Everyone Craves A Village, But We Are Too Afraid To Start One.
Where did our communities go and why do we all feel like we are on a connection recession?
Three nights ago, I was crouched sideways in my husband’s leather recliner, doom scrolling, when an AI generated reel showed up on my feed. It read, “Bills are forever paid, money isn’t an issue, so which house are you choosing?”
Ugh. These AI things are so dumb but let me watch the whole video so I can judge each mansion and pick my favorite. For the record, I picked number six. It was an updated Tudor style home, with a large bay window and an extended porch lined with boxwoods.
But before it showed the clip of eight different homes, my first thought was, “I pick whichever home has the best neighborhood and community.”
The organic thought made me sad.
It’s been on the leader board of my mind and conversation in our home lately. I don’t think it’s always been this difficult to make or keep friends and a community as adults. I think we’ve become increasingly isolated by technology, hustle, and stagnant routines. For the record, I have incredible friends—blessed by the best. But we are all either separated by towns and traffic, schedules and different schools, general busyness, and certainly different seasons of life and burnout. We are consumed with a hustle that leads nowhere.
For instance, some of my closest friends that are local either live a town away or their kids are teenagers, or they don’t have kids at all—different pages of life. We haven’t found our rhythm or the natural flow of a group of people whose children go to school with ours, same church, live nearby, same baseball teams, same neighborhood and so on. We drive a town away for church—our choice—we haven’t gotten connected with the small groups there just yet—our fault. I’ve never been a stay-at-home mom and the mother’s that I’m closest with from my son’s school, all work at least part-time.
Schedules are off, driving seems like a headache, and that leaves us—women in particular, extraordinarily burnt out and lonely. So isolated.
And let me just say this now—community building, and friendship retention usually falls on the women of the family because God knows 90% of men aren’t going to do it.
In true form, I took my curiosities to Instagram stories, and I asked several questions and gave multiple choice answer options.
Overall, about 6,000 people (98% female) answered and the most important question split them right down the middle. Do you have a solid community group of friends?
Fifty percent said yes, while the other half said no.
Whenever I do any sort of poll, I’m also flooded with DMs to explain their choices or people share a bit more of their personal stories.
Here are just a few I received—
“We had friends and community. But I see now that people don’t want hard. I guess because everyone has their own hard. When we lost our business, we lost all of our money. Which means we also lost our place in our societal group. My marriage was a wreck, and we were flat broke. It was a wakeup call that told me maybe we didn’t have the pack we thought we did. This was years ago and my husband and I rebuilt our marriage and are better than ever and found financial stability along with new friends in church. We are surrounded by Christians now who know how to stand in the hard with us. Though I’m hoping our hardest days are behind us!”
“I grew up in a village like you’re talking about! I was raised by my grandparents and parent’s friends. There was always a group of moms around and a load of kids running down the street. I think widely speaking that just doesn’t exist much anymore. Grandparents don’t help, it takes forever to convince my parents to watch my kids just for a few hours so I can go to Bible study, and all the women who stayed home when I was growing up have gone to work. And most women my age work. The cost of living is so high most female driven communities among moms that hold our groups together have jobs and we are all just so exhausted. Makes me sad.”
“We have sweet friends in our area and we get together once every few months but it doesn’t feel like enough to call it doing life together. I’m tired though. I’m always the one to ask and invite and pull everyone together and I feel like for once I would like to be invited somewhere. It takes mutual effort and a lift from everyone, but I feel like I’m the only one to get creative and think of stuff for us and our kids to do. I wish it would come more natural.”
“My family has fallen on extremely trying financial times. We’ve been scraping the barrel for over a year and while some of our friends know our situation, I think that it’s affected all of our relationships of community. Most friends go out to eat, well that cost money. You catch up for coffee, that cost money. You go on day trips with your friends to the museums, money. You get the point. I feel like a lot of friendships now have to have a center source of entertainment. Very few people want to come over for cheap coffee at home and just sit in the hard with you. We’ve lost that.”
“When I was much younger. I’m 56 now. I had a decent social life with good friends a while ago. I like my silence now. I like being alone.”
And as if the topic was just floating in the air, on Wednesday morning I took Samuel to the park to play and I got my steps in on the walking trail. I passed two other moms who seemed to be discussing the same issues.
Now, I was speed walking, and they were sitting on a bench, so I heard every other topic with each pass. My first lap around, the women were jousting each other about how long it had been since they’d been out to dinner with friends. “It’s been months since we’ve been to dinner with anyone. I never dress up anymore.”
The second lap heard them make fun of their husbands’ lack of effort to make friends. “Ugh! I love how they want to be each other’s friend but they both refuse to text or make a move! Like, get over yourself and just make a friend.” I can confirm from countless messages that the male friendship strike seems to be an international issue. Unless men have the same group of friends that they've had since 7th grade, they truly have no idea and zero confidence to orchestrate a grown-up friendship.
My last lap around them overheard a more tender subject.
One mom said to the other, “The Lord has made it very clear on where I’m supposed to be. Seven hours of school a day makes eighteen years fly by and then it’s just over and done. I’m proud to be home with my kids to raise them, but it’s just…”
I know, the other responded. I could only imagine the load of her I know.
Because I know too.
Our worlds have become lonely and isolated.
We reach for our phones to steal back minutes of what we think is decompressing and relaxation, but it makes us more anxious and aloof to our social surroundings. Our children seem to be in two sports each for each season, and if you have more than two kids that is at least four sporting practices over the span of five business days. We are overbooked, over scheduled, out of touch, and disconnected in a way that leads me to think our children may never know how to build relationships without us guiding them.
Because some of us have forgotten how to do the same.
My generation has been in survival mode since what, middle school?—9/11? The 2008 crash right when we went off to college, then Covid. It’s been one shot against us after the other. And all the while the advancement of technology made us connected like a counterfeit village. We answer texts and call it good enough, we share memes and reels to call it connection. We FaceTime and call it a life.
And if I may do some light comparing for a minute, walk with me down history lane.
I wasn’t alive for WWII, but I’m wondering if society felt this way, then too. There wasn’t time for joy, or connection, or friendship with Hitler and The Great Depression filling the air. I’m wondering if it took several years for everyone to take one collective sigh of relief and then they enjoyed the fifties and sixties.
Are we waiting for our collective sigh of relief after…gosh everything that we’ve consumed in the last five years?
The economy, elections, pandemics, social injustices, Ukraine, wildfires, riots, inflation, Carole Baskin, and the all-knowing development of ChatGPT? And those are just the headlines—not even mentioning what we’ve all faced in our homes. We’ve faced divorces, lost friendships, having babies, losing babies, losing jobs, selling businesses, botched Botox, infertility, parents getting sick, and your hormones making you feel like Charlize Theron in Monster.
We are whooped and we’ve turned hashtags like #catlady and #millennialgrandparentsyndrome into our personalities as we stay in our own lanes waiting for someone to invite us over for coffee.
One of my IG followers replied to my poll and said, “I can’t wait to hear your solution.” I messaged her back and said, “Honey, I’ve got no answers.”
Because I think a grander issue lies beyond the overscheduling and burnout.
When rumors of a pandemic started coming down the pipeline and toilet paper sold out everywhere, for some of us there was a collective relief of, “Oh thank God. Two weeks to flatten the curve doesn’t sound so bad. We can stay home, catch up on rest and laundry, have movie nights with the kids, and actually use the fire pit we got for Christmas.” We’d already been moving at a girl hustle, boss babe speed for a while and our brakes were shot. So, we were all given a national break and then so many of us, stayed home for a lot longer. The pandemic was the cultural shift of our lifetime.
We found different routines with less people, more screen time, started working from home and before we knew it—half of our village hadn’t been seen since 2021. That sadly is my truth, because I’ve seen in other towns, neighborhoods and communities that the most beautiful real-life connections came from the shutdowns. In 2020, I fell into the most fantastic group of friends. We had bi-weekly dinners, group chats, and we bounced from home to home—cooking for each other and talking about what weird times we lived in.
Once the mandates were lifted—we all went back to the hustle, our own fast lane, and our slower paced intentional community grew stale.
If you’re among the lucky to have that casual cadence of friends who just drop by on the way home, or you rotate houses for Friday night dinner—your cup is full, which means you might be the aloof person who scrolls at soccer practice while another mom is dying for you to make eye contact with her.
I’m not even mentioning the part of friendship through parenting where you have to make decisions about communities based on similar family and parental approaches. Are you a screen free family, but your friends from college kids are tablet raised?
Did your best friend have three kids with ease while you struggled, and y’all were never the same?
Are your kids athletic but your friends’ children are artistic, which makes playdates impossible because we don’t teach compromise?
I’m also pushing 2,000 words and haven’t mentioned moving as an adult which can be excruciating. New towns, new cliques, new faces, and most people either forget how hard moving is at all or we again, are in such a rush of our own doing we’ve stopped noticing if humans around us look lonely.
I’m not sure what the answer is.
I think across the board we have to prioritize slowing down and being intentional with checking in on our people. We have to return invitations and offer to host play dates, while being humble and okay that our house may not be clean. We need to offer the care that we so often crave. And just know, I only brought up this topic because I assumed that if I felt it—then other families felt it too.
Until next time,
Bailey
About an hour ago, I cried and told myself that at 35, I’ve never felt lonelier and more isolated. I blamed it on myself and our situation… and then I opened my email (a blessing from God!). My husband and I moved from Atlanta to Colorado 5 years ago and quickly found an incredible group of friends… fast forward, we’re all in different stages, people have moved, etc. and the group has dissolved. I’ve told myself the delusional lie that if we can just move back to Atlanta, we can have a strong community again. Thank you for the reminder that this isn’t an isolated issue and the grass isn’t always greener.
This is so so good. The pandemic was absolutely a cultural shift. I’ve noticed as time moves, we need to be surrounded by the people who we feel at ease with. The ones who challenge us but also cheer us on and we have to do the same for others.