Community: Connections that heal

"We don’t heal in isolation, but in community.”– S. Kelley Harrell

“We cannot live only for ourselves. A thousand fibers connect us with our fellow men.” – Herman Melville

In my journal this morning, I shared a moment of gratitude for the connections I’ve made on Fort Myers Beach. So many of my friends and neighbors are friendly, kind-hearted folks from the Midwest. I was journaling just how blessed I am to live here.

I acknowledged Goodness & Mercy for bringing me in contact with so many good people. I really love the people on this island. It fills me with a sense of connection to this place, one that I’ve felt for more than a decade.

COMMUNITY

I am blessed to be a part of this island community. I feel a sense of community here that I haven’t felt in over two years.

I understand the importance of it. I am a pack animal. Since childhood, I’ve always been very social. I guess you could say I “came by it honestly.” My mother, God rest her soul, was voted “class flirt” in her 1967 high school yearbook. 😄 Everyone of my high school teachers told my mother, “Chris is always talking in class. If he’d just apply himself…” But that was the best part of attending a small, Catholic high school with kids I’d known for years…some since the first grade!…was being social and honing some basic and crucial life skills. I didn’t realize it as a teen, but I was building community. And a few of those connections have lasted a LIFETIME!

Feeling connected to “your pack” helps provide a sense of belonging. I realize that now that I’m older. I appreciate and cherish those connections. It helps to waylay loneliness and the feeling of isolation.

In the Information Age in which we live, it’s easy to rely on social media for those connections, but it can create a false sense of community. I try to see platforms like Facebook and Instagram as vehicles to maintain those connections and create new ones. I have more of an appreciation for that having been off the latter for almost a year before rejoining in July. It’s so nice when those virtual connections get flesh and bone when I finally meet a new FB friend in person! And since moving back to the island, you wouldn’t believe how many new friends have come up to me excitedly, “I follow you on Facebook!” It always makes me happy. A new member added to my pack.

MY BOULDER COMMUNITY

Meet Nicole Speer, Boulder Town Council progressive now running for mayor. She is part of my pack out there. We met while volunteering to feed and clothe the city’s homeless. My pack included MOSTLY unhoused people, as I was one of them.

I made good use of my time out there in 2020-21 advocating for the unhoused while living with them and volunteering to assist them get a leg up. They WERE my community, a tight-knit family.

I volunteered weekly with Feet Forward, Inc., founded and operated by my friend Jennifer Livovich. Her organization fed me in the park several times, then I began helping her team setup, befriending many of them and earning her trust. In a matter of weeks, I was at her place helping to organize and load supplies for the weekly community meals. It’s where I made many friends, like entrepreneur and Feet Forward board member Graham, and volunteers and community activists, like Nicole.

I met her when she was considering a run for City Council and became a member of her campaign team, helping with social media content. She got elected the month after my father’s passing forced me to leave Boulder for good. And now look at her! I am so proud, as she is a beautiful person inside and out!

But I realized with this morning’s moment of gratitude just how much I MISSED THAT feeling of community.

I left Boulder, buried my Dad and bounced between the Indianapolis area and Evansville for months at a time, 19 of them in all. At the end of May, I landed back on Fort Myers Beach…MY BEACH! This island has felt like home to me since I first landed here the summer of 2011. And not a day goes by that I don’t ride my bike up and down this seven-mile paradise and get waved to, honked or hollered at by a member of my community.

It feels good to be connected again…to have a pack. That’s all.