Creating and Sustaining a Community

Now I don’t want to get too existential on a relaxing afternoon but I don’t have work so what else am I going to do today (maybe cook, practice a new hobby? Nope. I’m choosing to do none of those haha). As having moved to France twice now and edging a mere wise 23 years old (lol), I’ve been thinking about how I have evolved while moving through these different stages in my life. I had someone reach out to me and ask me if I was worried about being lonely and not knowing anyone. And the short answer is yes, I was terrified. Moving across the world is not easy, but it can be done with patience and living in the present. The most important thing that I have learned after my 2 moves abroad have been this: you must create a space of stability from where you can grow.

By this phrase I mean something along the lines of the old saying (when people talk about relationships) “you must be comfortable with yourself before you can let another person into your life” or something along those lines. Basically what I’m trying to say is that without a sense of “Home” or “Belonging” it can be really hard to grow to your fullest potential without some support. Ok this is going to sound extremely cliche but true, it’s sort of like a tree that needs roots in order to take up water and grow flowers and eventually 10 times its size. Without the roots, the tree could not grow. Much like humans, without the support it becomes extremely difficult to grow.

So the reason why I am talking about trees and roots and support is because I’m talking about moving to another country and how vital and necessary it is to create a support network while making the move abroad or elsewhere. I am so lucky to have a super supportive family but I am talking about making friends (the thing we all learned in kindergarten but still can be daunting now-a-days). Often times when people move across the world it is to go find themselves and to spend time alone which can absolutely be done but there is a difference between productive time alone and just forcing yourself to be lonely and wondering why you aren’t finding the answers to life. I’ve noticed that in my first 2 months back here in France that there are many people in my program who expected to sort of have a support system from the program but I think everyone is slowly realizing that this is not the case (not shitting on TAPIF at all but it’s very different than studying abroad). I think this is the difference between college life and post-college life, it is a skill to learn how to create a support network and it is not the easiest skill to learn. And if anything, it is one of the most vital skills to learn as an adult. In college, there are always new roommates to meet, parties to attend, clubs to join and it’s not terribly out of the ordinary to spend most weekends socializing in some way since college brings together many young 20 somethings into one place. In post college life, it’s not quite the same. I’ve noticed that no one tells you where to be and exactly where to go and where to find friends. I mean, many people learn some of these skills in college but actually applying these skills to a model that is entirely up to you (yay adult life) may be a lot trickier than it seems.

Since coming to France, my absolute number 1 priority when I got here (besides finding housing of course) was to put myself out there and make friends. Sounds simple right? Once more and more assistants got here I started to go to more and more meet-ups to kind of find my people that I connected with. Now I am no statistician but I think going to more and more meet-ups increases my chances of finding my “people” aka the people I could really be myself around. Now, this may sound calculated but it sort of was. It took an investment of time, energy and money (going out/activities ain’t cheap) but eventually I made some of the most genuine, kind and fun friends (you know who you are).

Thanksgiving in Lille :)

I recently read an article on the Ted Idea website and it was about how important creating rituals with friends reinforces friendship and bring you closer. It was interesting because when I read this article I kind of had an “Ah-ha” moment that I hadn’t realized that me and my friends here in Lille had been doing: we had been creating a ritual. At least once a week for the first month or so, we met to go out to the same bar around the same time to talk about our day at work or whatever we had done. And I want to emphasize that the rituals don’t necessarily have to be static because as the months and weeks have passed we have switched from going to a bar to playing board games and cooking at least once a week. Personally, I didn’t even realize we were doing it but it really made us all grow relatively close in a short period of time. Creating this routine and ritual of meeting at least once a week with more or less all of us, ensured that there was support here in France even during a stressful time of transition and moving (especially for me in the beginning when I hadn’t moved into stable housing and was living alone in a new city).

I’m not here to preach but I’m here to write down my thoughts and feelings and to share with anyone who might care or could benefit from them. It’s not easy to move (whether it’s across the world or to a city next door) but community is something that I think gets overlooked as a need and it really is a priority that I feel like people think “should come natural” and I think sometimes people get ashamed when they aren’t the one in the room that everyone sort of gravitates towards. I think it takes time and practice to really refine how to find “your people” when you move from one place to another. It’s a skill that needs to be put into practice, learned and improved upon. I especially think about all the introverts in my life, in which I know it is not easy and emotionally exhausting to put yourself out there at first but the investment is worth it to find a community of even one or two friends that have your back.