What is a village?
The saying “it takes a village” is thrown around openly when talking about draining life events. Mostly female dominated ones (child rearing, parental care giving, household mental loads) but that, and the fact that women are socially conditioned to keep to themselves during these events, is a different topic.
But what really makes a village? For me, it is a social system that holds us when life pulls us in difficult directions. There is no score to keep. It’s a place where friendship isn’t transactional, but a practice of showing up, sharing, and holding space. It’s built off the moments when we carry each other. Through weddings, through messes, and sometimes simply through saying “come as you are.”
Your village comes from your community. Growing up, I was told that community is your teammates in sports, the people who go to your church, and the family that you gather with regularly. And to that I say, where are they now? And what have they ever done for me? Now, I’m not saying this is true for everyone. I know people who still talk to their old sports mates or go to their same church from when they were a child, and know that if they called them that they would be there. And I love that for them. What I am saying is I think there’s a misconception on what community is that has broken down where the village comes from.
They aren’t wrong in the fact that your community comes from the people you surround yourself with, but it isn’t given by default. I think some people, including myself once upon a time, think that just showing up in the same spaces at the same times as the same people is what a community looks like. Wrong. Community and village are built with intention, love and care. You can’t just show up and expect people to know what you need from them. You have to build the relationships, provide support when others need it, and communicate when you need it as well. Without that work, there’s no net strong enough to catch you when life pulls hard. This is something that is much easier said than done for a lot, if not most people.
Lately I’ve been noticing that I’m not alone in wrestling with this. Even strangers online are asking: what do we really owe each other, and what does friendship look like in practice? During my doom scrolling recently, I came across a few videos that have made me start to question what community and village really look like. Especially in today’s America. We are as connected globally yet disconnected locally as ever. One video by @jasminahinton simply stated that we owe our friends the things that are supposed to come with friendship (kindness, respect, and loyalty). That showing up for our friends without the expectation of it benefiting us should be the standard, not an outlier. A video by another creator, started with a video making fun of friends that show up to event’s angry ‘stitched’ with a man expressing how he hates the mindset that friends can only show up when they’re happy or ‘on.’ He continued to point out that the people who expect people to always be ‘on’ are the same people who get upset at last minute cancelations, making a situation where the friend can never win.
The being ‘off’ and unpolished is probably the hardest part. It takes vulnerability on both sides. You have to be willing to both see someone be unpolished and allow someone to see you as unpolished, and vice versa. Which is extremely hard in today’s age, digital branding has almost ruined our ability to not be ‘on’ all of the time. Especially if the image we have curated of ourselves doesn’t align with our inner truth. It’s hard to let people see the side of you that you consider ugly, what if they don’t like it. But if we want that village, we have to be just as vulnerable with others as you want them to be with you. And in some cases, even more so. That’s what it is to be loved.
And sometimes, that unpolished-ness isn’t emotional but physical. Letting someone into your mess, your dust, your undone chores. I recently got to be part of the village for a close friend. Her wedding is in a few days, and I got a text from her reading ‘This might sound lame. But would you be up for a cleaning party next week?’ and without hesitation I replied ‘Not lame at all. I totally get it. Yeah! I can do that!!’ It took until I was mopping her floor to realize I was actively being part of her village. It doesn’t have to be these big gatherings or events. The village shines in the mundane small tasks of simply cleaning the other person’s floor. Helping, listening, and being unpolished together is what builds the community it takes.
But the village doesn’t only show up in chores — it also steps in during emergencies. Another time, the village came in to help my family while we were stranded in West Virginia. Our car had broken down in Beckley, about 2 hours from where my mom’s family lives. While trying to figure out what we are going to do, there were no car rentals and nowhere for us to take our car. The only thing we could come up with on our own was mom would go with the tow truck back to her hometown and stay there until her sister could bring her another one of our other cars, causing her to miss the white water rafting trip (which she asked for). It wasn’t until we reached out to her family when it all started working out. Her brother let her borrow her car. Dad and I found a ride. We all made it to the rafting. But this is only thanks to the village we’ve made. Her family really came in to support in any way they could, each person taking a corner of the net until it held. Something that until this point I had never seen happen in my own life to this extent.
And sometimes it’s not about crisis at all. It’s about the small, nagging tasks that live in your head until your friends step in to help. It's something I know people would do for me, because of the fact I have people who will help me with the mundane things that overwhelm me. A while back I needed to organize my basement so I recruited my best friends to help me. I knew it was a task that I couldn’t mentally handle by myself. I would either start too strong and overwhelm myself into not finishing or I would never start because I hyped up how hard it would be in my head. Either way, I knew I needed help. And my besties were happy to help. I can’t express how great it feels to have people in my life that I know are part of my village.
Support is one side of the village. The other side, the harder one, is accountability. The village isn’t only there to uplift you, it’s also there to keep you accountable. This is something I think we are losing. The art of cutting people off, letting go of toxic people, and “keeping your peace” has grown too large in this day and age. It’s something that needed to be normalized, but in doing so the pendulum has swung too far and the art of accountability and healthy shame has been lost.
We all need to be told when we are being crazy, taking things too far, or simply not handling things well. That’s part of the net too; not just holding you up, but tugging you back when you drift. They are there to keep you on the appropriate track, the one that aligns with where you want to go, who you want to be. Our village is supposed to be the ones who hold us accountable to those things. I can’t tell you how many times I hear about friends of friends who have been cheated on and one of my first thoughts is always ‘are the cheater’s friends just okay with it?’ This is one of the times when cutting the person off probably isn’t the answer. Supporting the new relationship isn’t the answer either. Getting the person on back on the right track is the best thing to do.
Comfort and correction, mess and joy — all of it belongs in the picture. And that brings me back to the question I started with so what is a village? A village is a net we weave together, loose enough for air, strong enough to catch us. It is a circle of people who let you be unpolished and stay anyway. It isn’t given by default; it is stitched, carried, and held into being. That’s my answer, but no two villages look the same. Maybe yours shows up in different places, different faces, or different acts of care. The question isn’t just mine to answer; it’s yours too.