“I Miss the Village” by Bunmi Laditan (of The Honest Toddler fame) sent my social media channels aflutter last week. It’s a beautifully written essay, and it struck a few nerves for me because I could relate, having grown up in the kind of village Laditan describes, and because creating a “village” for Baby Carrot has been one of my biggest desires and struggles.

I grew up in a small community outside Moscow in Russia. We all lived in apartments – houses were unheard of in Russia – and spent the bulk of our childhoods outside, running around together. I grew up in a small community that sprung up around a military base and everyone in the community worked for the base or around the base or commuted to Moscow on the same bus and train, so the village was both literal and figurative. Everyone knew each other just by virtue of going to the same grocery store, and my mom was a kindergarten teacher in the only nearby school so everyone knew her because their kids were likely in her class, or were cared for by her at some point. In our village, my friends’ parents disciplined me the same way my parents disciplined them. Our doors were never locked, our skinned knees were mended by whoever was the first to hear us cry.

One of the biggest voids I felt coming to the U.S. as a near teenager was losing that feeling of community. Although we made friendships and some family settled nearby, it was never quite the same as the village we came from. My parents were too busy working 12 hour days, 6 days a week, just to make ends meet; my brother and I grew distant as we got older and made our own friends and took on our own lives, and our friendships were arranged through movie nights or hanging out at the local Dairy Queen on summer nights. Even though we lived in a relatively small suburb in New Jersey, and there were definitely areas in our town where that village feel was alive and well, we never quite connected the same way, perhaps being too late in joining the community to really feel like an integral part of it.

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One of my biggest desires and worries before having kids was figuring out how to build this village. I realize that the view Laditan has, and the life I lived in Russia is not that realistic these days and Baby Carrot will likely never grow up in the kind of village I did – the rules and circumstances were just different – but the idea of an extended family is an important one to me, especially because we’re fairly isolated from ours. Mr. Carrot and I moved four hours away from our parents for work opportunities over a decade ago, so Baby Carrot only has one of her uncles as her immediate family nearby. We are among the first and few in our circle of friends to have kids – many of those friendships have either faded or have gotten relegated to occasional days out for either Mr. Carrot or me. Since Baby Carrot isn’t school age yet, and Mr. Carrot and I are both at work full-time, we haven’t come across too many opportunities to meet other parents, and where we have, schedules always seem to get in the way of forging that time to develop that closeness. It seems that friendships are harder in general, these days, though I often think that may just be a lack of earnest trying.

My biggest wish as she gets older and more aware of her surroundings, is that Baby Carrot has a village to turn to, and I realize that it’s up to me to create that for her. As a result, I’ve had to step outside my usually reserved nature. I’ve gotten pretty good at introducing myself to fellow moms at Baby Carrot’s occasional music and swim classes, and we’ve made a few friends this way already. This spring or summer, once Baby Carrot gets closer to 2, we hope to move her to a school-like environment from her current in-home daycare, which will hopefully yield some new connections. And there are definitely opportunities to make connections – in our area, especially, there are tons of playgroups, mom groups sorted by location, age, interest, etc. I haven’t been as proactive with these as I could be, but the resources are definitely out there, and now that we’re in the second year, and I’m getting on more solid footing as a first time parent, my hope and goal is to find ways to be more socially active so that Baby Carrot always feels like she has a big family, even if her biological one is a bit far away.

Do you have a “village” ? Tips on how to work on building one?