How to Find True Community

You have to have more than one. We have five. And they like love each other and they’re always together. And whenever I see them, because they have a huge cage, but they’re always together. It strikes me that we, you know, we need to live like that. We need to live in a community. And I’m sorry that in our modern day, it’s very hard to find it. I’m sorry. 

I want to validate that it is, it is so difficult to find it. At the parish level, with schools, with people your own age, with people going through the same life thing as you, it is difficult. And sometimes we have to pay for it. Which is also just not how it’s supposed to be. We really should live in tribes or at least in small villages where you can see your neighbors, you can trust them. Like for us, it would be living on the same street as many Catholic families that you trusted, that you could do life with. But that isn’t how most of us live and so we have to work harder to create it, but just because it is harder to create where you have to pay for it, it is still worth it. Humans need to do life with other humans, especially those who are going through the same. Things because otherwise we start to feel so isolated and alone, and then your mind will do weird things. 

When you feel isolated alone, your mind does weird things. And that’s why when you get a baby rat, they make such a big deal about how you have to have at least two and preferably three or four. So I just want to talk about some of the ways that you can find community and help your brain steps through the barriers to doing that. So one is reaching out and trying to create a mom’s group at your parish and here’s the mindset issue that you have to overcome. People are not going to show up. 

They’re going to cancel. They’re going to be noncommittal. It’s going to be frustrating. And in my opinion, we have to do it anyway. We have to keep pushing. We have to keep trying, we have to tell each other. Moms, we need to see each other. We need to talk about life with each other.  We cannot go through life alone. It was interesting a new family just moved here. I haven’t even met them yet. But someone found out that they were coming. And they sent out a message to all the families. 

All these dads were waiting at their house, which they knew, not a creepy way waiting at their house when they pulled up to unload. They’re moving, then they knock it out in less than two hours. Because there were so many guys that showed up and I thought, good job. Good job St. Joseph community. 

Like we really stepped up and showed them, you know, welcome we’re here. We’ll help you. And I see a lot of that. Anytime someone other mom recently broke her arm. Oh, bless her. She was ice skating with her husband. They wanted a date without the kids and her skate got caught onto something and she’d fell just the wrong way and really had quite a severe break in her arm. 

And immediately, everybody kind of rallied around her for meals and helping watch her two little kids and just being like a mother’s helper to her and it was so great. And so I think it’s just, it’s worth doing. But it is really annoying and difficult; that’s the part I want to validate. I think what keeps us from doing it is we think. Oh, I should just be able to create a mom’s group and it’s going to go swimmingly and everyone’s going to show up. And they don’t, it’s like pulling teeth and falling on your face and being embarrassed. And asking someone to go out on a date with you and then. You know, it’s even worse than them saying no, they say maybe, and then no. At the last minute, right?  And just in this modern age, that is how most people are, but I want us to fight against that. 

And I want you to say this speech to your friends or send them this podcast episode. I will call all of us out and just say, I know we don’t want to leave our houses. I know we’re tired. I don’t like to leave the house after dark. Most of us have that, like I took my bra off, so I’m not going anywhere feeling. But at the same time I want all of us to acknowledge that we are so lonely.  

And modern day parenting and life is so difficult. And we need this. We need to get together. We need to laugh. We need to share difficult things. We need to swap parenting ideas and hacks. I’d like to see more moms meet over zoom together. I think we could really push that forward. Because then you could still have your bra off. And the kids could be running around behind you, but you could still connect over zoom. I think we’ve really become accustomed to doing that in the business setting. But I haven’t seen that as much in moms groups. And so I just, I want to be an advocate for that and say, let’s try it. Maybe it’d be awesome and it’s worth pursuing.  

The next thing I think women should do is when you have unique problems. Spectrum kids, you know, special needs things. A military family. I don’t know, there’s just, there’s this kind of unique thing that comes with certain families. I really think you should go find at least one other person who’s Catholic and that thing like finding another Catholic military mom. Right or another, a Catholic mom who has a kid who is severely allergic to gluten so that you can be together and you can validate this. 

Oh my goodness. Yep. This is a real cross and it is difficult. I’m not crazy. And here’s how we give glory to God and do life anyway. And there are Facebook groups and other places, and you could even ask people, Hey, do you know anyone else who’s dealing with this? It’s just like good old fashioned networking and then find a mom. I know it will be awkward. This is the mindset thing. It will be awkward to find and make friends with a person who’s dealing with something similar to what you’re dealing with, but I’m telling you it is worth it. It is worth it to have a friend that you can text. 

You know, for me, it would be someone who had three kids in three years. And just like wanting to be friends with someone who did that. So I could just say, yeah, it is different, that is a different life experience then people on the kid, every two year plan. And we’re not saying that anything is better or worse, we’re not comparing for the sake of making any moral judgements on people, right? 

You just want to find someone that’s going through, what you’re going through. And I think that is, what’s so amazing about the internet and how we can be connected to people who live all over the earth is that we can find people who are going through the unique things that we’re going through and we can encourage each other. It’s not for the sake of complaining. We don’t want to make a bunch of groups for us to sit around and go, oh, everything’s terrible. They can be a little bit of that. There can be a little like food. Today was a day. Woo. And then you kind of tell your friend how the day was, but it should always, the punchline should always be, God is with you. 

I love you. You’ve got this. This is for a reason. And we can, we can do that with each other, but I just know that it’s very uncomfortable and requires quite a bit of effort. To find that, to pursue that, to date a couple people, but it’s just worth it. I’m telling you, like, I really want you to know that we were not meant to live alone and people get weird when they’re alone and that’s how most of us Moms live. We’re just in a house by ourselves with small children every day, every day. 

And then we see a little bit of our husbands in the evening. And for most women, that’s kind of it. And then they might smile and have a two-minute conversation with someone after mass. And I’m telling you, that’s not enough. You will go a little bananas. And some of you live in the country. Some of you have parishes where everybody is 65 or older. There are a lot of extenuating circumstances that are real. Where you tell me Sterling, it’s extra hard for me to make friends or find community because, and I want to say, yeah, All those things are real and true, and that does make it harder. And I still think it’s worth it. I still think it’s worth it to feel awkward, to feel frustrated and to keep trying.  

And I will tell you, even though I think it’s great. If you could have a few friends, you really just need one. You really just need one human that you can talk to sometimes who gets what you’re going through. Has to be a woman can be a man. And they have to be your friend. They have to want to either text you or go for walks or something to do life with. And to maybe do zoom calls. Can you imagine how awkward it would be?  

To meet someone at your parish and say, Hey, I’m really looking for a friend to do life ways, I’d really love it. If someone was up for doing a zoom meeting once a week. Because it’s kind of hard for us to get out of the house. That’s the most awkward thing ever. But what if someone said yes? What if you met your friend? Soulmate? I realize it’s not a thing, but you know what I mean? Like that perfect person that’s just like, you could do life with. That you could text.  

That will bring you dinner when you break your arm or if they live states away, they’ll just like to send you some dinner. Instacart you something, I don’t know. I want to validate that it is harder than it has ever been. To have friends but it is worth the effort. So much of the work that I do as a life coach is I help people understand that their thoughts create their feelings and that they can handle having uncomfortable feelings. You can handle the feeling of rejection or vulnerability.  

And if you do that a few times, one, you won’t die, I promise. And two, you might. Meet someone that you can do life with. Please make the effort to do this and pray, say, Lord please guide me to find a friend or many friends.  A community, I think we tried the low hanging fruit stuff and it didn’t work. And then we just kind of go, oh, that was hard. And then we go back to being isolated and alone.  

And we’re aware of it. I mean, there’s not very many women that I meet, who aren’t aware that we are really isolated as parents now. But I think we allow ourselves to indulge in the excuse of life and don’t know what to try, it’s hard. And I agree that it is hard, but there are 30 things you haven’t tried. And I’m telling you it’s worth trying. It is worth doing life with other people.  

And an example of that is this marriage group that I have, so I have this Group for Catholic Moms who are in really painful marriages, but are choosing to stay. Right. These are the marriages that probably would have grounds for annulment and divorce, right, pretty close to that, but they choose to stay. They want to stay. 

And just the solidarity and community and love in that group with these women we’re all over the United States in totally different life stages. But have this thing in common. It’s just been incredible to me how much they love each other and support each other and root for each other.  

And they’ll say. oh, we had a really hard day yesterday and he was coming at me about this and that, and this. But I was thinking about all of you while I was standing there. And I was thinking about what we learned here or those I was thinking about Sterling said. And I was calm. And I was respectful. That’s so much of the work that we do is controlling how we show up no matter how our husbands show up. 

And it sucks that all those women had to pay to be part of a group to find that, but I don’t know how else to do it. For that group. Like, I, it really, it requires somebody that it’s their job to buy all of the tech and do all of the marketing and pull all of the people together. So sometimes you might find a group and you have to pay to be part of it. But I still think it’s worth it.  

And maybe God is calling you to be the one to start a group that’s around a particular issue. To bring women together, so that they can heal together and do life together.  

So, if you’re interested, I have a video for that group. You can go to catholicmarriagehope.com and I filmed an hour long video that teaches what we teach in that group. Not everybody can.  Come be part of that group or want to,  but I did want to help anybody who does have a painful marriage, at least to have the tools that we teach there. So you can go to Catholic marriage, hope.com and see that free video.  

I’m just going to keep coming here and saying this, you guys, I’m just going to keep coming here and saying we have to do life with other women. I think that’s so important. And it is uncomfortable and it’s harder than it should be and it does require you to be vulnerable and face rejection and to be frustrated that people stay home when they said that they were going to come. Keep inviting them, keep putting things on, keep asking. It is worth it.  

All right my friends. I am praying for you. Please pray for me. Thank you so much for listening and have a blessed day.