...Find Your Community (thoughts on REAL community)
At the beginning of this week, I took a little trip to the North Bay, Rohnert Park, for a little vacay, Friendsgiving, and to just spend time with people I have missed dearly. For those that don’t know, Rohnert Park is where FacePalmer started. I was in my last year at SSU at the time, trying to build community in the music department, but found my own community through the dance department. Because it was my last year, I had a lot of open space for other classes and clubs and found my way to the Blue Baronz Dance Crew/Club. Long story short, after many long, late night practices for Winter Vibes Showcase hosted by Auxiliary in Santa Rosa, Lip Jam, PCN, and our own showcase, and after many memorable times at Sharis, Applebees, or my apartment at the time, I found a group of people I could truly be myself: my community.
It wasn’t until this past Monday at the LIVE live FacePalmer POWER UP Session (appropriately at Sharis with some of my Blue Baronz peeps), where I said out loud that REAL community happens in small groups, like mine in the picture.
I used to think that a real community, whether it’s a workplace or a team, wouldn’t have any cliques or smaller tribes that divided the overarching group. I used to see that as division, as a problem. When I was an usher at the Green Music Center (the music venue on Sonoma’s campus), it would bother me when groups formed in the workplace, causing others to be visibly, physically left out. As I write this, I think what bothered me the most was that people were being left out and not so much that smaller groups were formed.
If I’m being completely honest with you, and myself, I had and have my own small groups. Yeah, I can be inviting, friendly, and warm to as many people as I can, trying to bring everyone together, but what about me? What about feeling like I can take a step back and not have to exert any extra energy into feeling myself or feeling understood? If I’m being honest, I only really feel that way with my clique (ew. That word literally makes my mouth uncomfortable so I probably won’t use that again, but you get what I mean).
This isn’t to say that I’m not an advocate of bringing as many people together as possible, where finding fault in each other is easy, but we still put work in to understanding each other and helping each other grow. Those big groups or overarching groups are still types of community, but those smaller groups that form within, those groups of anywhere between two to ten people, are where the real connections are formed. That’s where those ride-or-die connections are made. That’s where tears are shed, either from sharing in each other’s pain or just laughing too damn hard.
As I’m divIng deeper and putting into practice the messages of this brand, I’m starting to see how my original thoughts on certain topics, like community, are changing, or rather, maturing. I think I’d still prefer big groups to be able to come together, be vulnerable with each other, and have each other’s backs, but realistically, these small tribes are where real community and connections are made.
If you’ve got a small tribe of your own, good for you! I hope you give to them as much as they give to you and/or vice versa.
If you don’t have a small a tribe of your own yet, that’s okay! You’ll find it eventually or they will find you. If you’d like to talk about it, feel free to DM me on insta or email me.
Whether you have a small tribe or you don’t, remember that finding differences in other tribes is easy. It’s easy to put division between yourselves and it’s easy to just ignore each other. But if the time comes where you need to come together, I hope this message is a reminder to take a step back from the initial judgements you might carry and take some time to understand each other.