My Experience with "Community Living"

I am likely the last person who would have chosen to live interdependently with a group of women for four months. I have always valued my independence and my solitude and often found the time I spent with others to be very stressful. I believed I needed lots of time alone to regroup. So it was only because I couldn't face the alternatives, that I found the courage to try this experience.

I came to learn that if you really want to change and heal yourself, joining a community of like-minded people has the potential to greatly accelerate that journey. It certainly did for me! The more people we interact with, the more "stuff" comes up that give us an opportunity to look at ourselves. In ordinary circumstances, we do not often have the time and space to consciously use these triggers as grist for the mill so to speak. It is too easy to lose focus in the everyday reality of work and simply getting through the day. But when everyone with you is first and foremost focused on mutual growth as the ONE goal that really matters, you can't escape. Moreover, eventually I stopped wanting to escape because I could see that staying and facing myself was the only way through.

It was an amazing four months for me not even counting beautiful Hawaii and its spirit of Aloha.

So in brief, if you want to accelerate your healing and have the opportunity to do so, I highly recommend spending some time in Bunny and Jane's conscious community. It can be a life changing experience.

(By the way, since then I have had another opportunity to share living space for short time with a different group of friends. I found this to be much more challenging simply because in this case we did not have either a common purpose or an agreed upon process for getting through the problems that inevitably came up. )

To read about Shirley's Initial Experience of working with Bunny and Jane.

Enjoy Shirley's first poem How I Am Unlovable, Let Me Count The Ways

For an eighteen month follow up read Shirley's Update.