in the ways we hold space for each other’s solitude without letting each other slip into isolation.
So I’m asking myself: What does villaging look like in a world that has made kinship a scarcity? How do we keep the cracks open long enough for something new—not just new, but deeply ancient—to take root?
Thank you for weaving this thread. I’m listening, and I’m digging in.
With care,
Ella
Looking back at my childhood is like looking back and watching my mother discover the very real truth of everything shared here. On our humble homestead, the garden was the place mom went most often to be with God, but as an adult I realize she also spent a lot of time in isolation there. I think a part of it was that she was never able to reconcile, for herself or with her church friends, that communion with the land felt alive, while taking communion in the pews felt as stale and sour as the sacraments.
My point is not to belittle anyones traditions, but instead to highlight something crucial shared here- this idea or this sense of belonging.
I'm loving this quote, thank you Ganga:
"The ability to be alone without being isolated. The ability to belong without losing oneself."
Yes to all of this. I feel it so viscerally in my being. Thank you so much for weaving my recent post into this.
After my dream of the community chicken coop the other day, I was presented a potential opportunity to bring this dream to life just down the street. It’s on an old farm that is now in a land trust with a nonprofit that wants it to become a more vibrant community space.
It feels like the energy is shifting to really begin building these types of interdependent community systems. 🥹
I love that that opportunity is emerging for you! There's a process of self-inquiry I learned in my studies with Regenesis that moves through the restraining forces we're feeling in our lives, the visions that activate us to meet those restraints, the person we are becoming to reconcile these forces, and then we kind of sit back and observe the opportunities that come to us in part because of that energy field. Everywhere I look I'm seeing people who are making choices and commitments to a different, better, more interconnected world meeting beautiful opportunities, and it brings me great joy. And the more we share this with one another, the more we expand our sense of what is possible, the more opportunities flow.
Also to add… that solitude piece is really crucial for me, too. I used to think I wanted to live in community, but it became clear in my attempts I want to be in community, but I also need deep, regular retreat. I love the avenues of building community within neighborhoods and a city, rather than forcing really close, constant contact (I.e. living situations with nightly community dinners and weekly meetings are too much for me!). It’s a real trial and error to figure out where we each fit in in the world.
Yep, it's a nuanced dance for sure. I think when all you know is one thing, it's easy to romanticize other ways of being, but it's through experimentation and learning that we find the right balance.
I grew up on an Ashram, and in college I lived for a semester in a Buddhist communal house in Boulder while I was studying Tibetan translation, and I really deeply value community obviously, but before I had my kid I could go weeks and months without actually encountering anyone outside of my small tight knit household. With my husband and I both working from home however, and being guardians of each others' solitude, I find myself needing to get out of the house in the afternoons while he's working and that's become a way that I've found a rhythm of connecting with neighbors and going to the nearby parks with my toddler in the stroller, and that's how I balance the interdependent solitude piece. Solitude in the mornings, connection in the afternoons, but always keeping our house itself pretty private because one of us is always in solitary focus mode it seems.
We’re going to start trying to get pregnant next month. I’d love to hear more soon about how you’ve sought to balance life and participation with the outer world while tending to a babe! Especially as someone who needs a lot of alone time to feel grounded and inspired, I’ve been curious how that will go for me since I need so much retreat time as it is.
This comment has been on my mind, and I apologize for the delay in responding! I suppose that delay is an indication of the nature of the response–everything takes it's own pace more than ever.
I will say that from my own experience and from what I gather from others, I would consider the first two years after birth to be a distinct time of your lives in which executive functioning, finding time for solitude, and operating out in the world are all particularly challenging. It's a magical time, but challenging in ways that nothing could have prepared me for.
Having people around that you can lean on, ask for help, and trust with your baby is a game changer. Don't assume the village will show up without clear asks and invitations. Postpartum for me was a massive mirror showing me the gap between my awareness of my needs and my ability to voice them.
That said, I think that pre-conception and pregnancy can be a powerful time to proactively shape this. It's an honor to be invited in to someone's pregnancy and early parenthood experience and I think that inviting people in to the process can open their hearts and support the villaging journey in a deep way.
You know it’s interesting, because while I’ve been in hermit mode for years I’m now emerging into this much more active energy. It’s like I was hiding for so long that now I have all this stored up energy to use! And after being down and out for so long, having this feeling of normalcy brings upon a different fear—I’ve just found this new type of freedom… will a baby take it away?
More often than now I hear parents (or watch parents) slough through those first two years. Occasionally I glimpse that rare breed that isn’t slowed down as much. One thing that stands out though is definitely how much community one surrounds themselves with.. and how much personal time they can build into the fold.
Some make sure that happens, while others forget themselves in complete ode to the sacrificial role they play. I hope when the time comes, I’m able to find a balance!
I feel that also, I feel like I'm coming out of a hermitude that I honestly entered during covid and am just emerging from. And the first two years of motherhood were definitely a hermit calibration time as well. I think that for me, nurturing the village is what's making it feel viable to have another child. I couldn't do it without a growing network of hyper local people. Today, this morning, during my working hours, I'm going to a neighbor's house for tea and yucca bread. Something my nervous system even just a few months ago would never have let me consider because "I need that time to be productive."
Seeing this instead as the best investment in my future, these relationships, reframes a lot for me and helps my body know I'm a different kind of safe.
The first two years are a very specific kind of initiation for sure, but I really really really think you're asking the right questions, you're living a life where your business has the word village in it, and I am so excited for the beautiful life that wants to come through you!
What an absolute dream. Thank you for sharing your words!
I wonder how this concept can apply to those who aren’t as well-resourced, who often rent in urban areas, hold multiple jobs, have multiple major life stressors — perhaps those who will suffer the most at the hands of our current administration. In my state (CT), living in more rural areas with access to space and land often means sacrificing diversity and risking personal safety. So I wonder how the folks who don’t feel they have the access to this lifestyle can also benefit? (This is where I get all fired up about poor zoning policies and modern segregation, which are alive and well in CT!)
I’m holding those questions with you Ruth! And though I am very much a proponent for fair taxation and participatory budgeting that would fundamentally change the calculus of poverty and inequality in this country, I think expanded definitions of different kinds of capital is a key step, along with normalizing conversations where we can be honest about what we have and what we need with those around us is an important step.
As someone in western MA, I find that living this way requires finances that most folks who need it just do not have, and the folks that can afford to buy land and live on it are not “villaging” folks but “here for my summer home” folks. Mutual aid and villaging probably looks more like community gardens, ride shares, meal trains, time banks, and co-ops for us here. (But also I am now obsessed with this concept and will be referencing this always!)
Love those examples of mutual aid and villaging! So important to remember that even "smaller" ways of contributing are equally important.
I appreciate a deep difference between villaging vs homesteading. In my writing I am contemplating the ways our ancient ancestors lived with a deep reverence for life and Nature. It is significant to note that Old Europe - like 8000 years ago - had highly technologically advanced societies- agriculture, art, writing- that were guided by communal attitudes about sharing resources. Villaging feels deeply kindred to this wisdom that also was pre-warring male god culture! I see a reawakening of the feminine in this notion of cooperation and mutual aid! This is, IMHO, an antidote to how estranged the present dynamics are from being on common ground and caring for each other and this exquisite 🌎! Thank you 🙏🏽
I absolutely love this and will check out your writing! I feel this awakening too, and feel such a deep responsibility, and joy, in reconnecting with this ancestral way of being as a woman of European descent. Grateful for the resonance and how widely and decentralized this work is taking root!
I feel we of European descent can forget we do have our own indigenous roots. There have been very recent archaeological discoveries revealing (by way of further confirming) matrifocal community structures in ancient societies (meaning the males joined the female’s clan). It is already evident matrilineal societies were normal in Neolithic societies, which I quickly want to point out does not equate to matriarchal cultures as the evidence also strongly points to societies that were focused on shared wellbeing not hierarchical systems of ranking! It gives substantive hope that somewhere deep in our DNA memory we know how to live cooperatively and dare I be so bold - love-centered! If you imagine cultures focused upon Mother as divine then the fundamental caring and nurturing nature of the human mother (and wild creatures too) would suggest the values of caring for each other would be centered! If we can - as women and men - respect our gentler inclinations of caring and loving then I feel we can activate our innate capacity to collectively shift the tone of our present conditions! It’s exciting to consider all the tiny shoots - like villaging- giving rise to this shift in consciousness!
I started with something as small as being the first to ask my neighbor across the street for a cooking ingredient that I needed for dinner one night. I didn’t have time to go to the store. Now we regularly depend on each other for that last minute something that we ran out of, and we share extra baked goods, etc.
I love that! It's such a simple human thing that we've gotten so disconnected from. We don't have so much of a daily/weekly rhythm with our neighbors, but when hurricanes are coming there are many ways we help one another out and that has definitely brought us all closer together.
This is such a beautiful post. I think you are spot on about the need for interdependence. The whole homesteading/prepping movement always rubbed me the wrong way with its hyper focus on individualism. And with the rise of online tradwife influencers, many are buying into an ideal that doesn’t exist outside a screen. Community and collaboration are the real way forward. Thank you!
I’ve been worried about the left turning away from the “back to the land” and “crunchy” type ideals as they become more and more centered within the conservative communities. It feels like a potential convergence where some good common ground work could be done, but I fear instead that some are distancing themselves due to the tribalism of our current politics. When I was first into these topics 15+ years ago it felt more balanced as far as political associations. It’s nice to see others exploring the topic.
I agree entirely with you regarding building villages, not isolated homesteads, and it’s amazing what you and your community are building. We’re trying to do similar work here, although we aren’t in town anymore so the work looks different.
It’s also nice to see other folks referencing The Great Simplification! The bioregioning round table was an excellent one.
You get it!! This is a big focus of my book and how we're approaching our work at Solar Punk Farms. We need villaging and bioregionalism everywhere <3
Ahh, I love making this connection with Solar Punk Farms! One of my colleagues in the Regenesis Institute was passing through your area and went into a bookshop where I believe you have a little area curated around the Solar Punk ethos? She told us all about it when we were in Santa Fe last summer. Beautiful to connect and weave here. I'd love to visit y'all one day, and look forward to reading your book!
Ahhh so amazing, what a small world. Yes we curated a little Solar Punk Library at our local bookstore. Hopefully can show you the farm sometime! Let us know if you’re ever in the area.
Love these thoughts.. wondering how we can scale villaging as more people become interested in this but may not have the land or money for the big investments themselves
Yes, I'm very interested in this as well, though I always want to be cautious about the word scale because it's such a strong impulse of late stage capitalism to scale everything, but in this case I see it as finding stories, frameworks, and models that can be shared widely to inspire deeper connection, mutualism, reciprocity, resilience, and regeneration for everyone wherever they live.
I think for some communities, a major initial project may need to be the creation of a renters union. For others it may be petitioning their government to make it illegal for HOAs to restrict the growing of fruit trees and vegetable gardens.
But getting to know your neighbors and learning what one another needs and what one another has to offer doesn't cost anything. It doesn't require any land. And no matter what the bigger goals are, the bigger projects, that's always going to be the starting point.
I'm going to be exploring this more with a wide range of guest contributors on my new publication Neighborhood Produce, in case you haven't checked that out. It's in it's infancy, but I think it will be a space where a lot of these questions can be explored by voices with many different circumstances than my own.
This resonates very deeply with me. While my children are grown, I am still villaging - weaving my small part of the web of re-learning how to live sustainably, abundantly and cooperatively on Mother Earth. I wish my adult children and their children would join me and maybe someday they will. Meantime I'm looking for people to join me in co-creating a permaculture based ecovillage where we work together to relearn and regenerate and support our local community to become more resilient and earth conscious.
Thank you so much for this essay. So many thing you mentioned echo the frustrations I have when I mention the changes I've made in my lifestyle and immediately hear, "Oh like a homestead/tradwife." There's no tone I can take that will make, "No, I just don't feel secure shopping somewhere that relies on almost daily shipments of goods from the other side of the country" sound polite and friendly.
And I know of so many people who take the idea of homesteading to describe their desire to get away from all the 'crazies' in the city. They really just want to self isolate rather than learn from their neighbours. It's hard when they think they've found kinship with you. I want Ecotopia, not to hide from the world and refuse to support my community.
I'm so relieved to see these feelings to well spelled out. And we do need to regenerate the commons. I think that itself is the biggest difference between what we want and homesteading. Some people truly want to privatize every space, so that they don't feel threatened by the presence of those they disagree with.
I love this! I was raised in communal living. Many aspects I miss. Gathering together, cooking together, cleaning together. Just doing everything together.
I am a single 55 year old female that lives on 70 acres by myself. I have never heard of a trad wife, but I can assure you a trad wife has not influenced my decision to live in harmony with nature. Lol
Of the numerous “neighbors” I have in my community, we all the same goals of not relying on a government system to help us. We like to rely on each other. We all barter, trade & buy from each other. Max has a backhoe, I don’t. Max needs money for animal feed. I need part of my land cleared. Jerry knows alot about solar, I have nice new tires that I am not using, so he hooks up my solar- I give him new tires. Marge brings me 2 dozen fresh laid eggs every 10 days or so- I help her with her checkbook & record keeping. Bob hauls water from our community well & I give him several home canned meals in a jar.
Anyone that thinks they move out to private land and are self sufficient will have a true awakening very quickly. Nobody that lives this lifestyle would ever call themselves self sufficient. We ALL know it is community that makes people thrive & it takes effort to build that community. Whether you are on 70 acres, or a small apartment in the city, we all need each other- regardless of who is in office or what laws have been administered. The closer we get to community (villaging), the less we need to worry about what decades of corrupt elected officials are doing. They hopefully will no longer be needed because we will all be in harmony with each other.