Journey Home

Me with Chloe and Claire - They ride in style

My husband and I are almost polar opposites in a lot of ways…I was born on a commune (which my mother left when I was very young) and raised by Yippies (Hippies turned Yuppy). My childhood included a combination of a more conventional upbringing in the “big” (250,000) city of Anchorage, Alaska and a summer wilderness life (my parents were teachers) at a homestead in Lake Clark National Park, an hour small plane ride southwest of Anchorage, and then another hour boat ride to our small, one room cabin that has no electricity and is located between towering mountains and a glacial, turquoise lake. My husband (Alex), on the other hand, was a military brat, raised conservatively and with no real ties to any one place and no real wilderness experience. This being said, it is no wonder that we have had our struggles trying to figure out a path in life that will fulfill both of our needs.

Life fairly recently brought us to Vancouver, to the amazing neighbourhood of Strathcona. Why amazing you ask? Well…I really only have to tell one story to paint a picture of this friendly and funky, eastside neighbourhood. Two months ago, my husband was out of town for 2 weeks, leaving me on my own with 7 month old twins and a barely 3 year old and my neighbourhood friend, Kirsten, arranged a meal tree for me. This meant that EVERY night that my husband was away, a different person in the neighbourhood (some that I barely knew) would make me an amazing, home cooked meal and deliver it to my door, often offering 20-30 minutes of help at the craziest time of my day. Most incredible of all, these were all women with young children too…super, super moms!!!

My handsome husband and beautiful children - More than I had originally bargained for, but I can't imagine it any other way!

Around this time, I struck up a dialogue with Kirsten regarding community and the desire to create a strong network of emotional, physical and (sometimes) financial support. We also expressed our desire to live in a more countrified setting and to live a more sustainable lifestyle than that afforded by city living. As we were already spending a lot of time together (our three year olds are best friends and our babies are only a couple of months apart in age…plus, it would seem, we were growing quite fond of each other as well), we decided that we would like to move towards combining our households.  (Doing WHAT???!!!)  We broached the subject with our husbands, not sure what kind of response we might get.

Gabe and his "girlfriend", Mirabel

Now, the “boys” were not strangers to each other. We had already started a tradition of getting together regularly for board games and, (dare I say it?) Dungeons and Dragons, but I suppose even a weekly date between families is a far cry from actually living together. To my surprise, Alex jumped on board right away and started researching farms for sale that we might be able to afford between our two families, one minor glitch being that none of us has any farming experience. At this time, Kirsten sent me a link for the Yarrow Ecovillage and Groundswell Cohousing. As I explored the Ecovillage website, tears came to my eyes as I realized that other people were already living in the way I had always seen in my mind’s eye as being the only way to REALLY live. I suppose I knew this type of community did exist somewhere, but here it was, within an hour drive of my current home. Could this be the answer to the holes in our lifestyle we had been trying to fill? Twenty acres of organic farm, 2.5 acres of all ages cohousing, and 2.5 acres reserved for mixed use such as retail and seniors cohousing. A way to reap the benefits of organic farming with little to no knowledge of farming ourselves? The amazing sense of connection that comes from working and playing with ALL of your neighbours? Then I got suspicious…surely this was just some kind of a crazy cult because there was no way these people could actually be making this work. 

Just in case this WAS the real deal, I sent an email explaining our situation (wanting to combine two families in one home) and inquiring about tours and housing possibilities that might work for us. After an initial exchange with someone named Cheryl regarding the regularly scheduled tours, I received a very long and very friendly email from someone name Viv regarding a house plan that might work for us and offering to personally give us a tour.  So, we gathered the troops and headed for the Ecovillage on the 20th of May, 2012, just one day shy of my 36th birthday.  Alex’s parents came from Chilliwack to meet us there so that they would know what we were babbling about if it WAS as good as it sounded.

The day was grey, but the mood was bright when we arrived on site, and we instantly felt at home as half of us trooped into Viv’s house to use her toilet. We met her husband Paul and her kids, and started our tour in the showroom while I nursed a baby and gave peanut butter sandwiches to the three year olds. After a brief history of the Ecovillage, we were already sold and amazed by how this place had started and what it was moving towards…a bunch of like minded people buy 25 acres of organic farmland, build some awesome eco friendly homes and a sustainable, loving, supportive, farming community is born. Well…a little more complicated than that, but more or less the gist of things. When we left Yarrow after the tour, we already knew that we had to make this happen. Even Alex’s parents, who are very conservative and don’t necessarily understand all of the choices we have made up to this point, were very clear that this was the place for us. 

The following weekend we attended a community meeting and continued to be impressed. I have never witnessed so much respect in the process of trying to make big decisions with a large group of people. There was so much support and good listening, even in the face of tension and disagreement. I kept thinking how much personal growth a living situation like this would contribute to. Not to mention the amazing benefits of community to emotional health. To quote Mother Theresa as she neared the end of her life of working with the poor and the sick: “The biggest disease today is not leprosy or tuberculosis but rather the feeling of not belonging”. I hadn’t even met everyone in this circle yet, but already I had a sense of belonging, and I confirmed with the rest of my “extended” family afterward, that we all felt the same.

The following (last) weekend, Alex and I went up with the kids to join in a work party whacking blackberry brambles along the creek. For the third weekend in a row, we were making the hour long car trek from Vancouver with our three year old and 9 month old twins…we were definitely hooked! And the only reason Kirsten’s family didn’t make it was because of illness…they were so disappointed not to be returning to the Ecovillage themselves. As Alex whacked brambles I wandered with one twin strapped on my back, and the other on my front, and Gabriel (my little boy) in tow. When I asked him if he would like to live here with Mirabel’s family, he got so excited, he was totally beside himself. He showed me in only the way a 3 year old can exactly what I was feeling inside. It has only been four weeks from the time of our first tour, but we are already counting down to the day that we can truly call the Ecovillage home.

With all of our differences, Alex and I have rediscovered something that we have always known, but something that had grown foggy with the complications of stressful job changes and drastic adjustment to our roles as parents (we REALLY were not planning on having twin babies to accompany our spirited toddler!).  The something that brought us together in the first place...and that is that our fundamental needs and wants (living a loving, supportive, environmentally friendly, sustainable, joyous, physically fit, HAPPY life) are exactly the same, and that living in Groundswell Cohousing is the answer to making this all possible for both of us.