Very astute observations about cohousing
From: David Heimann (heimannworld.std.com)
Date: Fri, 19 Dec 2003 20:39:11 -0700 (MST)
Hello,

        I read the following letter to the editor recently from Joan
Labbe, a member of Mosaic Commons Cohousing.  In it, she describes the
cohousing dynamic in what I feel is a very accurate, readable, and
effective way.  I have her permission to forward it to Cohousing-L.  Read
it, enjoy, and use it to inform your own larger communities!

Best regards,
David Heimann
JP Cohousing

============================================================================

From: Joan Labbe
Sent: Wednesday, December 03, 2003 11:49 AM
To: editor [at] brainchildmag.com
Subject: Letter to the Editor


Dear Brain, Child Editors,

I have been a member of a cohousing group working to build a community for
the last year and a half.  I hve also been visitor on several occasions to
two local established communities, interviewed cohousing residents, and been
involved on a national email list for cohousers.  So I read with great
anticipation and growing disappointment your Winter 2004 feature article
"Village People".

Cohousing is definitely not for everyone and I respect anyone's decision
that it is not for them.  However, I take great issue with the last few
pages of the article when the author attempts to generalize, based on
visiting only one cohousing community and reseraching mostly communal
living, as to what the drawbacks to cohousing are in general, that is, what
cohousing demands of its members.  Cohousing groups differ greatly in many
areas including values, goals, physical layout of the community, certainly
the predominant parenting style, areas of diversity and rules by which
members agree to live.  I would hate for anyone to visit one cohousing
group, feel their parenting style did not fit in, and draw the conclusion
that cohousing as a whole was not for them.  It seems more likely to me that
that particular group was not for them.

I believe this article, since it purports to draw conclusions about
cohousing in general, would benefit greatly from the author including visits
to three or four cohousing communities, doing more research (much of which
is available on the internet) on cohousing rather than communal living and
checking her impressions with cohousers to see if they resonate.  She could
also have benefited from joining the national email list and seeing what
types of conflicts come up on there.  By not doing this, she has written an
article that is not able to be well rounded or accurately draw a picture of
the common facets of cohousing.

What the author wrote about diffusion of intimacy in families and the need
for hard conflict resolution work did seem accurate for my experience with
cohousing, although some of her research was based on communal living.
Cohousing families often face the dilemna of how to get in "family time" and
many communities report coming up with creative ways of doing this - such as
designating a family night and having signs on their doors letting residents
know when they would like not to be disturbed.  I admired the author for her
perception when she wonders if she was ready for the hard work of conflict
resolution that is necessary for really living closely to other families and
knowing them well.  It is indeed hard work, but with a huge payoff.

However, there were other generalities at the end of the article which did
not accurately reflect my experience with my cohousing group nor my
experience visiting other cohousing groups.  The author talks about her
perception that cohousing exerts pressure on its members to be "a certain
kind of person", which seemed to be someone who is neighborly and sharing
all the time - a regular group of "Mother Theresa's" it would seem.  I have
not experienced such pressure.  Actually I have found my cohousing
counterparts to be pretty regular people who, like most of us, feel like
sharing sometimes, and sometimes don't.  What they demand of me is that I be
who I am and that I take responsibility for my needs.  I find it interesting
that the one person the author interviewed who was leaving cohousing was a
person who said she had great difficulty asserting herself or asking for
help.  In the situation where she had babysat other members children and had
messages on her phone and felt she couldn't say no I had quite a different
take than the author who seemed to feel there was an underlying pressure
there from the coho community to change this person.  I saw it as a person
without the skills to communicate what she needed to the community and who
was thus overwhelmed.  She was feeling she couldn't say no, but she didn't
ever say that.  She was needing the other people to read her mind.  Had she
gone back to the community and said "look, this babysitting gig isn't
working for me and I'd rather pass on it", then had her experience been that
the community shunned her in some way, I would be more receptive to seeing
this as the community's issue, rather than the individual member's issue.
As it is, I see the member struggling with making her needs know, which is
crucial to any healthy relationship including those in cohousing.  My own
experience is that many different needs have been expressed in our
community, including many introverts' needs to sit things out and these have
been completely heard and respected.

This brings me to my second area of disagrement, which is what the author
perceived as cohousing's "celebration of the extrovert".  I do not find this
resonates with my experience at all.  In fact, quite the opposite.  I am an
introvert among many in my group.  Before I joined the group, I internalized
what I perceive now to be the celebration of the extrovert in the world at
large - they are the go getters, the ones who get things done.  I always
felt it would be better to be this way instead of being an introverts who
tends to be viewed in terms of what I can't do.  When I joined my cohousing
group I found a strong collection of introverts who had their own needs and
were amazingly comfortable with themselves and good at expressing their
different needs.  This has been a tremendous gift to me in terms of being
comfortable with who I am and realizing that my introversion not only fits
into, but is respected, heard and even valued in my cohousing group in a way
that it is not in the regular world.

Lastly, I feel the need to comment on the author's feeling that she wouldn't
want to be called onto the carpet for values discussions necessarily all the
time.  Together with her comments about how she "wants a situation where I
can control how much I give and receive" it seems like she is saying that a
member in cohousing is not in control of things such as the conflict
resolution process or sharing.  This is also the opposite of my experience
with cohousing.  I will say one thing about control.  Cohousers have the
ultimate control.  There is no "big brother" shaping, molding or telling us
what to do.  We build and run our community together.  We each have a
voice with both the power and the responsibility to use it.  If you are a
member of a coho community and are feeling that someone's snippy comments
about woodchips in someone's mouth or putting bags in the wrong place are
creating an atmosphere you don't like, you have the opportunity to address
it and create a better atmosphere.  That is the hard work and also the
joyous payoff of cohousing.  It demands that we take responsibility for
that which we don't like and which we complain about.  What I find is that
this makes me a better person and that it helps make my cohousing
community (such as it now is pre-land) a better place.

Many folks find that cohousing is not for them from reasons ranging from "I
need more physical and emotional space than that where I live" to "I don't
want to work this hard."  However, this article does not give an accurate
picture of the hard work of cohousing.  I hope to see a more thorough and
well-rounded piece on cohousing in the future in your magazine.

Sincerely,

Joan Labbe



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