The Death of a Romantic Notion
Sometimes what we thought was the solution is a distraction.
TL;DR:
For over 15 years, we held a quiet dream of joining or creating an intentional community—one that could meet our need for connection, shared purpose, and mutual aid. But after doing a simple prioritization exercise, we realized that dream was more about escaping our overwhelm than embracing our true desire. This is the story of letting go, and what opened up when we did.
The Origin of Our Dream
I remember the inception of the intentional community dream. Luke and I were traveling around the U.S., interviewing original thinkers. We stayed on a biodynamic ranch in Colorado—milked cows at 5 a.m., made momos (steamed dumplings), got caught in an early-season snowstorm in our tent, and discovered that selling eggs to Aspenites meant you could charge $20 a dozen in 2011.
During that trip, I met a Seattle-based inventor whose free-energy experiments I had followed online. I’d been trying to wire my own radionics machine (think: electromagnetic (EMT) therapy) from his blueprints and reached out when I ran into issues soldering the circuit board. He kindly sent me a prefabricated one.
In another stretch, we once drove for hours, maybe days, around the Olympic Peninsula, hoping to stumble upon the house of famous American mycologist Paul Stametsso we could knock on the door and ask, “Can we camp here and help with anything?” In so many cases, our idealism was tempered by logistical setbacks.
The Closest We Came
But somewhere on that same trip, we found what seemed like a functional intentional community in the Mendocino area of Northern California. Nestled in the forest, they had built five to seven cob houses, a school for all ages, childcare, and so much chèvre from their goats that we ate it by the spoonful, trying to help them get through the surplus. They let us stay in an extra house and even invited us to join the community.
Our answer surprised us both: no.
In hindsight, the ease and certainty of that “no” sometimes makes me question our sanity. Other times, I remember clearly, this wasn’t our place. But ever since, we’ve held that land as the most functional and realistic version of the dream of intentional community we’ve ever encountered. For 15 years, it sat in our shared imagination as a possibility. We didn’t say yes, but we also didn’t say goodbye. We perched on the fence, waiting, hoping for clarity or closure.
A short time later, we found what seemed like the right fit: a 1,000-acre intentional community in south Indiana ironically called Needmore. The red flags were there (again, “Need More”!) But our hope overrode them. We lived in a dirt-floor yurt through the brutal, Indiana winters. We gave birth to a daughter. And we spent five years building a house by hand that was meant to be our forever home. It was a huge undertaking filled with painful challenges and profound rewards. But ultimately, the cracks in the facade of an equitable, free-thinking community became too great to deny. What may have been an original vision formed in the 1960s had befallen dysfunction and disorganization. We decided to leave, our friends and our house. We… needed more.
What Shapes a Dream
Whether it’s the dream of owning a vineyard, traveling the world to homeschool your children, or retiring early to a surfing village, there often comes a moment when you realize the dream isn’t what you imagined. You start to see that what you’ve been striving for isn’t the serene image of sipping wine at sunset with a light sheen of sweat from walking the grounds, but something far more grueling. Running a vineyard is back-breaking work. And while the idea of living abroad may be thrilling, the reality of lacking a home base can feel destabilizing, especially for families where one person wants nothing more than to stay rooted, while another loves to travel but finds it exhausting.
Then there are the dreams that just… don’t suit you. Like spending hours in cold, shark-infested waters, hoping it will feel like freedom, only to discover you’d much rather be on dry land.
We live in a society where our dreams are often limited to what we’ve been exposed to — in books, in films, and in the lives of people around us. That’s why exposure matters. If you’ve been on a speculative fiction kick full of dystopias, it can be hard to dream of anything but survival in a post-Gilead, post-Big Brother world.
We are taught to manifest by picturing the exact thing we want. Then we’re told to imagine what it feels like to have it—advice used by high-performing athletes and spiritual teachers alike. These are useful tools. But in my practice, what’s even more powerful is identifying the sponsoring thought, the deeper need or longing beneath the vision.
That’s what Luke and I had to do. We had to look beneath the dream of intentional community and get off the fence, one way or the other.
What We Actually Wanted
So what did we actually want?
This past weekend, we sat down to finally ask: What were we really seeking?
We realized we didn’t want communal governance. We weren’t interested in letting random people join our land and “see how it goes.”
What we did want was this: friends nearby. The kind who can drop by for tea or a spontaneous meal. We wanted to share resources, like our pool, which we use for an hour a day but maintain full-time. We wanted chickens and a functional homestead, but not the burden of maintaining it all ourselves. We wanted to co-dream with others, not shoulder everything alone.
And yet, we weren’t ready to give up ownership or move unless absolutely necessary. Like many dreams of community, it simply wasn’t urgent enough to justify giving up what we had.
The Tool That Shifted Everything
But even then, how much did we really want those things?
If you’ve ever struggled with prioritizing, I recommend using a Prioritization Matrix. A fellow board member from a food co-op introduced it to me years ago, and it changed my life.
Here’s how it works:
Make a list of your current goals, longings, or dreams.
Assign each priority a letter: A, B, C etc. Write out the full description of the priority (e.g. “A. Establish a photography business,” “B. Connect more with my family,” “C. Work on maintaining the food garden,” etc…) on the bottom of the page, next to a corresponding letter.
Use a blank grid (or spreadsheet) like the one I’ve drawn here.
Start by comparing A vs B and circle the priority that is more important to you… right now. Record that letter in the first blank box directly beneath “A.”
Repeat this process moving vertically down the grid. A vs. C. Circle the winner. Record that letter in the second blank box below the first one. Then, B vs. C. Record that letter in the third blank box, to the right of the second blank box.
Repeat again. A vs. D. B vs. D. C vs. D… Do this for ALL combinations until you reach the end of your list.
Then, go through the completed grid and tally the total number for each letter. How many A’s, B’s, C’s, D’s, etc… occur?
On the horizontal axis, record the total number of “wins” below its corresponding letter.
The highest scores show what truly matters. Not what you talk about the most. Not what seems the most inspiring. But what’s actually taking up energetic space inside you.
Luke and I did this last week, including categories like our careers, homeschooling, travel, and the dream of intentional community. It turned out we were both aligned: community scored much lower than we expected.
Why? Because that dream always re-emerged during periods of overwhelm, when we were lonely, isolated, and burdened. It was a relief fantasy. A quick fix. A magnet pulling us away from our true direction.
The Longing Beneath the Longing
Using the matrix helped us see that we didn’t need to abandon the core longing, we just needed to fulfill it in better-fitting ways. Through potlucks. Shared childcare. Book clubs. Co-op gardens.
We realized that with all our contradictions and residual colonizer mindset, we loved our current property. We needed to outsource more support so we could visit loved ones and maintain meaningful connections, instead of trying to force them into daily proximity.
So last week, a 15-year-old dream died.
And it felt like a magnet had been turned off, one that had been distorting our inner compass.
Suddenly, the path cleared. We could now fulfill the deeper longing — connection, ease, support — without taking on all the downsides.
Maybe that dream will return in a new form. Maybe necessity will change things.
But for now, I’m grateful. Grateful for clarity. Grateful for direction. Grateful for alignment with my partner.
And grateful to say goodbye, for now, to the romantic notion of intentional community.
Want to Try the Matrix?
Using the prototype, try completing your own prioritization matrix at home. You may be surprised what floats to the top. And if you feel conflicted about letting go of something romantic or long-held, ask yourself:
What’s the true feeling or experience I believe this dream will give me?
Are there simpler, more grounded ways I could experience that now?
Is this dream showing up in a moment of hope, or in a moment of burnout?
Not every dream needs to die — but some need to evolve. And some, gracefully, need to be released.
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