Many of you know, as part of the new MEA Homes initiative, we’ve purchased two homes near our Santa Fe ranch campus to create two types of rental homes for MEA alums, SageHouse and ChrysalisHouse.
Sage is focused on long-term affordability and stability and Chrysalis is perfect for those people (mostly women) who are in the midst of a transition period with an openness to adventure.
Our first Sage home, a 3-bedroom on 2 acres full of amazing views, has just finished its renovation and upscale furnishings and you can see a fresh-off-the-presses video HERE. We’re now taking applications for renters in this home. You can add your name to the MEA Homes mailing list and express your interest in being interviewed for this first home.
In January, I was fortunate enough to be the only man amongst 20 women in our first Golden Girls workshop and I wrote about what I learned in this post, What I Learned from Spending a Weekend with 20 Potential Golden Girls. Since then, both the New York Times and The Guardian have written compelling stories about co-living.
Elizabeth White will be co-leading our upcoming April 2-5 Golden Girls workshop with me as she joined us for the January workshop and is far more knowledgeable about shared living. Since that time and based upon the experience of that workshop, she wrote the following to me as she constructed a set of questions every co-living curious woman should ask themselves:
“I’ve been thinking about what actually triggers a woman to make a big change like shared living.
What we’re learning, both from the Golden Girls work and from my own shared living project, is that readiness isn’t one thing. Not all moves are triggered by a crisis. Some emerge from quiet recalibration. Others are set in motion by disruption.
A woman in recalibration is not in free fall. Many MEA alums may be here. Nothing dramatic has happened. Life still functions. It simply no longer fits as well as it once did. The discomfort is gradual, not acute. A woman in recalibration may also be thinking ahead, having watched her parents end up in assisted living. She knows she wants something different for herself and believes she still has time to create it.
By contrast, a woman in disruption is navigating a major life event like divorce, death of a spouse, children leaving home, a health scare, or unexpected job loss. For these women, something big has changed. The life structure they depended on has shifted. The rhythms are gone. There’s no normal to return to. Psychologically, this lowers attachment to the status quo. Research on life transitions shows that major loss temporarily increases openness to change. Identity is already in flux.
When your old life is clearly over, staying put no longer feels like stability. It feels like being stuck. A move becomes part of rebuilding.
Women in disruption are looking for footing.
When the ground has already shifted, a move can feel like part of rebuilding. For women here the questions are practical: What exactly is this? How does it work? How do I get out if I need to? What are the rules? What happens if there’s conflict? Structure lowers anxiety. Clear expectations are reassuring. Knowing the boundaries makes the decision feel safer.
Women in recalibration have different needs.
In many cases, they are not rebuilding. They are evaluating. They need room to think, time to weigh tradeoffs. Their questions even sound different: Does this fit who I am now? Would it expand my life or shrink it? Can I see myself here in two years or just for the summer? Will I be able to afford this ten years from now? Some questions show up for both groups regardless of where they’re starting. Cost. Logistics. What daily life actually looks like. The difference isn’t the question itself, it’s what’s driving it. A woman in disruption asks about costs because she needs to know if this is survivable. A woman in recalibration is running a longer-term calculation. Same question, different weight behind it.”
Are you in disruption or recalibration? You might want to join us in April or at our next Golden Girls workshop May 21-24 in Santa Fe. If you’d like to see me April 2-5 in Santa Fe but are not a Golden Girl, consider our Landscapes of Silent 3-Day retreat during the same dates as I’ll be leading a couple of sessions there as well. Remember what the poet Rumi wrote 750 years ago: “Silence is the language of God, all else is poor translation.”
-Chip