Throughout my life, I have constantly sought close-knit community experiences: working on tall ships, joining a multicultural life-long sorority, convincing my friends to rent a big house together…like many other millennials, I often dreamed of buying a plot of land and starting a community. I attended a visitor program at Dancing Rabbit in 2019 to see how other people were achieving that dream, and I was quickly convinced that moving to an established community was a better option than trying to build one myself. After returning home, I spent around five years dreaming and planning about how to make living at Dancing Rabbit work for myself and my family, and we finally moved here in September of 2024. 

Life in the village, in some ways, is pretty similar to life outside of the village. I work remotely full time and spend Monday through Friday following a pretty strict routine for the benefit of myself and my toddler. The biggest difference is that I’m no longer isolated in a large town–I’m nestled within a small community. Despite my work schedule, I’ve found many places to plug myself in. Some of my favorite and most frequent activities include co-working in the Common House, afternoon walks on the prairie with my friends, serving on the youth committee, attending women’s circle, and raving about wrestling to whoever will listen. 

I love living at Dancing Rabbit because village life makes it so much easier to care for others tangibly and to receive care myself. There’s always something to do with somebody else if you’re willing to look for it. While I’m still early in my residency, my hope is that DR will become my forever home, that the village will grow, and that we will show others that it is possible to live a fun, fulfilling life in alignment with our planet.