Cohousing Communities Make Good Sense!

At Germantown Commons, a cohousing community in Nashville, Tennessee, our mission statement is bold: “Our whole is greater than the sum of our parts. We actively embrace community, plan for sustainability, value diversity, and nurture creativity in a welcoming urban environment… Although we know we cannot change the world, we can shape part of it, creating a healthy sense of community.”

These days, everyone witnesses the suffering of people around us. Some experience depression, anxiety, and isolation, along with the current, critical divisions between people as if we are family clans like the Hatfields and McCoys, feuding over everything.

In the era of Trump’s administration, people are often led by fear of the “other,” fear of financial collapse or nuclear proliferation, so many fears.  Being lonely and fearful are experiences that cohousing communities address directly.

Cohousing communities can look like people living together in extended families or small towns, but in our mobile society, so often, children move away to jobs and live far away from their families of origin.  Many have given up the goodness of living in community.

Cohousing communities have developed over many years and Germantown Commons is the first cohousing community in Tennessee, now 3 years old.  All ages of people and families flock to this type of living hoping to create a better way to experience life.

The benefits include enjoying ourselves while developing deep friendships and having people closely available if one is sick or isolated.  At Germantown Commons we privately own our condos and we share a large Common House where we gather often for meals, trainings, meditation, business meetings, and fun activities.  Each condo has its own kitchen and laundry area as well as privacy which we also enjoy.

We benefit also from sharing our lives with all sorts of people, those we may have never known without this community.  

We work together to enhance the physical, financial and emotional parts of our lives, making many of our decisions by committees and consensus.  We reap pleasure from downsizing so that we don’t have to own every piece of kitchen or lawn equipment that we may need.

Disadvantages?  Certainly, there are some.  Like living closely together with people whose lifestyles are different from our own, some who may hold strong beliefs different from ours, or behaviors that may irritate us.  Cohousing is like a microcosm of our world and we work together closely, trying to help each other improve our lives and deal with any conflicts that arise, hoping to generate compassion for differentness and learn from each other along the way.

Like in our nation, living in cohousing is not for those who only want to relax and take it easy in life, circling the wagons, keeping to themselves. Our participation in community takes some time, energy, and caring intentions, as we build a better world around us, by working with what we have - which is each other.

Why Cohousing?

Why would anyone choose to live in a cohousing community?  After all, living so close to people can be challenging. I have close friends who think my husband and I are a bit whacked that we moved into Germantown Commons 3 years ago.  Why would we (or you) do that?

We might all agree with the impressiveness of a multigenerational community that believes in sustainable living, composting, compassionate communication, diversity of all sorts, social justice, and caring about one another.  But, when you consider living in a cohousing community, there is more to life than just these wonderful values.  In fact, some of what brings us together can also pull us apart at times.

Many of us grew up in families, even good ones like mine.  And, perhaps that helped me imagine what a cohousing community is like.  But, not really.  In a modern American family, parents or guardians make most of the decisions for the family, even though they may seek input from the children.  Not so in cohousing.  Therefore, what our experience has taught us may not appear to be that useful when making consensus decisions with our peers, other community members that have as much a stake in decisions as we do. No more hierarchy, more equality.  After all, we each buy our own condos, participate in the work of the community, and we spend much time and energy helping make our policies and procedures as streamlined and effective as possible.

But, you might say that there are always personality conflicts in every group.  Exactly! Conflict does occur along with shared responsibilities, fun and enjoyment of ourselves and one another.  

So, if you like living in your private space, your own home with your own property, cohousing may not be for you. I, myself, loved living in several of my family’s private homes with our fenced in backyards for the dogs. I liked the amount of space we had where our 3 member family could stretch out and enjoy privacy and togetherness without too much hassle.

However, when we think about cooperative living and actually embark on the cohousing path, there are lots of variables to consider. Yes, it is great that we don’t have to own our own lawn mowers or every kind of cookware necessary.  It is wonderful when we are cooking that we have 25 other homes nearby where we can ask for eggs or spices to complete our meals.  We enjoy a 2600 square foot Common House which we co-own, where we can cook with each other and enjoy meals and parties together - when we choose to do so. Respecting each other’s privacy is extremely important and we try not to make up stories about people who seem standoffish or too domineering.

We all enjoy our separate lives, but we no longer have to drive across town to have coffee or a drink with a friend. We meet each other’s families and get to know best those people we enjoy the most.  At times, community business meetings can be a bit stressful, but I think of cohousing living like this: it is similar to getting involved in an intimate relationship, which hopefully contains some joy and excitement as well as comfort - and sometimes conflict, which we attempt to work through.

How lovely it is to walk my dog every morning and see a couple of neighbors outdoors when I open my courtyard door!  Seeing a smile, getting a hug, or even a brush off at times, works for me.  If I want more privacy, I leave by another door where there are fewer eyes and neighbors.

Why live in cohousing? Because we want to. Because we want to challenge ourselves, to grow more healthy and find ways to live together in community with some unlike ourselves, to learn how to be compassionate even when someone’s behavior is annoying. To get to know people on a deeper level than I ever got to know any of my past neighbors over many years. To have people around if I am sick, upset or just plain ole lonely, and to learn about people from other types of backgrounds than my own, finding them fascinating and often loveable.

If you are like me and interested in cohousing, I advise you to do what my husband and I did even though our process took a long time. When Germantown Commons was forming, designing, financing, and building this lovely community, we often joke that we “flirted” with this community for a year. The next year, we “dated” them, getting to know some of them better, participating in potlucks and meetings. And, then the third year, we “married” them. 

I sometimes wonder if we will grow old in this community, and like with any relationship, I have learned more about myself than I sometimes care to know. My weaknesses and strengths are more apparent than ever before.  But, if not growing and developing, what is there to life? You will have to answer that question for yourself!

No attempt, a poem, May 20, 2018

No attempt was made to save her life.

Everyone knew he was troubled.
Wearing a trench coat for a year
Hiding his shame before his guns,
His self-loathing and rage after being
Bullied, beaten up far too often.

She had befriended him, trying
To be an open, caring person,
Until he misread her signals and cues.
She had broken his heart without
Even knowing it.

Until he shot her dead inside the school.

There she learned all there is to know
About life and death, love and sacrifice.
He on the other hand didn’t have the courage
To kill himself after murdering so many others.
No courage at all to turn the gun on himself.

No one tried to stop him, they all thought
It was just a fire drill, staying glued to their phones
As they wandered outside the school building
Only to learn later of the havoc, the horror
10 people dead, 10 wounded.

It is time to talk about guns. It has been time for so long.

How many more children, how many people need to die
Before we say,

STOP.

We will not allow our children
To go to school scared that the next shooter will be
One of them, when that kid has just had enough
And goes out with a bang and no whimper.

When will we protect the children,
Who are slain so damn often, cut off at the knees
Before they have a chance to live?
Who will stop the shooters if we don’t do something
Really drastic to keep guns out of these shooters’ hands?

No real attempt has been made to save any of their lives.

Loneliness: a need for Connection and Community

Loneliness can be deadly. Loneliness is a looming problem in our highly technological American society. If people don’t die from loneliness, they sometimes appear to walking around dead inside, or silently starving for connection and community. Sometimes, lonely people hurt others.

Loneliness has probably been around for as long as people have but it may be getting worse, more prevalent and more pervasive.

Why does loneliness occur? For as many reasons as there are people. Some suffer from traumatic backgrounds, families sometimes acting more dysfunctional than a Gothic horror movie. As a psychotherapist, I see many lonely people even from good families, some who suffer with anxiety and depression, crippling them at times. The stigma of mental illness often keeps people at home, unable or unwilling to attempt to deal with their distress.  But worse is the lack of available and affordable services, making getting help nearly impossible for some.

What are the answers to solving the loneliness crisis in our nation? Not only funding expert mental health services for all people in our society but even when services are found, loneliness is not just an individual problem with an individual solution.  It is a problem with connection and community as well.

I propose that all healthcare providers not only screen their patients for cancer, STI’s and other medical issues, but screen them also for anxiety, depression, PTSD, and loneliness. Health care systems need to help patients find access to services instead of just starting them on psychiatric medications without offering or recommending counseling, 12 step programs, or psychotherapy as options as well.  Although many health care providers strongly support counseling for their patients, oftentimes follow through is difficult.

Many other problems in our country and around the world can be better managed when people have access to counseling for individuals, couples, families and organizations. Excellent counseling targets a wealth of problems like obesity, alcohol and drug dependence, gambling, compulsive porn behaviors, violence, and how badly some people treat each other. Issues like sexism, genderism, ageism, racism, and religious bias are rampant.

People are not flocking to churches these days and many human needs are not being met in our mobile world where nuclear families are geographically and emotionally distant from their extended families, long term friends and often from financial security. We Americans have many needs for connecting with each other and within ourselves in all sorts of ways, including spiritually, emotionally, physically, intellectually, vocationally, and more.  The time to work on this problem is now and we are the ones to do it.

Please reach out to anyone you know who seems alone, lonely, or distressed and help them explore possible services available to them. Let’s also create more affordable and available services so that we can support human, family and community growth, becoming a society full of connected, committed and healthy individuals working together to create more peace and harmony in our world.

And Then There Were Guns

Weapons, tools to hurt each other, have probably been around since human life began. As have other issues like poverty, mental illness and addiction. However, now people can so easily buy weapons of mass destruction, that too often criminals, men and even children sometimes mow down large numbers of people in a rapid fire moment.

How do we deal with our need to keep guns out of the hands of anyone who misuses them? Even when Americans try to develop regulations and controls about weapon sales, they have not been good enough so far.

There is no possible way to accurately screen anyone’s potential for acting violently even though criminal history may be one indicator. People shoot weapons at other people in times of crisis, especially when heightened financial, mental health, and romantic stressors occur. S0me follow extremist groups that urge its members to use violent force in the name of some political or religious ideology. Some also use weapons to kill themselves in a moment of impulsive and/or planned actions of despair, anger or pain.

How do we decrease mass shootings?  One solution is to end the sale of guns except for military and law enforcement personnel.

This would be a drastic change and some will think we are taking away their rights. The financial impact of such a change might resemble how the economy would suffer if we banned pornography, another money making and dangerous but acceptable American business. 

Americans are slow to change any of our culturally acceptable norms like the current state of our electoral process, neocapitalism, and plutocracy.  To change any of these systems of belief and behavior is highly complex and complicated and takes much work over many years if most Americans and their leaders, in fact, support such changes.

American racism, classism, and inhumane beliefs and practices about how we treat women and LGBTQ populations have changed a little over time, but not enough to provide us all with rights like life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness, the rights to be who we are and to love whom we love. All of these ideologies must continue to change.

I fear that we cannot significantly decrease our large numbers of injuries and deaths without the removal of guns from most of our population.

Let’s explore how Australia has gotten rid of their weapons even though controversy exists about whether their gun violence has decreased.  We also need to elect leaders who are not highly influenced by corporations and the wealthy but who will represent all voters. We need to challenge our own opinions, beliefs and attitudes about the need for guns for protection and/or sport.

Perhaps those who love guns can instead develop their bow and arrow skills. Let’s get rid of these weapons before any more children and families suffer future accidental and mass shootings.

Corruption, Scandal, Lies and Sexual Harassment: Change begins with me and you

We as the United States of America harbor secrets much like any culture, society or family.  One secret is based on the fact that we need governance and need to govern ourselves effectively, and instead, we have created a system rife with corruption, scandal, lies and sexual harassment.

Living in a patriarchy, so rigid in its formal and informal rules, we all suffer.  When women gained the right to vote as an evolutionary step, when birth control became more available, and when women became tired of being pigeon-holed into only being mothers, home-managers, and supporters to husbands and the like, the times, they began a’changin’.  More women started working outside of the home, women planned their families, women fought for equal rights and equal pay, and now women are standing up, as do oppressed minorities, saying: “We won’t take this anymore.”

The United States elected a highly complicated and suspect person to be president in 2016.  An entertainer, narcissist (and possibly sociopath), sexual abuser of women, corrupt businessman who broke contracts and deals, a man illustrative of everything wrong in human beings: a gloater, an erratic child-like adult, a man who says “if you don’t play my way, I will call you names and try to destroy you,” a man who can walk up to a woman, grab her crotch and kiss her without asking just because he wants to and can, and more.  Such a man is not fit to be president but he garnered support from all the other men AND women who believed that he would help them.  A master of disguise, deceit, and broken promises, seen so clearly every day in his absurd actions.

Today, some decent, competent, highly intelligent and might I say “good” men are falling by the wayside (at least briefly), as we women tell them that they cannot hold such power when their shadows, their dark sides include acting like this president, when they threaten, cajole and force women to service them sexually so that women can get and keep their jobs.  Even with these so-called “good” and effective men, we say STOP. Along with those men who don’t seem to have such power, but who try to act strong and controlling by abusing women, minorities, animals, anyone or anything seeming to be lesser or weaker than they.

Corruption, lies, sexual harassment and scandal have gone on as long as there have been people on earth.  Perhaps longer.  How can we change this continual human behavior that oppresses, humiliates, embarrasses and abuses people less fortunate than we; less powerful, less rich, less important that we?  Yes, we all participate in such behaviors. I am speaking not just about how men treat women, but about how each of us treats others, like immigrants, the poor, and those who have different beliefs or skin colors other than mostly white.  How can we change these age old ways of being, feeling and acting?

Some people walk into churches, synagogues, mosques and other religious institutions on holy days only to walk out of these same buildings acting in ways that hurt others, that demean, devalue and debase others, somehow finding it fitting to act in such ways. Sometimes not knowing how their actions affect others in such painful ways.  Most religions preach about love, harmony and peace.  I imagine that the very design of human beings creates our continually acting in such ugly, hostile ways at times while we attempt to pray or meditate on the good hoping for change. Maybe this is just a design flaw, but if so, what can we do about it?

Who am I to judge?  Well, I sometimes do.  And, so do you.  We all judge and evaluate each other, and ourselves at times, whether we are conscious of it or not. We often do not help the poor, we do not stop racism, we do not create a better world where more people can live in peaceful states of harmony and compassion, fed and sheltered.  After all, we each have limitations as to what and how much we can do. 

At times, we compete, we curse, fight or pout when we don’t get our way, we step on or over others to make ourselves feel better because we all feel too often not good enough, not smart enough, or not pretty/handsome/competent/effective enough. We are constantly comparing and contrasting, feeling better then worse, high then low, confused and distressed.  We seek for power over our own lives, we seek to meet our and maybe our family’s needs, but can we meet those needs without hurting others?  Too often, we fall short.

Each of us lies sometimes.  Those who claim to never lie frighten me, their being so out of touch with reality.  My hope is that we can decrease our condemnation of others when they are just different from us.  But, when a man who is so corrupt, hateful, childish, probably mentally ill, and perhaps demented, gains power over our whole country, we all need to stand up and say STOP.  We will not stand for this.  We will not let you and your supporters set us back hundreds of years, change the very bedrocks of our nation. We will not let you prompt nuclear war by your silly, infantile antics, your tweeting on a telephone while sitting on your golden toilet, your throne.

Am I angry?  Yes, I am angry and fearful and not sure what to do to make healthy changes. And why don't I show more compassion for Trump?  Because he endangers us all.

What I do know that I can only make changes in myself.  How can I act in more just, honest and compassionate ways?  How can I not stoop so low seeking to sustain my own privilege without thinking about those who are so much worse off? Do I give all I have away and live on the streets? Do I walk in protests, practice nonviolent resistance, and work with others to participate in momentous actions and movements that may or may not help make the needed changes?

How can we change the ways things are, protect ourselves and others, and create a surge of energy, enthusiasm and support so that we can all carry the banner and do something instead of staying silent, nesting in our own spaces with our own people, either too despondent or too frightened to take a step toward increasing the health and well-being of all people? 

Please come along with me, organize and join ongoing groups and coalitions that are fighting for justice in nonviolent ways.  Fund those organizations that seem to be the most effective in carrying out excellent, humanistic missions and goals. Walk the streets, talk with others, get to know those unlike yourself, put yourself in uncomfortable situations trying to understand those who are different.

And, then, let’s try to work through our conflicts, moment by moment, and pay close attention to this difficult process of change which can take a lengthy amount of time, over a long period of time, in order to promote the common good, blessing us all.

"Me, Too? Time for Change"

I am glad that the Harvey Weinstein sexual harassment charges have stirred up this nation and the planet. Men with power assaulting women has been such a normal way of life, a shock may help us create a cultural change, a shift from tolerating to criminalizing this closeted behavior.

The new allegations that Weinstein hired Israeli private intelligence investigators, like Black Cube, to intimidate and to get dirt on some of this victims is not only appalling but clearly illustrates the gravity of his crimes, exemplifying extraordinary behavior.

I have often heard, “Boys will be boys,” while living in a society where this type of “power over” others happens far too frequently.

The ”Me, Too” Movement has prompted most women to review their lives for such assaults, some memories being very clear and some not so much.  Trauma affects our brains, spirits, and bodies in interesting and painful ways whether a man “just” puts his tongue in an unwilling mouth or conducts a violent rape.  Trauma is trauma.

Many men may be feeling nervous and worried, asking themselves if the whistle may be blown on them.  Even worse are men who won’t even imagine that they could be identified as a sexual assailant.  They tell themselves that a relationship was consensual or that because they married their secretary or nurse, there was no offense. Isn’t it OK to touch an employee’s body without asking, imagining she wants it?

In 1976, I was a 5’ tall, 24 yr old small woman, he a 6’ tall, 45 yr old large man, a graduate school professor at a well-respected university with a scholarship available.  Having worked with him before and because some professionals I trusted seemed to hold him in high esteem, I inquired about the scholarship. We decided to dine at the Gerst House but met at his Green Hills apartment.  After serving bourbon on the rocks, he kissed me. Big tongue, big man.  I suggested we move toward supper while he pouted but agreed.  Needless to say, I didn’t get the scholarship.  The good news is that I had said “no” indirectly, and he didn’t push too hard.

I am not sure what helped me say “no” to him and to a few other powerful men in my life. Not being desperate for the scholarship and having supportive parents both helped.  I didn’t have to compromise my values or my body because I am privileged in many ways and he was smart enough not to overpower me.

Are these men just little boys begging their mothers to praise and adore them, displaying their extreme neediness and insecurities? Are these men so frail and feel so badly about themselves that they need extreme adoration and worship, asking women to pleasure them physically because they are desperate for illustrations of their power? Where is the line between crime and consent?  Don’t we women learn early and well to submit or to please to get what some of what we want?

Some men’s methods for building self esteem are disgusting, deplorable, and deceitful, manipulating if they have power over their prey.  Women often suffer even when some women are attracted to men in power.  But, that's another story.

Why do these predatory, powerful men continue to assault and sexually harass women?  Because they can.  Because they can also afford to settle complaints out of court and keep women quiet.

I ask women and men to change this pattern, knowing it will take time and much effort because in our lifetimes, unfortunately, it has always been this way.