The Trick to Having a Village?

 

Freepik

The idea of “the village” 

looms large in our restless minds, but 

the image of it is less defined.

It takes a village to raise a child, we say. 

But it also takes a village to raise a parent. 

And sometimes, it takes a village to hold together an entire family, or a community, that is stretched thin by worry, love, and obligation.

We know the proverbial village is important, critical even. 

But there’s no real manual for starting or sustaining the kind of community we want. 

Actually, for many of us, it’s not even entirely clear if we know what we want. 

The idea of “the village” looms large in our restless minds, but the image of it—the shape of it, how it feels, the boundaries, who’s involved—is defined less by aspirational clarity and more by the aching suspicion that we don’t quite have it.

For many, winter is the season when the myth of the village feels most palpable. We remember how much we still need one, how much we never had one, how much we’ve lost ours, or how much of it we’ve been trying to build on our own.

Perhaps we arrive at a table that looks like the real thing, decorated for the holidays, and surrounded by people we love. And yet, something’s off. Suddenly, the past sits at the table with the present. Old roles rise. Old wounds reappear. Old expectations tighten around us. Even in the midst of joy, there can be grief, ambivalence, or a quiet dread that we will get pulled back into dynamics we’ve spent years trying to change. 

What do we owe the people at this table? 

What do we owe ourselves?

Two recent episodes of Where Should We Begin? explore the tenderness of what we owe the people we love and why community is essential to meeting those obligations.

In “You Need Help to Help Her,” two devoted parents arrive to the session with a desperation recognizable to so many: their daughter, once thriving, has retreated into her room, spending nearly all day online, disengaged from school, friends, and daily life.

They speak quietly, almost guiltily, about how few people know what is happening, how they don’t want to burden others, and how they’ve been lying to family and friends to protect their daughter and perhaps themselves. Their daughter’s withdrawal has become their withdrawal. This is a part of caregiving that is rarely spoken about.

When a child is suffering—whether through depression, anxiety, illness, addiction, or profound overwhelm—the parents often become cloistered as well. The child retreats, and the family contracts. The world gets smaller, the shame grows larger, and the parents are left holding a secret that becomes heavier by the day. 

But caregiving was never meant to be a solitary act.

Talking to another parent who has been where we are, seeking help from a counselor, joining a support group . . . these forms of reaching out for help are not a betrayal of the person we love. They are the actions that allow us to remain connected to ourselves, our loved one, and to the larger world we need in order to sustain the long work of care. 

The village is both a support system and a reality check. 

It’s a reminder that 

you are not meant to parent in a vacuum.

Likewise, we’re not meant 

to take care of our parents in a vacuum. 

In “Mothering My Mother Into Mothering Me,” a woman calls in to talk about the lifelong experience of being the emotional grown up in a family where the adults were struggling. Her words echo the stories of so many people who were asked—quietly, implicitly, and far too early—to hold responsibilities well beyond their age.

Parentification leaves a long shadow. 

It teaches a child to over-function, to anticipate everyone’s needs, and to see their own vulnerability as a threat to the family’s stability. That legacy often stretches into adulthood: struggling to ask for help, confusing boundaries with disloyalty, feeling guilty for having needs, feeling responsible for everyone’s emotions, and finding it easier to be the caretaker than the one who is cared for.

The latter episode is not just about a mother and daughter. 

It’s about the invisible contracts children enter when a family system is overwhelmed as well as the courage it takes to renegotiate those contracts as an adult.

Both of these episodes, in their own ways, ask us to revisit a set of essential questions:

1. Where did I learn to carry so much on my own?
2. What would happen if I allowed myself to put even a little of it down?
3. What might change if I ask for help?
4. What would it take to allow myself to accept the help I need?
5. In asking for and accepting help, can I support others to do the same?

These are the questions that transform the mythical, blurry image of “the village” from a mirage into something real and rooted. It’s not neat. It’s rarely pretty. The real village rarely is. It’s a place where burdens are occasionally shared and shoulders are often cried on. And sometimes, particularly around the holidays, the village is a place where we express gratitude for one another as we look back on all we have endured and where we might go together next.

Let’s Turn the Lens on You

Your Village, Your Story

As you move into the final weeks of the year, reflect on the village you have, the village you need, and the village you want to build. Here is a practice to try this month:

The Village Inventory

1. Who are you carrying? 

Name one person whose emotional life you tend to hold more than your share.

2. Who carries you? 

Name one person with whom you can soften, talk to candidly, and/or ask for help.

3. Where are you hiding? 

Identify one place where silence or secrecy has replaced connection.

4. Where do you need to loosen a pattern?

 

Is there a conversation you need to have with the person who came to mind in your answer to question one? 

What would it look like to initiate that conversation with kind differentiation—not by withdrawing, not by over-functioning, but by honoring your care for this person and your care for yourself? 

There’s no need to act right now; think of this as a thought experiment. 

Example: in “You Need Help to Help Her,” this could look like the parents saying 

“We love you and we’re here. But we can’t hide from the world with you.”

5. What part of you needs a village right now?

• Is it the overwhelmed parent?

• The tired child?

• The adult longing for reciprocity?

• The partner trying to do it all?

Now, choose one small action—telling one truth, asking one question, letting one person in—that lets your village, however small, grow one person wider.

 Esther Perel