We moved to Cascadia 15 years ago. At the time I was a single mom with a 7 year old boy. Cascadia gave us lots of support for those initial difficult years of single parenting and adjusting to a new city, new job and new schools, without the friends we had relied on in San Francisco. My son had instant “siblings” and playmates in the community. I had neighbors who would help out, with watching him after school, picking him up from games when I couldn’t leave my intense job at OHSU. Neighbors taught him skills I couldn’t, like car repair, wood chopping and how to hang out like a guy leaning on a shovel in the work party. In the teenage years he was initially embarrassed by his weird community (bunch of pinko commies his friends jokingly called us). But soon his friends wanted to come here to sleep over in the common house, and hang in the recreation room. Now he is grown and on his own, I have new little ones to befriend and play with in the community. There have been hard times, when egos, our needs for control and to be heard clashed like poorly tuned instruments. Some people have left the community because the fit was poor and at times there is still strife, but we are a fairly well-tuned team now, having worked through many challenges (and decided not to work through others). It is hard sometimes when I’m frustrated with the direction we take on an issue, but then I think back to cooking a meal for everyone after the work party, and the pure pleasure serving food and eating together after working together.