I have been a “community” professional long before it became a business buzzword and part of my official title. After growing a nascent community department and joining many other community professionals in helping to define what exactly community means, one of my favorite analogies for explaining Community is that it is like tending a garden. You can kinda control what goes in and what comes out (talking about care and attention NOT gatekeeping, folks), but you can never predict or dictate how things will grow and how the presence of what is in the garden changes with what is around it. When curated and nurtured correctly, the garden (community) begins to tend to itself and nature really takes over. Approaching community building with an open mind and allowing members to take the lead builds trust and connection that creates a breeding ground for growth. Deep connections (roots) can be formed when sharing meaningful experiences and acts of advocacy (when you turn over a rock and find earthworms improving the condition of the soil, for example) can indicate a healthy community that members want others to be a part of. There is also a slower pace to a garden growing in the right ways, just like a community. Knowing when to water, prune, or support—but also when to back off and watch things grow—is a game changer when it comes to community building.

Community is active, not passive; a verb, not a noun. The past decade of my career has shifted a focus towards the necessity of community beyond a physical location or business strategy and more about how groups of people gather with intention and purpose. Successful community groups come together around a shared purpose-there have been a lot of studies connecting human health and happiness to the amount of true connections they have. I think everyone coming out of the COVID era did some reflecting on in-person gatherings and I know I have done a lot of work to creating boundaries around what I say “yes” to and what I am really looking for out of joining and/or building communities either online or in-person. When we practice ways of being that reflect abundance and collaboration, we begin to counter the lies of scarcity and competition.