The Month of March - Connect to Your Community

When you live in the midwest, the go-to theme for March is spring, growth, new things to come. You struggle to make it through cold, gray winters and it's pretty much all you can think about. This year, however, we had the most amazing, mild, somewhat sunny winter I can remember. Do I dare admit that it was easy this year? When I moved back to Chicago from San Francisco a decade ago, I cited one of my top reasons being the collective hardship of getting through these winters with everyone else around you, which creates an automatic sense of community. While I never experienced a major earthquake during my time in San Fran, there was nothing that happened in nature there that encouraged an unspoken bond with the people around me. Maybe because of the missing sense of collective survival, or maybe just because of cultural differences, I also felt just slightly detached from everyone else. Occasionally, I'd meet someone from the midwest and we'd commiserate about the cheek kiss greetings and how much we missed a good, solid hug hello. I was grateful to have three of my childhood best friends living in the bay area at the same time I did for my down home connection with them. So, this year, instead of the predictable "spring is coming" inspired theme, I'm thinking a lot about community. From family of origin to family of choice, there are people we feel connected to. There are also ideals and interests and hobbies when shared that help us feel connected. I encourage you to build and nurture your sense of community this month, and I'll do the same! * Happy to say I've already started by having lunch with two new girlfriends today and having a family-of-friends over for early kid-friendly dinner and then two golden oldies over for after-the-kids-are-down dinner tomorrow night. Hadn't even thought of these plans when I came up with this idea, but I'm sure these get-togethers are part of the inspiration for the theme. How do you connect to community? Who or what is your community?