I grew up surrounded by family. There was no shortage of people filling the rooms of our gatherings. With six uncles and four aunts (my parents siblings), their spouses who joined the family, and plenty of cousins… we had a tribe before we even understood what the word meant. With that tribe came a symphony of gifts, talents, and temperaments that reflected pieces of myself back to me in ways I never could have seen alone.
That’s the beauty of community… you become visible in places you didn’t know were hidden. My uncles would catch things in me that my aunts couldn’t… and vice versa. My cousins reflected back traits I didn’t know I carried. Family gave me different mirrors to look into, each one angled in such a way that I caught new clarity about who I was and who I could become. In that tribe, I knew I wasn’t alone. I came from somewhere, from someone, and that lineage reminded me that belonging is not something you earn… it’s something you inherit.
Community wasn’t just reflection… it was relief. It was the new mother who doesn’t carry her burden alone because along with her mom… there was always an aunt, a grandmother, or a cousin to pass the baby to. It was the uncle with a truck who showed up when it was time to move… not for money, but because that’s what family did. It was my grandfather, hands stained with oil, teaching my dad and uncles how to change brakes so they would have access to know how if needed. It was the hours spent together fixing, lifting, rocking, and laughing while we unknowingly strengthened the invisible thread that tied us to one another.
But as the generations pass on, that thread has frayed. Our careers stretch us across states, money lures us into chasing opportunity at the expense of presence, and divorce has scattered households that once made villages whole. Where we once leaned on family, we now hire strangers like nannies, movers, mechanics, and therapists… because our built-in support systems have been divided, and our togetherness has been outsourced.
The cost is more than financial… it’s exhaustion. It’s mothers quietly drowning without help. It’s fathers carrying burdens no one else sees. It’s children growing up without cousins as their first friends. It’s the silent burnout of people believing they must do it all alone because “individualism” has been sold to us as independence. But when independence lacks interdependence, it’s not strength…. it’s isolation dressed with our pride.
I don’t believe the village is gone forever. I believe it can be replanted. Some of us will have to sow it from scratch, choosing intentional connection with siblings, cousins, and even chosen family until trust becomes tradition again. The truth is, we do need each other. Every day! For a hand, for a hug, for perspective, for laughter, for love that does not demand repayment.
And so I pray… for myself, for you, and for the generations to come… that we learn to extend olive branches across the divides. That we rebuild what was uprooted. That our children will inherit not just our names, but our branches of love.
Because clarity really does come with community. And we are all responsible for ourselves… and sometimes responsibility is the attempt to regrow a village so that unconditional love has a home again in the generations to come.