Community is a Gift We Give Ourselves
With the holidays approaching, we find ourselves thinking more and more about experiential gifts—that we’d like to receive as well as share. Here, Quilt’s co-founder shares her thoughts on how and why community may well be the best thing we can do for ourselves in the New Year. Download the app to join us!
by Ashley Sumner
It’s no secret — even as our world becomes increasingly digitally connected, loneliness is on the rise. Families are smaller, neighborhoods more fragmented, and the pressures of modern living demand ever more of our time and emotional resources. When I co-founded Quilt in 2017, I was seeking an anecdote to this; I was looking for my own community. I wasn’t raised with religion, and I didn’t have a lot of friends growing up. I didn’t fit in anywhere — not at home, not at school, and I tended to make people uncomfortable with my intensity. I went inward. I became a chameleon to those around me because “different” was difficult.
In my 20s, I worked as a community developer for lifestyle brands, helping to build memberships and audiences. I enjoyed the work, tapping into my natural talents of connecting people. But then I realized I was doing it for everyone but myself. Community, I realized, is a gift we give ourselves. It’s the outward manifestation of a whole, healthy, relationship with self and our place in the world. Our wellbeing is defined by the conversation we’re having with ourselves — communities are defined by the conversations we have with each other.
Conversation as a Gift
But it’s more than that. Shared, public conversation can shift perspectives and effect real change. Words have immense power, and we need a safe container to explore what it means to communicate. We’ve all heard the idea that our thoughts can change our experiences; perspective matters. The same goes when we’re talking community. These shifts have profound ripple effects that can impact much more than our personal selves or our immediate circle.
I like to call it the “2+2=5 theory.” If we feel whole (individual transformation), and we align with another who does, it equals more than our individual wholeness. Aristotle is credited with a common variation of this idea: The whole is greater than the sum of its parts. When we commit to collective transformation as well as individual, we are able to reap significant benefits across the board.
Working toward collective transformation through the nurturing of community is hard work that requires trust and commitment. It requires showing up in the ways you say you’re going to — even if those ways are as small and simple as walking through the door on time.
Tools for Collective Transformation
It all comes back to the realization that we’re not alone, that the struggle we experience doesn’t have to be undergone solo, and that we have more in common than we may realize. The need to go at it alone, or the belief that you must, is limiting — these kinds of limiting beliefs are what hold us back from ourselves and from others. We all struggle with feelings of loneliness, inadequacy, and insecurity. The biggest tool we have to find “2+2=5 wholeness” is to recognize — through shared experience — that our challenges are not unique, and to learn how to lean on community for support through them.
What I’ve found to be so healing about Quilt is that we’re designed to show you just that: that you’re not alone. That someone who doesn’t look like you, who you may otherwise would have never met, who is at a different life stage than you entirely, is having the exact same thoughts.
Bottom line? When we come together in this way, we give ourselves the gift of communicative healing, of the solidarity in shared experience, and we radiate that outwardly into the world. And this is a significant step forward to addressing the loneliness epidemic — to finding the strength to recognize that different isn’t difficult, but a crucial part of an interconnected whole.
Find your community of supportive women and conversations that matter. Join us for a Quilt chat! To learn more, click here.
