Healing: The Importance of Community

A few days ago, I was at a vintage toy and comic book store with some friends. While I was perusing toys I used to own when I was a kid (like the Smurfette doll pictured above), I couldn’t help but overhear the conversation between the store owner and another customer. Either the owner or the customer had recently returned from a con (a gaming convention) that he attended with his girlfriend. One line in particular caught my attention. Referring to his girlfriend, the speaker said, “It was healing, in a way, being around other people like her.” It was healing for this person to be around other people like her. This sentence is a common refrain among gamers the first time they attend a con or go to a niche game store. Gamers feel less like societal outcasts when they’re among other gamers. It’s the healing that comes with the realization, “Ohhh, I’m not the only one.”  

Growing up, I always felt different from my peers. I moved around more. I’d lived in different parts of the country as well as in another country. The first time I felt like I met people like me was at an orientation week with a mission agency. That was when I learned about Third Culture Kids (TCK’s), children raised in a host culture (the second culture) outside of their family’s culture of origin (the first culture), creating their own, unique, third culture. I devoured a book about it during that week and had lots of conversations with other TCKs, with whom I felt I had more in common than many of my school friends and peers. I finally didn’t feel different. It makes a difference. 

It makes a difference to find your people, your tribe, other people who are weird (wired?) in the same way as you. A few years ago, I came across “Save This Blessing” by Margaret Ernst. One of the final stanzas says: 

here is what this blessing knows: 
that you are needed 
that your people need you. 
and that if you haven’t found your people 
yet 
or lose them 
they can always be 
regrown 

If you have not found your people yet, or if you have lost your people, may this be the week that brings you a step closer to finding them. May this be the week you plant the seeds that begin to regrow them. Your people need you.