Love & Belonging: It’s Closer Than You Think
Ingredients to create a community of love and belonging:
Self-knowledge
“Yes” energy
An open heart
A little courage to be your awkward, unique, lovable self
When I lived nomadically, connection was the default. I met people on hiking trails, in tasting rooms, on the street while eyeing their dog like I was about to propose. We shared Airbnbs, snacks, Spotify playlists, and hard truths about our lives under the stars. These weren’t curated networking events or DMs carefully typed and retyped for relatability—they were real, spontaneous, and fueled by a mutual agreement to see each other.
I now have friends all over the country. Some I met for five minutes. Some invited me into their homes. Some sat down to share a drink and changed my entire stay. That kind of openness isn’t just sweet—it’s medicinal.
Let’s Talk About That Medicine
Loneliness isn’t just a mood—it’s a public health crisis. According to the U.S. Surgeon General, chronic loneliness increases the risk of premature death by nearly 30%. That’s the same mortality risk as smoking 15 cigarettes a day. Meanwhile, studies from Harvard to Stanford to tiny forest monasteries all say the same thing: authentic connection improves your immune system, reduces inflammation, lowers anxiety and depression, and extends your life. It’s not self-indulgent to crave community—it’s survival.
And yet, after nomad life I moved to… Washington, DC.
I’ve now spent almost a year in DC—a city of ambition, not always alignment. A place where brains sparkle, but hearts hide behind calendars.
There’s something disorienting about being surrounded by brilliant, beautiful people and still feeling invisible, as if people I speak to aren’t really “there”. Conversation here is cerebral—there’s always a think tank quote or a clever flex. But depth? Eye contact? Spontaneity? Much harder to come by.
The irony is, DC has the ingredients. It has jaw-dropping old buildings that demand reverence. It has trails that wind through forests like secret love letters from the earth. It has people—good, soulful people—who just happened to land in a culture of overwork that told them intimacy was unproductive.
What I (and We) Can Do About It
I’m channeling that soul-hungry energy into big moves rooted in love, depth and gathering.
1) Returning to my “yes” energy that gave me so much adventure and connection during my nomadic existence. I realized that, while I was always up for an adventure — social, physical or otherwise— the pandemic made me small. Years spent living differently — contained (for me, the worst feeling) — first felt unnatural, but then I habituated and built my cocoon.
Once life stared up again, social events started feeling like a chore, they exhausted me. This was for two reasons:
Coming out of our cocoons (social, physical or emotional) is mentally taxing for the brain, which is built to conserve energy. When the habit is to be out in the world, lighting it up in extroverted bliss, but our circumstances require us to acclimate to a smaller, “safer” more limited existence, it’s hard to go back to the hamster wheel. Automatic behavior like going out, drinking alcohol and socializing life your life (ego) depends on it, becomes the default, which is easier. When the default is to stay inside with your dogs all day, that becomes the default, and its much easier than the former.
I changed during the pandemic. After several expansions and contractions, I couldn’t go back to drinking every weekend (an activity which helped me extrovert, all day everyday) and I didn’t have the energy/desire to pretend that common social activities (or people, or conversations) were enjoyable. I craved something different, more expansive and fulfilling, more connected —and I couldn’t find it anywhere.
The answer? Courage, dear heart.
Now I invest in my life and health by making connection as important as running my business, caring for my dogs and exercising, because in the end, it is.
2) This led me to my next project: Creating a wellbeing collective rooted in depth, not dopamine. No product pushing. No wine and wellness nights. Just like-souled humans, deep connection, and maybe a few herbs that do more for you than retail therapy ever could. Just show up and exhale.
Born out of an 1-81 compliance law and extrapolated out of my own desire for depth, it’s called The Expanded Collective (because I’m original like that). I noticed many calls to attend events for community tended to center around a product line or a networking club, or the environment felt like another place to pretend. I want the Expanded Collective to feel like a home for women who crave soul-level connection without needing to buy anything, drink anything, or perform their perfected rendition of who they feel they have to be in a city powered by ambition and achievement.
Message to future members — You can be a huge success AND be yourself. I promise. It’s possible.
Performative wellness centered around colonized white ideas of how we should be living is NOT the way. This collective is for the grown-up misfits, sacred rebels and women who are so freaking tired of the performance. The ingredients here are ritual, conversation, nervous system regulation, and medicine woman wisdom—modernized for our overstimulated lives.
3) Wroting a BOOK (in two weeks — it was a fiery endeavor), as a call for collective healing and refreshing mental health by returning to what our needs truly are: nature, new experiences, neighbors.
What if we stopped pathologizing human responses and started returning to what’s always held us? What if mental wellness wasn’t a luxury spa day, but the result of perspective shifts, ritual, and reconnection?
This book exists to remind us that our suffering is not a sign of personal failure, but a wise response to a deeply unwell world. Mental health decline has been pathologized, commodified, and used to separate us from our own power—but we are not broken. We are remembering who we started out as in this world. We are returning. And that shift demands collective healing.
Connection should never be a luxury item.
You don’t need to be nomadic to feel connected, but it does require a shift in energy from “guarded and cynical” to YES energy.
To leave space for the unexpected.
To create white space for creativity and gratitude and self-knowledge.
To unlearn the idea that busyness is a virtue.
To pick your head up and smile at the sky, pet the dog or say “good morning” to the person on the trail.
To say yes to the invite, yes to the backyard hangout, yes to being seen—awkwardly, imperfectly, beautifully.
Because the medicine isn’t in the location. It’s in the willingness and openness and understanding the assignment that there is so much magic in sharing our weirdness, our loves and our gifts. And I so look forward to watching this grow.
