Common Ground on Imperfect Streets
Choosing a home also means choosing a neighborhood - even when budget and timing make most of the choice.
“Location is everything,” people say. These days, that’s often privilege talking. Some homes come with tidy HOA signs and freshly edged lawns; others are walk-ups, duplexes, porches where life happens just feet away from your living room. Wherever we land, the mix is the same: beauty and mess, generosity and gossip, safety and risk. Belonging starts when we pay attention to what’s real right where we are.
Real life looks like this:
Grown kids moving back in, elders who keep to themselves, night-shift parents, single folks we wave to even if we don’t know their names yet. Not perfect and hopefully not “Secret Lives of Mormon Wives,” - just the daily puzzle of people making a life side by side with strangers.
Still, vigilance creeps in. We study maps and headlines, track police calls, scroll registries, trade warnings on neighborhood pages. Social media drops every scary story into our laps until each porch light reflects mostly shadows. Some places truly are dangerous; that matters.
Safety plans matter. Trusting our gut matters. But fear doesn’t have to be the only soundtrack. Alongside the worry, life keeps happening.
Kids wander between friends’ houses. Scooters clatter over cracked sidewalks. Someone grills on a Tuesday. A neighbor hands over extra tomatoes from an abundant backyard garden. We teach our kids to notice - cars, people, their own instincts - and we also let them stretch toward independence, because that’s how courage grows. Risk has always been part of growing up; wisdom is choosing which risks we take and which ones we don’t.
What steadies us isn’t the scroll on social media. I challenge you (and myself) to put the phone down more often.
To remember how much we have in common with the people next door: we all have groceries to carry, bills to pay, kids to raise, griefs to hold, technology to navigate.
Family is bigger than four walls. It’s the wave across the yard, the check-in after sirens, the watchful eye when kids cross the street, the returning of a package delivered to the wrong porch, the quiet “you okay?” on a hard day. Fear can inform us; it doesn’t have to define us.
We know not everyone’s support system is directly next door. The Village Collective is here to assist in community - close in heart, where trust grows and friendships are made.
