Building a Village

There is too much positive in this post to start anywhere but the end.  The village that surrounds me today is full of life and love and people that genuinely are looking out for my best interests.  This village listens to me, they make me laugh harder than I knew possible and the moment I start to fall, they somehow pick me up before I ever hit the ground.  For a large part of my life I didn't know what it felt like to have a village, I felt abandoned by the idea of one and I searched in all the wrong places trying to create one.  As I sit back and marvel, yes marvel, at the village that surrounds me, I finally am beginning to understand the importance of what the studio space has been creating.  It is a village, a village of all different athletes, different lifestyles, different personalities, all coming together to sweat and work hard, to pick people up when life seems too big and to be there to give a helping hand.  

This village wasn’t created in a moment, it slowly evolved over time and I can’t really take the credit for what it is becoming.  But because it’s my job, I do get to live and enjoy this village everyday.  I get to head out to work to be surrounded by people who care for each other and support each other, people who complement each other and help others find their super powers.  This village has taken time, it wasn’t instantly a village.  It took people who consistently showed up and consistently still show up.  It has taken their relationships and their attitudes and their work ethics and them being themselves to create this village.  And like any village, it will change over time, but the changes it has made so far have seem to only be building a stronger home.  

Let me go back towards the beginning, the part that didn't start out so positive.  This whole idea of a village has seemed to be an arms distance away for most of my life.  I remember when I had my first child, people would say, “it takes a village to raise a child.”  I kept hearing those words and every time I felt like yelling, “Where the FUCK is my village.”  I had never felt so alone and judged as I did in those first few years of parenting.  Too many days I spent mad that I couldn’t find my village, I hated the simplicity of those eight words.  Somehow the constant reminder that there is a village out there would somehow help and encourage me.  But most of the time I would leave the house to hear judgement and criticism that drove me deeper into depression and further from any semblance of a village.  Maybe that village wasn’t my home, maybe I just needed to search a little longer and spend more time not thinking about the words but living the life.  Instead of thinking that the only village was too far from where I stood, maybe I needed to find a different village.  Maybe it was me, not them.  

And years have passes since those lonely days.  I don’t know when or where or how it all happened, all I know is that I found my village.  I found my fucking village.  I found it so much closer to my home and my family than I ever could have imagined.  I just have to open my eyes and there it is.  Twelve years later I am surrounded by a village that regularly surprises me with their compassion and empathy.  

So what is a village?  I have asked myself that question in the loneliest of times and came up with negative feelings towards the people around me, but I couldn’t even figure out what I wanted from that village, forget about trying to define what it meant.  And then there were times when I felt like I was in the middle of a village and I still couldn’t define what it meant, I just knew that I liked the feeling.  I don’t know what the village is, all I know is that life is a lot better when you are living in one.  One of my biggest hopes when someone walks into the studio is that they too will find their village in that space.  Every week when I create the warm ups and the workouts, I also look at the village of people that make up the studio, I think about what this will look like for the people that come in week after week, month after month and year after year.  I try to make sure that everyone will find success and that everyone will be challenged, unless it’s Friday.