Transition Times: Going Rural Pt 2
By: Alex Alden
Tags: Coliving, Trauma, Community, Rural

For those of you that are just joining, several weeks ago I participated in a rural living experiment. We were trying to test out what a transition to a more community driven and nature-focused lifestyle would feel like. The experience was facilitated to create community and deepen emotional reflection and ties. It took place in a small semi-abandoned town called Montosnis in Lleida, Spain. This is the story.

We drove up a winding road through the chill December night. Monstonis with its stone homes and a small castle dating back to Medieval times, glittered like a jewel atop a hill. We pulled up to our new home for the next two weeks, and the rural co-living experiment began.

Immediately it was like an Agatha Christie novel.

Six people come together — they don’t know why they’re there or what’s going to happen but they know they all have something in common. The first evening we set our intentions for the experience and it was clear only slightly beneath the surface each person had wounds they needed to heal, each of us was seeking something we didn’t know how to name. Life had made us lonely in some way. Who actually seeks and drives change? Those that are hurting, because without the pain the status quo will never need to be interrupted. The pain has to get to a point that it hurts enough to require change, and awakening. Those that are hiding from it, ignoring it, or even potentially don’t have it, don’t have the same motivation.

Pain doesn’t stay beneath the surface for long and to build community and change we need to address it.

The first night in Montsonis was excitement, discussion of the hikes we’d take and the good vibes we’d build, but by the third day of co-living and co-working two of the men, let’s call them José and Manuel, got into a conflict during lunch. One was expressing a strong opinion about the people of Barcelona and the other harshly silenced him. This escalated quickly into threats of physical violence and a shock to the still tenuous fabric of our new community. I wasn’t even in the conflict, but felt it viscerally. All sorts of triggers from childhood arose and I immediately felt ‘These people aren’t safe. I should leave, I should avoid this. DANGER WILL ROBINSON.’ But I didn’t leave. Instead, we took the opportunity to transform the conflict into an act of community building — but the steps to conflict resolution are fraught with trolls of past traumas under bridges.

The morning after the conflict the facilitator shared we’d have a session that night where they would facilitate a process of mediation between the men. That seemed like a good idea, we all agreed. As we did our morning share, Manuel — who had been in the conflict — expressed forcefully that he felt ‘Bad vibes’ in the community. Again I was triggered, ‘DANGER WILL ROBINSON, this person thinks you are a bad person, he is going to hurt you, AVOID AVOID.’

However, I was able to take a moment to question that assumption. These bad vibes could be coming from his past, if I interrogate rather than flee maybe there could be a different result. I asked him to sit and discuss with me what was coming up for him. Through our discussion I discovered the fight had triggered memories of childhood abandonment for him, and when felt me withdrawing this fed his narrative that nobody liked him. I was able to explain that I felt triggered as well and had withdrawn because I was scared of him. These simple words of identifying the role our pasts were playing in our present opened a path to a real relationship.

During that same day, the lead facilitator’s cat got sick. She disappeared to take him to the vet and the group was left with the other facilitator, who doesn’t have training in conflict mediation. The time came for the ‘big talk’ and suddenly the plan had changed. We weren’t doing a mediated talk, but a workshop on non-violent communication. Non-violent communication is a methodology developed by Marshall Rosenburg that focuses on “reframing how we express ourselves and hear others. Instead of habitual, automatic reactions, our words become conscious responses based firmly on awareness of what we are perceiving, feeling, and wanting.” The overall goal is to make people feel seen and heard as well as sharing your feelings and needs in a way that doesn’t give rise to conflict. A toolkit we all need to more effectively relate.

In that moment, I saw the mens’ faces fall. They had been preparing for this moment, this talk, all day and now it wasn’t that moment. Instead we were going to do a structured hypothetical discussion. I wanted to step in and share with the facilitator the need I saw in the room, but didn’t feel it was my place.

We started with the non-violent communication activities, we went through and workshopped past trigger moments, expressing our needs in non-violent ways, but the un-dealt with conflict simmered beneath the surface. Jose started doing the behavior that triggered Manuel the other the previous day. He was taking up too much space in the conversation and completely unaware of the order of speaking and the amount of speaking he was doing.

Quickly, this spiraled and the un-dealt with conflict reared its head.

Manuel became aggressive and angry, dealing the only way he knew how with the hurt of not being heard. He threatened to leave, began packing his bags, declaring the organization was horrible and the team didn’t know what they were doing. Over the course of an hour or so this continued. I became very triggered, the noise, the aggression. I wanted to withdraw. I held space the best I could.

Finally, both men came to the main room. Manuel sat down and essentially said ‘Look I don’t know why you’re mad but please tell me and I am willing to change.’ José was preparing to finally deliver his apology he had been working on all day. As he opened his mouth, in a sit-com style timed moment, the lead facilitator walked in close to tears about her dying cat. This broke the tension, it re-centered us on her as a human and her suffering. After a few moments of commiseration about the cat, José was finally able to deliver his apology. He identified the triggers from his childhood — his mom never being around, never feeling loved — that were at play in the dynamic and asked forgiveness. There were a lot of hugs all around and we sat down for dinner, feeling stronger for the challenging areas we had traversed together.

But wait, there’s more. The lead facilitator, let’s call her Maria, sat us down to tell us that the cat may be dying. If it wasn’t dying it would need round the clock care. She shared that she didn’t have anyone in this moment, no partner, not a strong network of friends, poor relations with her family. This cat represented so much more than a pet and she had no one to help her. She proposed dissolving the community because she wouldn’t be really ‘in the experiment’ if she had to care for the cat. I intervened there. I explained, ‘This is actually part of the experiment, you having to learn to ask for help and us coming together as a community to support you and the cat makes you more in the experiment than ever.’ She paused, having never thought of it that way, and is considering that option as a way forward.

As we cleaned up the dishes, the other facilitator, let’s call her Olga, declared — ‘If she’s in the experiment I can’t be the only one out!’ So now here we are, without captains guiding the ship. A self-organizing community that has been brought together by conflict. The next day we will have to decide if we continue or dissolve, but overwhelming people seem to want to push through and continue the experiment, whatever it ‘is’ now. Stay tuned.