Cohousing-L Mailing List: Communication when times are stressful

[March Twisdale (march]

Dear Fellow Cohousers,

Hi, my name is March and I've not posted in awhile.  I have just looked
through the archives, but I feel that I'll need some back and forth
discussion to better work through my current frustrations.  Let me give a
quick background of where we're at here in Duwamish Cohousing:

    Basically, construction of our 23 unit community (plus a CH and a small
commons) was to take 9 months and be completed in April of 2000.  Today is
Thanksgiving of 2000 and we just got into our Common House about two weeks
ago.  We just attained substantial completion on Nov. 9th.  We finally had
all moved in between June 17-July 25th and have been living with
construction workers constantly coming in and out of our homes, repainting,
retexurizing, ripping up plants, fixing the heating, lighting, etc.  It is
very stressful for some of us and annoying for all of us.

    So, I joined in March or April of 1999 and have been somewhat concerned
from the get-go about how much "Community Building" gets put off for "the
next meeting" while mostly only business stuff gets done.  Once we moved in,
we had all talked about how much easier it would be to attend to the living
together stuff, communication, etc.  However, when we did finally move in
people were so stressed by the construction and moving issues that instead a
lot of negative attention got focused on the length of meetings (4 hours
every Sunday) and we cut back to every other week meetings.  Then we cut
back to 3 hour meetings and now we are down to 2-hour meetings every other
week.

    Maybe I'm wrong, but 4 hours together a month (only 4 months into living
together) as a community doesn't seem like a lot of time....AND we are still
shunting the Community Building stuff off to this imaginary "next meeting".
This really bothers me because I see all sorts of normal "American" style
behaviors emerging amongst our members...communication is falling
apart...cliques are forming...people are feeling isolated...feelings are
being hurt...and trust is suffering.  This is what I hear from others and
feel myself.

    So, my question is....how can I encourage more attention to these
issues?  We even have a "CPR" (Conflict Prevention & Resolution) team set
up....but until this week they were too busy to meet until we had a problem
to deal with....where's the Prevention in that?  AND....I had problems way
back (as have others) but there's a big sense of people being too stressed
to deal with the less important issues of communication.  We've had teams of
people out working on Sweat Equity projects every weekend,...but no one will
gather to talk about communication.  Even talking about the kids (there are
18 children in our community so it's a big issue) gets chronically cut from
our agendas.

    I'm frustrated because we're spending time on the superficial, business
stuff....and ignoring the infinitely more difficult and more important
interpersonal stuff.  I'm scared that we will fall apart on the inside while
our outsides finally get finished!

Thanks for all input from others who have been there,
March