How to Community 101?

1. What Heals Us: Reparatory Experiences in Real Life

In psychotherapy, particularly within constructivist approaches, we talk a lot about reparatory experiences. Technically, these are emotionally corrective encounters that challenge and revise our deeply held personal meanings - especially those formed in painful or limiting circumstances.

But in plain words? Reparatory experiences are the magical relationships that make us forget we were ever too much or not enough.

They are the moments where someone truly sees us - perhaps for the first time. They might witness a part of ourselves that no one ever noticed. Or they may be drawn to our presence organically, even while we’re out in the world begging for love elsewhere. These encounters don’t fix everything. But they shift something foundational. They start to rewrite the internal blueprint of what we believe we're allowed to ask for.

2. You Don’t Have to Heal Before Being Loved

There’s a popular belief floating around on social media, in well-meaning self-help circles, that we need to be healed or complete before entering relationships. But reparatory experiences go against that idea by their very nature.

It is people who repair us. It is people who see our brokenness and say:

“I can work with this. I want to stay - because of it.”

Those moments don’t come after some perfect solo transformation. They come while we’re still fumbling in the dark. And they’re often the catalyst for real change.

That’s why I find the trope of found family so compelling in stories. It’s not just comforting - it reflects this deeper truth. We’re not meant to figure it all out alone. We find ourselves through others, not in isolation from them.

3. The Blueprint for Belonging: Needs, Limits, and Mutuality

Of course, building community isn’t as simple as someone seeing you. You have to learn to see them too - and to form relationships around what both of you can give and receive.

No one person can meet all your needs. But if you get to know yourself well, you can start dissecting those needs into smaller parcels - and send them to many addresses. That’s what makes community work.

A real community is a living, breathing thing. It’s a web of relationships built on acceptance of one another’s capacities, limits, and rhythms. Reparatory relationships may open us up to belonging, but sustaining that belonging requires constant movement and recalibration.

4. Change and Transition

One of my favorite sentences I’ve ever written is:

“Love resides in the spaces we give each other to oscillate.”

And it’s something my chosen family has both given and required of me.

When you’ve spent your life feeling broken, finding your people can feel like a miracle. You may think:

“This is it. I’m safe now. It’s smooth sailing from here.”

But that’s rarely how it works. If your community is truly life-giving, it will challenge you. It will push you to explore the parts of yourself you’ve long avoided. It will offer you unconditional presence - and in that presence, you’ll start to change.

But not neatly. Not cleanly.

Change, in this context, is messy. It’s nonlinear. You might stumble from one extreme to the other - like a baby learning to walk - until you find your balance. And your people? They’ll be sitting in the front row while you do it.

5. Seeing People as a Process

Let’s say you were a chronic people-pleaser. You go to therapy. You learn about boundaries. You connect to your anger. You stop abandoning yourself.

Suddenly, your behavior shifts. You’re a bit sharper. A little anger spills out here and there.

Now the people around you face a choice:

• They might say, “Ah, so this is the real you. You’re not kind after all.”

• Or they might say, “I’m not loving this anger spilling onto me - but I’m proud of you. I’ll protect my own boundaries while you learn to stand in yours.”

The latter is what it looks like to see someone as a process, not a fixed identity. That’s the kind of flexibility long-term relationships demand.

And when we offer this grace to each other, we naturally begin revising our assumptions:

What can I give you right now? What can you give me? Can we adapt this relationship without abandoning it?

This is real intimacy - not the illusion of stability, but the commitment to grow in tandem, even when that growth is awkward and unfinished.

6. Curiosity Over Certainty

At the heart of all this—reparative love, chosen family, sustaining relationships—is one core practice: Curiosity.

Not “I know who you are,” but:

“What am I missing?”

The people who hold us best are the ones who stay curious. They don’t demand certainty. They don’t shut down when we change. They stay, not because they know the outcome, but because they have faith in our process.

7. Found Family Will Reflect You, Too

Let me end on this: Found family is beautiful - but it’s also a harsh mirror.

If you don’t develop the ability to tolerate shame, to sit with discomfort, and to really look at yourself through the eyes of your community, you might miss the incredible gift these relationships offer.

Because chosen family will love you through change - but they will also ask you to show up differently. And they will expect you to do the same for them.

It’s hard. It’s not always sweet. But it’s real. And it’s worth it.