Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: Re: Cohousing, Communes, ...

[Empathy (Empathy]

lynn farnum asked me if my life was different living in cohousing in denmark
from other children my age who did not live in cohousing.

in regards to this the main things that come to mind are:
1: i have been living in the united states continuously now since i was
    14, and the main influences i feel are not from the cohousing
    experience, but they are from the fact that there are vastly different
    morals here relating to sensuality and its impact on sexuality and
    "drug" usage.  
2 i did feel somewhat "disconnected" upon returning to the    states because
in denmark there were always a    lot of people    around (many of whom you
didnt like, but you missed    them when    they were gone), and when i was
here in high school i 
   felt isolated and alone....but again i do not know if that was
      because of the lack of platonic physical contact or because of a
      relative sparsity of social interactions.
now that i am in college and in a dorm i did feel that it was nice to have a
lot of people around again, but the dorm situation is not really a cohousing
situation, because most of the things that made my unit a cohouse ie the
tasks of daily living such as cleaning cooking etc, are done for us in a
dorm.
3 it seemed to me that there was not much difference between the    children
   who lived in cohousing and those who did not, i think the    difference
was in the adults.  i think that the adults who lived in    cohousing were
more self confident. i do not think cohousing made    them this way, but that
those people who were not self confident    chose not to be in cohousing
                                           
there have been some comments about my name.....my name is Rebecca S.
  although on the computer i do prefer to be "empathy"