Cohousing-L Mailing List: My Heart is Heavy

[Ann Zabaldo (zabaldo]

My dear best cohousers near and far …

Acknowledgement:   This list is created to help cohousers in the living in, 
building of, and maintenance of cohousing communities. I promise there’s a tie 
in.

Let me also acknowledge that I am writing this under pressure this morning to 
get to medical appointments, submit my bills to close out our TVC budget, get 
these empty boxes out of the way so I don’t keep rolling over them (power 
wheelchair rider), put the milk back in the refrigerator before I leave and 
feed the dog.  Oh. I don’t have a dog...

Since Oct. 7th,  from where I sit now I have looked at a world coming apart.

Yet, I live in this warm comfortable space called cohousing where people try to 
meet standards of human interactions even when we fail miserably.  We fall on 
our faces a lot.

From this space, it is unfathomable to me that there is so much hate in the 
world that leads to despicable acts of violence.  Students being harassed on 
campus?  A six year old boy stabbed to death?  Cemeteries burned?  What is 
happening to my world out there?  Operative words:  “out there."

Cliff Note version of what I understand:  when we marginalize people, 
dehumanize people, racialize people, ______fill in the blank, when people are 
separated from each other, we open flood gates through which pour ancient and 
contemporaneous rivers of fear, fear, fear … leading to RAGE.  Absolutely RAGE. 
 We see it in Road Rage and we see it now in this cesspool of outrageous acts 
throughout the world.People separated from each other by eons of distrust, etc.

Cohousing communities are antidotes to this separation.

And yet ...

Here’s the tie in … I hope.

And yet ...

Where are our cohousing voices?  Not the standard political voices.  No.  The 
cohousing politics of living face to face everyday w/ differences far and wide. 
I realized this morning I haven’t reached out to my own community much less the 
185 built communities and 200+ incubating their hearts out. 

I haven’t seen anything on this list although I may certainly have missed 
conversations posted here.

I haven’t said anything to my own community members or posted anything to our 
own list.

How are our Muslim, Arab, Jews and all other members of the panoply of 
cohousing thinking about their safety in the world right now?  Have I asked?  
Just ‘cause I feel safe … how do others in my very own community feel?  Have I 
reached our to them to let them know I stand with you?   

Comparatively, I have lived in a safe community for 23 years.  I live a life I 
love and live powerfully.  I’m so excited and about cohousing I’m evangelical 
about it. Beware those of you standing in grocery lines w/ me …

And yet, (here’s that “yet” again) I wonder … is cohousing part of the problem 
by creating cozy places to live?  I don’t really need to go beyond our "front 
gate” to live out my life.  

Or does my cohousing life give me the foundation to believe we can change the 
world?  Because, you know  … we can.

Am I living in a fantasy that the caring of a very white, meditating, 
semi-buddhist, power wheelchair riding shiksa w/ a sprained ankle mean anything 
given the turmoil around us?  Believe me … I wonder … I do wonder.

So I ask you now, all of you:  how are you doing today?  


Best —

Ann Zabaldo
Takoma Village Cohousing
Washington, DC
Ex. Dir. & Mbr. Board of Directors
Mid Atlantic Cohousing
Principal, Cohousing Collaborative, LLC
Falls Church, VA
202.546.4654
zabaldo [at] earthlink.net

People can be divided into two groups: those who think they are right.