Building Community

It's Guest Blog Time!

If I am being completely honest, in the early days I was more in love with the idea of being a diplomatic family than the realities. This idea of living a cultured lifestyle with the world at your fingertips was intoxicating. I was snapped back to reality the first time I had to move and leave behind my friends, my career, and the life I had built as a young professional woman. Not many people I knew could talk about sleeping on the floor of their office so that they could work an Inaugural gala for the first Obama administration at a luxury D.C. hotel. It was historic, it was inspiring, and I was lucky enough to be in it.

It was hard for me to let all of that go to move to our first assignment but my marriage was more important to me than my career. I also knew that if I wanted to be in a partnership where compromise was truly in the middle, sometimes I had to give up more in one moment to receive more when I needed it. Welcoming in this opportunity to change was the beginning of who I would grow into, a person seeking community and wanting to be in it as much as helping it to grow and thrive.

I met Patricia at a networking event that Rona Jobe and I coordinated for women entrepreneurs of the foreign service in the DMV, but before that I had been part of a collective of entrepreurers reviewing each other's websites and providing constructive feedback. It was then that I learned her story and thought, "Wow, I love that she put herself first after a lifetime of putting her spouse and kids at the front of the line!" Patricia is an active member of the FS community even today as a positive, inclusive and welcoming influence during what is possibly the most difficult time the Department has faced in recent history.

Guest Blog by Patricia Linderman

Building Community: a few thoughts from 30 years as an EFM

At high-stress posts like Havana, Guayaquil and Nuevo Laredo, I found that community support could literally be lifesaving, when I and others experienced medical emergencies, depression, critical security threats, and more. I also learned about community from serving with volunteer groups such as Associates of the American Foreign Service Worldwide (AAFSW) and Tales from a Small Planet.

Now that my spouse is retired, I've found that I have useful community-building skills to share, for instance by leading the DC-area circle of the non-profit Finding Female Friends >50.

Here are some principles I keep coming back to:

We're hungry for spaces where we can belong, just as we are.

Think of an old-fashioned neighborhood where people are quirky and often disagree, but all accept each other as belonging, and provide support when needed. Can we create this feeling in our communities, in the U.S. and abroad, perhaps by:

• Creating containers where all are treated equally. I loved the occasional outdoor taco breakfasts in Nuevo Laredo (yes, tacos are a great breakfast dish there), where U.S. and Mexican staff, contractors and family members gathered briefly, shared stories and laughed together before a stressful day.

• Intentionally reaching out with warmth and curiosity to people who fall outside the majority, whether in cultural background, age, family situation, beliefs, or other characteristics. "Belonging is the opposite of fitting in," says Brené Brown. Can we create environments where people don't have to strive to fit in, because they already belong?

We need interest groups too.

This is a both-and situation. Inclusion and belonging are essential, but there is also a need for subgroups to pursue specific needs and interests together. In Guayaquil in 2008, the consulate (after the sudden, shocking death of the CLO, a young mother) had no organized social activities during the workday, considering them "not inclusive" of those in the office. To support our traumatized and isolated community, a thoughtful American expat retiree created the "Guayaquil Network" with coffee gatherings, outings and volunteer opportunities, which is still helping people in that high-threat city nearly ten years later.

Building connection takes more than just bringing people together.

Unstructured gatherings can easily fall into familiar patterns like "complaining about our housing" or listening to the same individual who loves telling stories (I'm sorry to say this has sometimes been me). I highly recommend Priya Parker's book "The Art of Gathering," where she recommends exercising "generous authority" to steer groups toward greater connections and opportunities for all to be heard and appreciated. For instance, there might be a challenge that gets people interacting, or a thoughtful question posed to all such as "What was your happiest moment of the weekend?"

Thank you so much for reading this -- and thank you to Diplodash for inviting me to reflect on this topic. Keep on building community -- it's something the world needs!

Patricia's Bio

Patricia Linderman is the founder of Fierce After 45, a service for woman 45+ looking to add more physical activity, community and or laughter to their lives. .

After becoming an empty nester, longtime EFM Patricia Linderman turned her own health around and then became a health coach to support other women in their own journeys. Her work is also her play, as she leads a free outdoor workout in Falls Church, VA, a balance class and Laughter Yoga sessions, among many other activities.