Cohousing-L Mailing List: 20 years of coho-L

[Marty Roberts (martyr]

We have been moved in at Two Acre Wood in Sebastopol, CA for 13.5 years now.  
Wow - seems impossible!  All our toddlers are teenagers now and a couple off to 
college.  We are bracing for a big mass evacuation when the current high school 
group flies off to college - or somewhere.

I was involved in the planning process for five years before move in - that was 
a long birthing process.  We had three properties come and go before we landed 
on the one where we now live.  We had four hour meetings every weekend - now we 
meet once a quarter!

At our quarterly meeting on Sunday we had a discussion about aging in place - 
what will this place look like in 15 years?  What should we be preparing for?  
What responsibilities do we have for caring for each other?  Big question….. We 
have had only two of our 14 houses turn over in the the 13+ years we have lived 
here, so chances are good most of us will still be here.

Coho-L and the greater cohousing community were a huge help to us in our early 
years.  I might have posted a question here every other day.  We also did field 
trips to nearby coho communities, attended the conferences and so forth.

Now we are finding it is kind of less cohousing and more a regular neighborhood 
where everyone watches out for each other.  We have discovered that everyone 
has their own lives and there is less focus on community activities than some 
of us expected.  But we still have dinners about twice a week (sporadically), 
quarterly meetings, work days a few times a year, community garden and so forth.

It still feels good that everyone knows each other in a way deeper than a 
regular neighborhood, the kids feel part of a big family and very safe and we 
have a beautiful place to live.  Many of us are very involved in the greater 
community and our common house is well known as a community gathering place for 
all kinds of meetings and events.  We have a yoga class in the common house 
every Saturday with the same teacher almost since we moved in.

When the occasional conflicts and upsets come along, I pause and then realize I 
am still glad I live here and can't imagine living anywhere else.  (I am a 
single woman in my 60's by the way.)

Marty Roberts
Two Acre Wood, Sebastopol, CA



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‎"Enjoy the little things in life, because one day you will look back, and 
realize they were the big things." - Robert Brault