If you’re anything like me (or, honestly, anything like Texas), there’s a decent chance you were transplanted here from somewhere else.
For me, that somewhere else is a small town outside of Milwaukee, Wisconsin. In 2022, I packed up my life and moved to Texas knowing essentially no one.
And when I say no one, I mean no one.
I had gotten a teaching job in Hutto through a virtual interview. The Ninth Grade Center had only been open for a year, they were building a brand-new English team, and for whatever reason, something in me just knew it was time.
So I moved.
Brand spanking new. Baby-fresh-out-of-the-womb new.
Which was simultaneously one of the most terrifying and freeing things I’ve ever done.
There was just one small problem.
I had three young children, a full-time job in education, which if you know anything about teaching, requires approximately one full human being plus an additional human being you do not actually possess, and no family nearby. No lifelong friends down the street. No grandparents to call. No built-in emergency contacts.
I had moved to Texas in search of something new and suddenly realized:
Oh. I literally don’t have anybody here.
Except, it turns out, I did.
You Don’t Find a Village Fully Built
Somewhere along the way, we started talking about “finding your village” as though there’s a fully staffed support system waiting for you to stumble upon it.
Like you’ll move into town and someone will hand you a brochure:
Welcome! Your village includes three emergency contacts, two babysitters, one person who will listen to you cry, and a woman who will bring snacks.
Unfortunately, that’s now how it works.
My village started with a coworker.
She had been transplanted here, too, except from California. She didn’t have her people here either. We started as two people who happened to work together.
And then somewhere along the way, that changed.
The coworker became the friend. The friend became the person who could take care of my kids. The person I could call when something went wrong. The person I could cry to. The person who knows things about me that practically no on else on Earth knows.
And then our families became family.
As I’m writing this, I literally just got home from one of our game nights–something we do almost every month now.
None of that existed when I moved here.
We built it.
Villages Start With Really Small Things
That’s the part I think we sometimes miss.
You don’t necessarily notice when your village is being built.
You don’t see someone laying the foundation. There’s no ribbon cutting when construction is complete.
It starts with a hello in the morning.
A ridiculous meme.
An inside joke.
Showing up to volunteer for something.
Checking on someone when they’ve had a bad day.
Grabbing the package they accidentally left outside.
Watching someone’s kid.
Answering the phone.
Doing some tiny, seemingly insignificant thing that says, Hey. You’re not doing all of this completely by yourself.
One house goes up. Then another.
Before you know it, you’ve built a neighborhood.
And eventually, you look around and realize you have an entire community where there used to be nothing.
The Best Way to Find a Village Is to Be One
Hutto isn’t new, but so many of us are new to Hutto. We’re transplants. We’re building careers, raising families, joining organizations, volunteerings, sitting in positions we probably never imagined ourselves sitting in, and occasionally driving to places where we don’t know anybody and wondering why exactly we agreed to do this.
But that’s how the village gets bigger.
You keep showing up.
You keep doing the little things.
You keep saying yes sometimes, even when it’s uncomfortable.
And perhaps most importantly, you stop waiting for someone else to become your village and start asking how you can be part of theirs.
Because I’ve learned that the best way to build a village is to be a village.
That’s not always easy.
There are absolutely days when I get home and think, I have nothing left to give another human being today.
I’m tired. I’m stretched thin. I’ve given pieces of myself to my students, my own children, my coworkers, organizations, responsibilities, and approximately 700 other things I somehow agreed to do.
But then I remember what all those little things have built.
Five years ago, most of the people who are now woven into my everyday life weren’t in it at all.
That’s wild to me.
We were just people looking for our people.
And somehow, by showing up for each other in a hundred tiny ways, we found them.
So if you’re still looking for your village, maybe don’t worry quite so much about finding the whole thing.
Build one house.
Send the text. Make the joke. Volunteer. Check in. Pick up the package. Invite someone over. Show up.
Be one small piece of someone else’s village.
You might look around one day and realize they became yours, too.
