Find Your People: Building Deep Community in a Lonely World

by Jennie Allen

Professor and author Brené Brown famously told the story of a group of women in a remote village in Africa who spent their late afternoons at the river’s edge, washing their families’ clothes by hand.[2] There in the sunlight, they would swap stories. They would ask questions. They would check in with each other. Most days, they would laugh so hard that they’d cry. These women were stuck in the throes of poverty, but you wouldn’t know it, aside from the tattered clothing and the obvious detail that they were forced to wash clothes in mucky waters. Well, sometime later, the entire village experienced a massive shift in its resourcefulness, after residents learned to plant and harvest crops. They could sell fruits and vegetables in a larger town nearby. With their new income, they could afford uniforms and send their kids to school. They could upgrade their modest huts to substantial, permanent structures. They could wire their lives with electricity. They could dig wells and finally have clean water. They could even buy a few modern conveniences, like cell phones, toaster ovens—and washing machines. Interestingly, once nearly every home in the village had its own washing machine, the prevalence of depression among the moms in that region rose sharply. What was going on here? The village was thriving, right? Look at all the stuff they had! The explanation may not be obvious to you and me, but it is to people like Pastor Mugisha, who was raised in a family of refugees followi...