Create Your Own Community

With families often living great distances from each other, and friends often going separate ways, finding a community to share your life with can often be tricky in this day and age. Are you feeling alone? Consider creating your own community!

Since there are not a lot of Unschoolers in Southern Arizona (where my family and I live), some friends and I started the SOARing Unschoolers (SOuthern ARizona Unschoolers) group to seek out other families with similar parenting and lifestyle interests. We talk online and have gatherings that average out to about once a week. While none of us are identical in our beliefs and come from very diverse backgrounds, our bonds strengthen whenever we are together since we all believe in Unschooling. Unschooling is a lifestyle choice that bonds families in very interesting and strong ways, even when cultural and individual differences exist. It is a whole way of thinking that respects children as fully formed human beings and believes in their innate ability to learn from living.

Advertise what you are looking for. Libraries, bookstores, and online lists are great ways to seek out like-minded people/families. Thousands and thousands of google and yahoo groups exist just for people to find communities of people with similar interests. If in your search you can't find a single individual with a similar lifestyle, consider broadening your scope and definition of lifestyle. Just get out there (or stay home) and do the things that interest you and look around at the other people doing them with you. The people might not be a similar age or from the same background as you, but these are the people that make up your community. Take a class, browse around a hobby shop, ask your co-workers out to dinner. You might find that you have a lot more in common than you originally thought (or you might learn about new ways of living that you never knew of before). Don't be afraid of talking to random strangers in stores. You might find a new best friend in that carseat aisle. Then again, you might not, but at least you'll know that you broadened your horizons and took a chance!