Vick chowing down on some ice cream with two of his youngest friends.

  

Hi folks, Vick here. I hope things are going well for you. Here in northeast Missouri, we had our third visitor group of the year join us, and they’ve been spending the week in workshops, learning about sustainability, experiencing what life is like in a tight-knit community, and having lots of fun.

This is the next piece in my series about the top five things I love about living in this magical village, reason number three:

3. I have had more hugs in five years living at Dancing Rabbit than the rest of my life combined.

If you love me, hug me. I’m that kind of guy. (When you visit, I’ve got a hug with your name on it, if you’re open to that.) But what I mean to say here is that I am more connected to my companions in life than I have ever been before, since moving to my community.

I know every single one of my neighbors well enough to have a conversation with substance. By contrast, I lived in the house I grew up in for sixteen years, and I never knew more about my nextdoor neighbors than their first names. It’s been that way for me most of my life. 

Here, I have the honor of calling many of my neighbors my friends. They range in age from twelve-ish to sixty-something, representing all genders, walks of life, and just about any other facet of human diversity that you might single out. (Any neurologist will tell you this is good for brain health. It does the soul good, too.)

Some of my strongest connections have come through personal growth work in our local Men’s Group. Similar groups gather for folks with two X-chromosomes, though I haven’t been to any of them personally, as well as groups that don’t concern themselves with gender at all. I have learned from hard-earned experience (not altogether bargained for at the time) that interpersonal conflict, once moved through and resolved, can result in a powerful bond. 

The flipside of the coin is that being so interconnected means that word spreads around like wildfire. A gal who used to live here joked that the whole village knew she was pregnant before her pee had cooled on the test strip, and that’s not far from the truth. This often means that interpersonal relationships are interwoven in a complicated tapestry, and from time to time, that can make things difficult, especially when romance gets involved. Nonetheless, the depth and richness to many of the relationships here makes enduring any challenge worthwhile in the end.

Do you long for deeper connections with people, like I did before I moved here? You can visit us  in October and spend a couple of weeks in our community. (Note that you only have one more chance this year; we won’t have another visitor session until April of 2020.) You’ll get to know the people, see firsthand what life at Dancing Rabbit is really like, and perhaps make some new like-minded friends. Maybe you’d like to stick around. Don’t worry if you can’t take that much time out of your schedule, because we have a condensed four-day option as well. I look forward to meeting you soon.