Invisible Threads: How to Find Your People

On Community

I moved to Brighton from London a few months ago. Brighton is cool. My neighbourhood is lined with colourful houses and the artsy kind of graffiti. Within a few weeks of moving, my neighbour welcomed me to a friendly WhatsApp group for our block. I never miss a delivery because someone is always around to take it. It is easy to feel “at home” in Brighton. Like a good urban enthusiast, I thought I knew why.

Brighton’s Blueprint

Living in this compact city, where every destination is just twenty minutes away, brings a special kind of freedom. Public spaces dot the landscape everywhere you look: Parks, playgrounds, and the beach are like a big, communal backyard. There are so many free services here like playgroups and walk-in clinics. People in my neighbourhood mostly own their homes, stay a long time, and are invested in the community (from the volunteer group restoring native plant gardens to the monthly community cleanup drives, people here actively shape their environment). The city is right-sized and well designed but there is something else, something intangible driving a sense of ease and community here.

I’ve been scratching away at this something intangible because I’ve got a feeling it holds the formula for connection. I’ve moved a lot in the last few years, and starting over is exhausting. It was exhausting to take the underground for 45 minutes to meetup with the few people we knew in London. It was a lot of work and a little sad to leave the friendships and routines we formed in London behind for a new city just 18 months later.

The Invisible Threads

I moved to Brighton already a little tired with my six-month-old son. My early days here were all about exploring with him. Days filled with walking, noticing the events at the community centre, and running into the same people at the playgrounds. Now, I love our community centre, but I don’t think I’ve ever noticed a community centre in any neighbourhood I’ve lived in before.

Being a mother is prompting me to explore my city and connect with people in a totally different way. I feel a sense of serendipity that reminds me of my 20s. I’m talking to people I don’t know at the toy library. Within a month I had dozens of phone numbers of other mothers, who adopted me into their circles.

That intangible thing that supercharged a sense of community for me was shared experience. Experiences that involve overcoming something, together, are especially good at building bonds. Next to a shared experience, vulnerability is the secret ingredient to authentic connection. In normal life, it can take years to get there with someone. But some experiences fast-track that: College. Group Travel. Motherhood.

In the first year of parenting, no one really knows what they are doing. It’s full of moments when you are bleary-eyed and can’t put two sentences together but need to be around other people. You tell each other stories like how you learned why high chairs have seatbelts when your kid slid out the bottom of his. That unique combination of honesty and shared struggle creates quick, strong bonds. The School of Life sums it up well.

"We only get close by revealing things which would, in the wrong hands, be capable of inflicting appalling humiliation on us.”

I still like Brighton for its location, infrastructure, and the soft edge that makes it both cool and approachable. I’ve grown to love hearing the seagulls and seeing the windmills working in the channel between England and France from my walks through my hilly neighbourhood. My life got easier when I got a backyard. But perfect location, affordability and infrastructure doesn’t manufacture authentic connections. Paradoxically, being pushed outside my comfort zone on this wild new ride of raising a baby put me in the right state to quickly feel comfortable around other people.

Selfishly, I'd like to crack the formula for finding my people when starting over at any age and phase. I keep moving, I like exploring, but as I get older and going to work means opening my laptop, it does feel harder. Maybe the answer is somewhere in that struggle. You don't need to have a baby to give this a try (phew!) An improv class or running club could do the trick. The key is finding spaces where people are learning, growing, or struggling together - because that's where the invisible threads of connection begin to weave themselves into something real.