In Part 1 of this series I explored the first three place attachment strategies from Melody Warnick’s “This is Where You Belong: Finding Home Wherever You Are” and how I’m using them to build some community and attachment in our new town. Today I explore strategies four through seven.
- Do fun stuff.
- Explore nature.
- Volunteer.
- Eat local.
Could place attaching be as simple as the above? I wondered this as I read This is Where You Belong. The author Melody Warnick uses all of these strategies herself to attach to her new town of Blacksburg, Virginia. At first glance the tasks seem easy and simple. Nothing incredibly out of the ordinary to doing fun stuff or eating locally. But… this actually is hard. It’s hard to do all of these things if most of your hours of the week are spoken for or if you are into a pattern of not doing these things. I think one of the long term take aways from this book for me was to be intentional with my efforts and time. Even the small stuff like saying hello to a neighbour. It all adds up.
Part 2 of my Place Attachment experiment:
Do fun stuff. Fun is pretty subjective. This is what I realized as I thought about what I found fun. Also, from reading Warnick’s book, I knew I need that fun to be about the place I live. Not simply the usual fun of Friday night movie night at home. What is different and fun (to me) about where we live?
Snow.
We marvelled at the first good snow fall of December. It felt like our little town became a village from a fairytale overnight. I’d never appreciated how snow brightens things up even on an overcast day. The kids were excited for sledding and building snowmen and I found myself excited too. We bought sleds and my brother recommended the perfect – and somewhat secret – sledding hill in our neighbourhood. Our big three man sled soon became the favourite and all three boys would pile in, testing how far they could make it run out into the fresh snow in the field below. It was pretty magical and an incredible amount of fun for them. And for me. Because I found out this winter that I love sledding. I am not the parent waiting at the top of the hill with coffee in hand. I’m the parent barrelling down the hill solo or with a few kids along. I like the speed and excitement of sledding. It’s fun.
The other new local fun we tried: skiing. Yes, at 40 and 47 my husband and I took up downhill skiing. This was largely precipitated by our oldest wanting to ski. My oldest kid doesn’t like many new things or sports. So when we carefully tested out skiing with him, and he asked to go again, we thought it would be best to learn to ski ourselves.
Learning to ski at 40 is hard. Falling hard at this age hurts both physically and in the embarrassment department. There are very few learned/learning as an adult skiers on our local hill. It was hard being the only person over the age of eight falling on the bunny hill. But I kept going, graduating off the bunny hill and eventually hitting some green runs. My husband and I even went to another hill nearby for some day dates and lessons.
Learning to ski at 40 is also a lot of fun. Learning new skills is thrilling. Especially new skills that involve hurtling down a mountain. I don’t often get a chance to learn something new, to take lessons or stretch my body or brain into something that is totally foreign to me. So getting the chance to do that stretching and learning ten times over the winter was exhilarating. And because it was something new that we were doing because it was available to us locally (and very affordably!) it definitely helped me feel attached to this place.
Explore nature. Check, check, check. This one has been pretty easy to do with all of the walking and skiing. We have beautiful trails a few blocks from our home that I try to get to a few times a week. It definitely makes me appreciate where we live. In our previous city life we’d have to drive to get this kind of nature so I feel a lot of gratitude that moving here has immersed us in nature.
Volunteer. With three young kids and a very busy spouse, I haven’t felt that I had much time or energy to volunteer in the last eight years. But I wanted to change that with our move to a small town. One of the reasons we moved here was to have a lot more time and I hoped I could find an organization to put some hours into. And just a week into being here I found a volunteer opportunity with an organization that supports families with young children. It’s just a few hours a month right now that is manageable with the ages and needs of my kids. Has it made me feel more attached to this place? Yes! I feel invested in this organization and contributing to its success. And I’ve also met some great people through it that have widened my circle of acquaintances here.
Volunteering begets more volunteering. In addition to joining local boards of nonprofits, my husband I are coaching soccer for the spring season. Neither of us are soccer aficionados or have even played much. But it was something we could do for our kids (we are each coaching one of the older boys teams) and we also thought it would be a good way to meet other families. If I hadn’t read Warnick’s book I don’t think I would have taken the steps to volunteer as a soccer coach (thank you Melody!).
Eat local. One of the things we hoped to change with this move was our frequent coffees out and occasional meals out (don’t ask me how many times we went to the Costco food court that is two blocks from our old apartment). We found that living so close to easy take out and cafes made it feel just too easy to grab $20 worth of sushi for dinner. So becoming regulars at a cafe as an Eat Local experiment didn’t feel like the right move for us. Per my previous post in this series, we did try out the local food co-op but it was a bit of a bust. We will start going to the farmer’s market when it reopens in the spring. But what about local cafes and restaurants? I really didn’t want to get into a habit of visiting a cafe to eat at least once a week in the name of attachment.
Instead of eating local, we played and drank local. There is a new venture in our little town: a board game cafe. And with a coupon in our regional coupon book, it makes for a very inexpensive and fun date night. We’ve gone to this board game cafe five or six times over the winter, sometimes bringing someone along with us, and learned a few new to us board games. Add in a decaf latte and it makes for a great evening. We’ve gone enough that I have gotten to know the owner and have been working on a project with her (it checks off one of the place attachment tasks I’ll talk about in the next post). While I wouldn’t call us regulars I do feel like we are known there.
New ventures often struggle, even more so in small towns. Because we’ve gotten to know the owners and have had such a nice experience there, I feel invested in their success. I encourage others to go to the cafe and if we’re looking to go out in the evening it’s on my mind. I feel pretty attached. And thats exactly what the eat local task is about.
These place attachment strategies work. I still have a few more to work on and share here on the blog, but so far this has been a big success in learning to love where we live. When I think back to our move to the Isle of Man, we didn’t do any of these things. It was a much different situation: my husband was at work in an expat heavy company. We were quickly connected to a network of families and my husband had lots of friends through his job. In comparison, we moved to this town only knowing my brother. Plus, my husband and I both work from home. I knew it was going to take extra effort to meet people in our new town. I wasn’t wrong!
I love this Rachel. I listened to a podcast where Melody was interviewed (can’t remember what podcast!) and was fascinated. Thanks for the reminder through these posts, I need to read the whole book.
How do you think this relates to a suburb within a larger town? We are in a suburb I’m not in love with and I was hoping to use these strategies to help form some attachment!
I think all of these strategies can be used to some degree wherever you live. In the book she gives lots of examples and tries a few herself.
If you’re in the suburbs and can’t walk to nature make it a habit to drive to a hiking spot or park once a week. While it may not be right in your town, it’s still a place you can access because you live there. Or make a habit of a 20 minute walk in your neighbourhood after dinner each evening.
It’s a slow process. I’m not finding anyone of these strategies has made me attach to our new place but together they are having a cumulative affect. I know a few more people, I have more activities and tasks on my calendar that have a social element to them (board meetings and Jazzercise class are social!). I also feel good knowing I am making the effort. That helps. I would have lonely times back when we lived in the Isle of Man and my solution was to just wait for it to pass. Now I have better strategies and ideas for dealing with those times. Good luck!