The Village is Both Tangible and Virtual to Me

Meet Lucy. We met online. Like so many new parents (how can our kids be preschoolers and we still feel like new moms?), we found each other on the local Facebook mama forum.

That’s my place. There’s one club that seemingly every mom on our side of LA is in: the moms from our park, the mompreneurs from happy hours, our kiddo’s teacher, my husband’s boss … everyone. And in there, we all know each other, even if we don’t, and if we know each other too well, we get to pretend that we don’t just long enough to share the most touchingly (shockingly) intimate details of our motherhoods.

We share the space, the space for ourselves and for each other, and we share the feeling. Lucy says, “It’s a space that I go to for encouragement, help, solidarity on this road of motherhood. The village includes the moms I’ve met there and within my local community where we meet up for playdates, but also the moms who’ve generously donated baby items to me, recommended a product to me, or simply made me laugh.”

Do you have that place? When do you go? Do you go more now?  (I know I do.)  

“The village is both tangible and virtual to me,” Lucy said.

She’s an artist. She can sit with you for an hour and produce that one masterpiece photograph that hangs on your wall for generations. A hundred digital photos for one tangible masterpiece.

Then lockdown, and now the hundred digital photos we all have are of our kids in pajamas eating cereal … again … and again.  Instead of Karen’s Family Room (the special mom-owned small business that Lucy adopted for her studio), it’s our family room (sans Lucy) … also covered in cereal. 

So Lucy morphed what was tangible and what was virtual.  While quarantined with her toddler and husband and third-trimester pregnant, she crafted how to transform those mundane snapshots into something gripping and other-worldy, something entirely unreal that perhaps captures more poignantly than anything what is real behind the eyes in those everyday photos.

“The village includes anyone who makes the road a little less bumpy and a little more fun,” Lucy says. We agree, Lucy, so much.

I read Lucy’s blog at The House of Wang (heartstrings and tears, I dare you), and she said something you all need to read, to yourselves, everyday.

“I know enough. So long as I stay diligent in my pursuit of knowledge, humble in attitude, and gracious towards the process, it is enough.

I do enough. There are just enough hours for me to work, pray, laugh, cook, welcome my husband home, answer emails, serve, and dare I say, Netflix, and retire to bed. What can’t be completed today won’t end my entire world. There is a season for everything and resting is allowed, it is enough.

I am enough. I am fearfully and wonderfully made and judging myself from a worldly perspective will always leave me unsatisfied, critical, and very bitter. I attempt each day with my best effort and that is very. much. enough.”

To me, this is what the Village is for. To transform what is hard and scary and crippling into life and self and love that is beautiful, sustaining, and uplifting. Satisfying. Hopeful. Real.

Enough. <3