A personal letter: I'm building my most important community (yet) and will be sharing notes here
An innuendo of a phase of my life (motherhood) in which I’ll be living and sharing my rawest experiences and freshly-baked learnings in building my utmost community.
Becoming a mother has reconnected me to human experience of community-building.
A little background: about 3 years ago, after 10 years of living an entrepreneurial and nomadic, i.e. independent and free spirited life, I came to realize that commitment (to the right things) is freedom.
Commitment to the right ideas, activities, and most importantly, the right people.
I always valued freedom above most things. And while my previous life seemed to overflow in it, I often felt trapped in a fun, yet restless search for an authentic sense of home and self. That search even led me to become an expert community builder. I learned to build a home everywhere - surrounding myself with people who mattered. While the journey was 100% worth it and helped me connect with the career I am passionate about, I also left as many homes as I built - leaving communities to sustain on their own and grow beyond me.
Now I know: I intentionally engineered it that way. For example, I founded and sold a business to keep it alive, founded a community and inspired its members to become leaders (who keep it alive even five years after I became inactive), and encouraged spin-offs to outlive another learning community. I also wrote a book on it, to transfer my early learnings and knowledge on community-building.
I built communities to be self-sustainable. I still believe that a great community grows like wild flowers, while its core value remains aligned with its founder’s DNA. In Hacking Communities, I used dandelions as a metaphor to exemplify this idea.
Yet, now I’m off to build the most lifelong community I could build. One that currently defines me, and will ultimately transcend me.
Paving ways to live authentically
An ancient quote of unknown attribution tell us there’s three ways to live forever: plant a tree, write a book, have a child. I’d add a fourth item to it: build a community. But now that I’ve become a mom, I understand these last are two in one.
Motherhood is the biggest commitment I’ve ever made.
One that is pure and whole-hearted: naturally, biologically, and hormonally authentic. This time, I am building a home I can’t, won’t, don’t want to leave.
Motherhood frees my mind from self-imposed, impossible standards, because there is literally not time to keep up with it. Since pregnancy, I’ve been learning to let go of ego and commit to something bigger than myself. At first, I felt afraid, out of tune with my body, derailed in my career. Then, he was born and it was no longer (and never again) about me.
Commitment is freedom. Freedom from attachment or addiction to the wrong things. From feeling lost, always searching for je ne sais quoi. Freedom from perfectionism, the main symptom of narcissism.
In Hacking Communities, I wrote something along the lines of a community being like home, that ideal place which is the end of all our journeys, where we can take our shoes off and be fully ourselves. Home is where we feel like we can be authentic and vulnerable. Only three months in, I can already notice how motherhood inexorably leads us to a path of extreme authenticity and vulnerability in three instances:
First, when we’re alone with our babies. Pregnancy, childbirth, and breastfeeding act like a natural force: a sudden surge of oxytocin breaking a mind-constructed dam that kept me buttoned up. Suddenly I found myself naked, holding my entire life and all that ever mattered in my arms.
Second, when we look out for support with our closest ones: a core community. Be it our partners, immediate family or closest friends, child-bearing and raising forces you to find (and accept) support. It pushed you to acknowledge I need help and prioritize those core relationships over the pride of being independent (which I held dear until now).
Third, when you expand your search for friendship, support, and validation in your broader community: including other parents, caregivers, experts, neighbors, etc. This, I learned from more seasoned parents, might become my best friends of the future. Those people who replied to your questions on mother groups might end up becoming your go-to playdate mates, and eventually become regulars in your child’s birthday parties.
It literally takes a village.
Motherhood reconnects me to the most human experience of community-building.
I feel like re-reading and re-writing my book to incorporate and consolidate learnings. And as I build my most authentic and self-sustaining community yet, I am eager to document new learnings. This time, one that you can apply not just for business, but also to your own life. While some of the same principles and frameworks apply, I can’t wait to share what new things I learn in the process.
I am recurring to my own frameworks to build this community. From Interaction Design (Attract, Engage, Commit) to Closeness Circles.
As we speak, I am in full “community mapping process” - listing, joining and researching mama communities around me, from neighborhood-based Facebook and Slack groups, to community apps and in-person communities (deriving from pre and postnatal yoga classes, for example).
Building a Village
If community is a space where we can be our most vulnerable and authentic selves, the parenting experience represents the epitome of community-building.
Motherhood is unforgiving. It doesn’t allow time for perfectionism. It barely allows the time for me to clean the kitchen and sit down to scribble these notes before his nap is done and the next feeding session begins.At the same time, being a mother is the purest experience of forgiveness. Towards oneself and our own faults. Motherhood forced me to just exist, vulnerable and imperfect, hoping to be just enough for him. To be his mom. ❤️
I think it was Leonard Cohen who said “there’s a crack in everything // that’s how the light gets in”. Motherhood feels like letting my heart burst with love, allowing more and more light (and people) in.
Commitment (to the right things) is freedom.
I am looking forward to committing to the right people and projects, as I become Lucas’ mom - and sharing the process with you.
Holding my most core community member ❤️