The first was money. Many of the communities I was interested in were simply beyond what I could afford, even though I wasn’t looking for a big house or anything particularly fancy. In fact, part of the appeal of cohousing was that I could imagine living very happily in a smaller home because I wouldn’t need to fit every part of my life inside my own four walls.

There would be gathering spaces, guest rooms, gardens and other things we could share. I had assumed, probably somewhat naively, that sharing more and living in smaller homes would also make cohousing more affordable. Often, that wasn’t what I found.

Now that I’m on the development side, I understand a lot more about why. Land costs what it costs, and then there are water and sewer lines, roads, architects, engineers, attorneys, surveys, environmental work, permits and the actual construction. The Common House and other shared spaces that make cohousing so appealing aren’t free, either. Long before anyone gets a mortgage, someone has to pay for years of planning and development, and in most forming cohousing communities, at least some of that money comes from the future residents themselves. That creates another financial hurdle that I hadn’t really understood when I first started looking. It isn’t only whether you can afford the eventual home. You may also need tens of thousands of dollars available to help create the community years before you can actually live there.

That makes it much easier to participate if you already own a home, have accumulated equity, have significant savings or simply have enough extra income to put money into something that won’t become your home for several years. It is much harder if you’re paying high rent every month, raising a family on a limited income, carrying debt, recovering from a financial setback or trying to save enough for a traditional down payment. As I learned more about cohousing, I discovered that my experience wasn’t particularly unusual.

Research has found that cohousing residents have historically tended to be highly educated and financially comfortable, and one U.S. study of older adults living in intergenerational cohousing found that 95 percent of the participants were white. Even the National Cohousing Alliance has acknowledged that affordability continues to be a challenge for the movement. The more I learned, the more I realized that what I had experienced wasn’t simply a matter of finding the wrong community at the wrong time.

This is one of the things I have a hard time reconciling. I was drawn to cohousing because of everything it offers that most neighborhoods don’t. Older adults can age surrounded by people they know, children can grow up with more adults looking out for them and neighbors can share things and help one another instead of everyone having to figure everything out on their own. Perhaps most importantly, people actually know each other. None of those benefits are more valuable to someone because they have a higher income or a large amount of home equity. In fact, I sometimes wonder whether the people who could benefit most from the financial and social support of community are the very people who have the hardest time getting through the door.

As I visited more communities, I began to realize that money wasn’t the only kind of access I was thinking about. I visited established communities that were actively looking for new members and the people I met were generally friendly and clearly proud of what they had created. They had spent years living together, eating together, raising children, working through disagreements, celebrating milestones and helping one another through difficult times. They had the kind of close relationships I was looking for, which was wonderful to see. At the same time, there were places where I came away wondering how a new person actually became part of all of that. No one was intentionally excluding anyone. In fact, these communities were saying quite clearly that they wanted new members. Yet people already had close friendships, routines, traditions, inside jokes and years of shared history, and sometimes it felt a little like arriving very late to a party where everyone else already knew each other.

I could imagine buying a home there, but I wasn’t always sure I could imagine finding my place within the community itself. I don’t think this is particularly a cohousing problem. The same thing happens in churches, clubs, workplaces, neighborhoods and probably anywhere people have known one another for a long time. The interesting part is that the very closeness that makes a community so appealing to the people already living there can unintentionally make it harder for someone new to find a way in.

That experience changed how I think about access. At first, I thought primarily about whether someone could afford the home and the upfront costs of becoming part of a forming community. Those questions still matter enormously to me, and they’re a big reason we’re working toward having up to half of the homes at Gratitude Village Brighton be permanently affordable. Now I think there is another question we have to keep asking, too.

Once someone gets here, will they actually feel like they belong? It isn’t enough to remove a financial barrier if someone walks into the community and feels as though all the meaningful relationships were formed years before they arrived. Being able to live somewhere and feeling that you are truly part of it aren’t necessarily the same thing.

This is something I find myself thinking about now because Gratitude Village is still new. Everyone is relatively new to everyone else, although some of us have already been working together long enough that we have a few of our own shared stories and experiences. We’re building relationships at the same time we’re buying the land, designing homes, understanding drainage, raising money, working through zoning, planning a Common House and learning an extraordinary amount about development. Right now, it is pretty easy for us to talk about being welcoming because we’re still creating the community together. I wonder what that will look like ten years from now, when some residents have known each other for more than a decade and someone completely new moves in.

By then, I hope we’ll have deep friendships, traditions we love, stories we tell over and over and a long history of helping each other through whatever life has brought our way. That’s exactly what I want. I don’t want us to avoid becoming close because we’re worried that someone new might someday feel left out. At the same time, I want us to understand that creating a welcoming community isn’t something we accomplish once and then check off a list. We will have to keep making room for people, and those new people will need room to influence the community too, rather than simply being expected to fit into everything the original residents created.

The same is true of financial accessibility, although that challenge looks very different. Our goal at Gratitude Village Brighton is for up to half of our homes to be permanently affordable alongside market-rate homes, and we created our Equity Access Fund through Colorado Gives because some lower-income households need help getting past the financial barriers that appear before there is even a home to purchase. We’re exploring partnerships, different funding sources and ways to make the numbers work. Affordable homes don’t cost less to build simply because the future homeowner has a lower income and finding the money to fill that gap is complicated.

I wish I could say we had figured all of that out. We haven’t. Some days I feel very optimistic about what we can accomplish and other days another development budget or funding requirement reminds me how difficult this really is.

There are other cohousing communities working on this too, and I find their examples encouraging. Some have partnered with community land trusts, while others have incorporated income-restricted homes alongside market-rate homes. Linden Cohousing in Madison, Wisconsin, for example, has 11 income-restricted homes among its 45 homes, while Troy Gardens, also in Madison, used a community land trust model to create permanently affordable housing. What those communities reinforce for me is that affordability doesn’t happen simply because a community values it. It requires money, partnerships, planning and a willingness to keep working at the problem when the easy answer would be to build only what the market will support.

I also want to be careful about suggesting that cohousing communities have intentionally excluded people who couldn’t afford to live there or that established communities don’t really want new members. That hasn’t been my experience. Most of the people I’ve met in the cohousing world care deeply about inclusion, sustainability, connection and creating better ways for people to live together. They are also operating within a housing system that makes creating genuinely affordable new homes very difficult, and within the normal human tendency to become comfortable with the people we already know. Neither financial exclusion nor social exclusion has to be intentional to be real for the person experiencing it.

I don’t know yet if we will get all of this right at Gratitude Village. We’re still figuring it out, and I’m sure some of our ideas will change as we learn what is actually possible. I do know that I want us to keep asking both questions: Who can afford to become part of this community, and once they’re here, will they really have the opportunity to become part of it?

If we’re serious about creating a community centered around belonging, we can’t simply say that everyone is welcome and assume we’ve done our job. We have to think about who can get through the door in the first place. Once they’re here, we need to keep making room at the table.

At first, that sounds like an odd thing to say. Most of us already have neighbors. We’ve lived next door to people for years, and many of us have wonderful relationships with them. We wave across the driveway, bring in each other’s trash cans, collect the mail when someone is traveling, or stop for a quick chat while walking the dog. Those small acts of kindness matter, and they help make a neighborhood feel friendlier. But I’m beginning to think there’s another layer to neighboring that many of us have had very little opportunity to experience.

As our Founding Members have begun designing Gratitude Village together, I’ve noticed something about the rhythm of our meetings. We come together with full calendars, long agendas and important decisions to make. We work hard, ask thoughtful questions, wrestle with difficult choices, and then, when the meeting ends, many of us gather our things and head off to whatever comes next. I understand that completely because I’m usually doing exactly the same thing. We have busy lives! There are emails waiting to be answered, dinner to make, errands to run, and responsibilities that don’t disappear simply because we’ve spent the afternoon planning a community.

There’s nothing wrong with that. In fact, it’s exactly how most of us have learned to live. Our culture rewards productivity. We admire people who are organized, efficient and independent. We pride ourselves on solving our own problems, managing our own schedules and not asking too much of anyone else. Those qualities have served many of us well throughout our lives. They helped us build careers, raise families, weather difficult seasons and become capable adults. Independence is not something I think we should abandon.

But I’m beginning to wonder whether independence, by itself, is enough to build a village.

When I imagine life at Gratitude Village a few years from now, I don’t picture people rushing from one obligation to the next without ever looking up. I picture someone lingering after dinner because the conversation has become too interesting to leave. I picture neighbors sitting on a porch while children chase each other through the courtyard. I picture someone mentioning they aren’t feeling well, only to find soup arriving at their door later that evening. I picture spontaneous moments that no one scheduled and no committee organized. Those are the moments that transform a collection of homes into a community.

The interesting thing is that those moments won’t magically appear just because we build a beautiful Common House or design inviting walking paths and quiet gathering nooks. Thoughtful design certainly helps and I believe deeply in creating places that encourage people to cross paths naturally. But architecture can only create opportunities. It’s the people who choose what happens next. If we’re hoping to create a neighborhood where connection becomes part of everyday life, then perhaps we need to begin practicing those habits long before anyone moves in.

I’ve noticed this in other ways as well. Every design workshop and every Community meeting asks something of us that goes beyond making decisions. It asks us to slow down enough to really hear another person’s perspective. It asks us to hold our own opinions with a little more humility and a little less certainty. Sometimes the best idea isn’t the first one offered, and sometimes it isn’t mine. Learning to sit with differing viewpoints, to let ideas evolve instead of rushing toward a conclusion and to trust that collective wisdom can produce something richer than any one of us would have created alone is a very different way of working than many of us are used to.

The more I reflect on it, the more I think we’re all engaged in a quiet process of unlearning. Many of us were raised to believe that success meant becoming increasingly self-sufficient. We celebrate people who can handle everything on their own. Asking for help can feel uncomfortable. Receiving help can feel even more uncomfortable because we worry about being a burden. Yet every thriving village throughout history has depended on something different. It has depended on healthy interdependence—the understanding that giving and receiving are equally valuable, and that our lives become richer when we allow ourselves to rely on one another from time to time.

I don’t think this is just a lesson about cohousing. In many ways, I think it’s a lesson about the kind of world so many of us say we want. We long for deeper friendships, stronger neighborhoods and a greater sense of belonging. We worry about loneliness and disconnection, yet many of us have spent our entire lives practicing habits that unintentionally keep those things at a distance. Building Gratitude Village is making me realize that creating a different neighborhood also requires creating different habits and habits take time to change.

Perhaps that’s one of the reasons this work begins years before the first home is built. Right now, we’re conducting environmental studies, refining site plans, meeting with architects and navigating the long process of development. But something else is happening at the same time. We’re learning how to listen more carefully. We’re learning how to think about “we” as often as “me.” We’re discovering that belonging isn’t something a building can provide or a developer can deliver. It’s something ordinary people create together, one conversation, one decision and one act of generosity or kindness at a time.

Someday, I hope people will walk through Gratitude Village and notice the beautiful homes, the gardens, the Common House and the tree-lined pathways. But I hope they’ll notice something else, too. I hope they’ll sense that the people who live there have spent years practicing how to become good neighbors before they ever shared a ZIP code.

Maybe that’s been the real work all along.

If you don’t know what that means, you’re probably wondering whether we’ve become a pirate ship instead of a cohousing community.

The title actually belongs to one of our Founding Members. Well, to be completely honest, he didn’t exactly volunteer for the job. His wife “volun-told” him that he would be our Gratitude Captain and the role has stuck ever since. Before anyone heads home or logs out of Zoom, he reminds us to pause for just a few minutes and share something we’re grateful for.

I’ll admit something that probably doesn’t paint me in the best light. When we first started doing this, I found it annoying.

Our meetings are full. We have a lot to accomplish, important decisions to make and discussions that almost always take longer than we expect. By the time we’re wrapping things up, I’ve usually been going since early that morning. My mind has already shifted to relaxing at home, the emails I still need to answer, dinner, tomorrow’s schedule, and the dozen other things competing for my attention. At that point, all I really wanted to do was adjourn the meeting and turn Zoom off.

Of course, no one was asking us to stay another half hour. It was only a few minutes. But when you’re tired and your mind is already racing toward what’s next, even a few extra minutes can feel like an eternity. I remember thinking, Can’t we just end the meeting?

Somewhere along the way, though, something changed.

I can’t tell you exactly when it happened. There wasn’t a particular meeting or a specific conversation that caused it. Instead, almost without realizing it, I found myself anticipating those last few minutes. Even prompting for the Gratitude Captain myself. Rather than feeling like one more thing on the agenda, they began to feel like a natural way to close our time together.

Part of that change may have come from a tradition my daughter and I have shared for a few years. Every evening before bed, we each say at least three things we’re grateful for. It’s a simple practice, but one I’ve come to treasure. No matter how hectic, frustrating, or disappointing a day has been, taking a moment to reflect shifts my perspective. It doesn’t erase the challenges, but it reminds me that they are never the whole story. If we’ve gotten upset with each other, it also helps shift us from the “blame” game or holding onto resentment and back into a more open, loving perspective. There is always something worth noticing, even on difficult days.

I’ve begun to realize that’s exactly what our Gratitude Captain is doing for our community.

Instead of ending a meeting with everyone’s thoughts scattered across unfinished agendas, action items and tomorrow’s responsibilities, he gently invites us to pause. For just a few moments, the conversation changes. We stop thinking about what still needs to be accomplished and remember what has already been given. Sometimes people express gratitude for family or friends. Sometimes it’s for good health, a productive discussion or simply the opportunity to be part of this journey together. The answers are always different, but the effect is remarkably consistent. The room softens. People smile. We leave feeling a little more connected than we did a few minutes earlier.

The more I think about it, the more I wonder if these small moments are actually part of the work of building community.

When people imagine creating a cohousing neighborhood, they usually picture architects drawing plans, engineers designing infrastructure, or construction crews building homes. Those things are certainly important and we’ve spent countless hours working through each of them. But communities aren’t sustained by site plans alone. They’re sustained by habits, traditions and rituals that remind people why they’re choosing to live together in the first place. A shared meal. A birthday celebration. Checking in on a neighbor who’s had a difficult week. Pausing together before everyone hurries back into busy lives.

Those things rarely happen by accident. Someone creates space for them and over time they become part of the culture of a community.

I’ve also found myself thinking about how difficult it can be to slow down. Many of us, myself included, have spent our lives measuring our days by what we accomplished. We value efficiency, productivity and independence because those qualities have helped us succeed in so many ways. Yet creating an intentional community seems to require another set of skills as well. It asks us to be fully present, to make room for one another, and occasionally to resist the urge to rush on to the next thing. I’m discovering that those practices don’t come naturally to me, but perhaps that’s exactly why they’re worth practicing.

As we continue creating Gratitude Village, I find myself thinking less about the homes we’ll someday build and more about the people we’re slowly becoming. Every meeting, every workshop, every shared meal and every conversation is giving us an opportunity to practice the kind of community we hope to experience once we all live together. In many ways, the culture of Gratitude Village is already under construction, even though the land itself is still waiting for its first foundation.

I still smile every time someone calls out, “Gratitude Captain!” It has become much more than a signal that we’re almost finished with the meeting. For me, it’s a gentle reminder to slow down, to notice the people around me and to end our time together with gratitude instead of urgency. Those few minutes won’t appear on any architectural drawing or development timeline, but I have a feeling they may become one of the strongest foundations we’re building.

Perhaps that’s how villages begin—not only with homes and shared spaces, but with simple practices that quietly change the people creating them.

Like many people discovering cohousing for the first time, I spent countless hours reading websites, watching videos, and imagining what life might be like in a neighborhood where people truly knew one another. One community in particular captured my imagination. Everything they described was exactly what I was looking for—neighbors who shared meals, cared for one another, and built a life together. At the time, they didn’t have any homes available, and I wasn’t in a position to move anyway, so I simply kept following them from afar.

Over the years, that community became, in my mind, the picture of what cohousing could be.

Eventually, my daughter and I finally had the opportunity to visit. We arranged to stay for a week so we could really experience daily life in the community. I was excited, maybe even a little nervous. After waiting so long, I couldn’t believe we were finally pulling into the neighborhood I’d imagined for nearly a decade.

Instead of feeling like we’d arrived home, though, we felt a little lost.

I had texted when we were about ten minutes away, expecting someone might meet us or point us in the right direction. No one did. We eventually figured out where to park and where we were staying, and that evening we joined the community’s monthly potluck. We brought desserts to share and looked forward to meeting everyone.

During the introductions, I mentioned that I had been following the community for nearly ten years and had dreamed of visiting. Someone quietly muttered, “Stalker.” I don’t think the comment was intended to be hurtful, but it stung nonetheless.

Throughout dinner, I did what I usually do. I introduced myself, asked questions, and tried to get conversations started. I’ve never considered myself an introvert. I genuinely enjoy meeting new people. But the conversations never really took off. People were polite enough, but it felt as though we had interrupted a family gathering where everyone already knew one another.

What affected me even more was watching my daughter.

She has always approached new situations differently than I do, and I pay close attention to how welcoming environments feel through her eyes. Throughout the evening, people repeatedly called her Regina instead of Reyna, despite being corrected. She became quieter as the night went on, and by the end of the evening, neither of us felt like we belonged.

That night we quietly booked a hotel room and decided we’d leave the following morning instead of staying for the rest of the week.

As we were walking through the community the next day before leaving, we happened to run into the resident who was supposed to give us a tour the evening before. They were surprised to learn we were leaving early and even more surprised when we explained why. They shared that they were one of the newer members of the community themselves and also one of the more introverted residents. It was a kind conversation, and I appreciated their willingness to listen.

The drive home gave me a lot to think about.

It would have been easy to conclude that cohousing simply wasn’t what I had hoped it would be. Although I had attended several lovely Zoom meetings over the years to meet folks from both established and developing communities, so I knew that wasn’t the case.

Instead, I realized something much more important. That community wasn’t lacking community at all.

In many ways, they had exactly what I had admired for so many years. Their relationships were genuine. They clearly cared deeply about one another. They had built something remarkable over more than thirty years together.

The challenge wasn’t that they had failed to create community.

The challenge was that their community had become so well established that it was difficult to see what it felt like to experience it for the first time.

For people who had lived there for years, everything probably felt perfectly natural. They had decades of shared history, inside jokes, routines, and friendships. Without meaning to, they had become a little like a close-knit family. And anyone who’s ever walked into someone else’s family reunion knows how hard it can be to find your place.

That visit changed the way I think about community. I realized there’s an important difference between community and belonging. Community describes the relationships that already exist. Belonging is the experience of someone who is just arriving.

One can exist without the other.

I’ve thought about that visit many times over the past several couple of years as Gratitude Village has grown from an idea into a real community of people. Long before we ever had land under contract or architects drawing plans, we were welcoming people into meetings, hosting information sessions, sharing meals, and inviting strangers to imagine building something together. Every time someone walks into one of our gatherings for the first time, I remember what it felt like to walk into that dining room years ago.

It has influenced countless small decisions that most people probably never notice. We wear name tags. We make introductions. We try to explain unfamiliar terms instead of assuming everyone already understands them. We invite questions. We intentionally create opportunities for new people to participate instead of simply observing. We won’t always get it right, but we want every person who visits Gratitude Village to leave feeling that someone was genuinely glad they came.

Ironically, the community that taught me this lesson continued learning as well. Over the years, they’ve updated their website and communications to more clearly describe who they’re hoping to attract, particularly young families who can help sustain the community for future generations. Like every healthy community, they’ve continued to evolve, adapt, and learn from experience. That, too, is part of intentional community.

Looking back now, I’m grateful for that visit, even though it wasn’t the experience I had imagined. It reminded me that beautiful architecture, a Common House, shared gardens, and decades of history don’t automatically create belonging. Belonging happens when people intentionally make room for someone new.

That’s the community I hope we’re building at Gratitude Village.

Not just one where neighbors know one another, but one where every new person who walks through the door can imagine, perhaps for the very first time, that they might someday belong there too.

I remember riding my bike until the streetlights came on. I remember neighborhood-wide games of tag that somehow spilled across half a dozen front yards without anyone ever asking permission. I remember drawing hopscotch courts with sidewalk chalk and skating up and down the sidewalks until someone inevitably fell and everyone stopped to make sure they were okay. On warm summer evenings, it seemed like every front porch or front stoop had someone sitting outside while children played. Conversations happened naturally because people were already there. If you walked down the block, you rarely made it home without stopping to say hello to someone.

Those memories have stayed with me for a long time, but they’re actually layered with even older memories from my grandparents’ home in a small town in western Oklahoma. Their house didn’t have air conditioning, just open windows and a few fans that worked overtime during the summer. After supper, everyone moved outside. My grandparents’ best friends came over almost every evening, while other neighbors wandered by whenever they had time. Someone was usually snapping green beans, shelling peas, or shucking corn while the conversation drifted from family news to local gossip to stories that had probably been told a hundred times before.

My sister and I played in the yard or the driveway, sometimes with other children and sometimes on our own, always within earshot of the adults. Looking back, I don’t remember many of the conversations, but I remember the feeling of belonging to something larger than our own family. At the time, I assumed every neighborhood worked that way. It wasn’t until much later that I realized how unusual those memories had become.

Somewhere along the way, many of our neighborhoods changed. Homes became larger. Garages moved to the front. Backyards became more private. Air conditioning meant windows stayed closed through the summer. None of those changes were wrong. They reflected changing lifestyles, growing communities, and new priorities. But together they quietly changed where life happened. Instead of gathering in front yards, we gathered in backyards. Instead of sidewalks filled with children and neighbors, we drove into our garages, closed the door, and went inside. We still had wonderful homes, but we had fewer opportunities to simply bump into one another.

Years later, after I started learning about cohousing, I came across a phrase that immediately took me back to those childhood memories. Architect Chuck Durrett talks about “life between the buildings.” It’s such a simple phrase, but it captures something profound. He points out that traditional suburban neighborhoods are largely designed around streets, driveways, garages, and private backyards. In cohousing communities, homes are intentionally arranged around pedestrian walkways and shared green spaces instead. As a result, people naturally spend much more of their time in places where they see one another.

The design itself doesn’t create community—people do. What thoughtful design can do is make community easier by creating more opportunities for neighbors to naturally cross paths throughout the day. A walk to check the mail becomes a conversation. Watering flowers turns into helping a neighbor harvest tomatoes. Children playing outside become the reason parents get to know one another. Those interactions aren’t planned, and they aren’t required. They simply become part of everyday life.

That distinction has become one of the guiding ideas behind Gratitude Village. As we’ve worked with Studio Co+Hab over the past year, we’ve spent surprisingly little time talking about roads compared to the time we’ve spent talking about pathways, gathering places, gardens, and the beautiful cottonwood grove on our Brighton property. We’ve talked about where children might naturally play, where neighbors might linger after checking their mail, and how the Common House becomes part of everyday life instead of a place reserved for meetings and special events. Those conversations aren’t really about buildings. They’re about people.

When I first started visiting cohousing communities more than a decade ago, I thought I was searching for a different kind of housing. Looking back now, I don’t think that was ever really true. I wasn’t looking for smaller homes or a Common House or even a particular architectural style. I was looking for a feeling that had been quietly planted years earlier in my grandparents’ yard in Oklahoma and reinforced in the Denver neighborhood where I grew up. I was looking for the feeling of knowing your neighbors, of children playing freely outside, and of conversations that happened simply because someone was sitting on a front porch as you walked by.

I don’t expect Gratitude Village to recreate my childhood neighborhood or those summer evenings in western Oklahoma. Every community develops its own traditions, its own stories, and its own personality. But I do hope we’re creating a place where children can ride their bikes until dusk, neighbors stop to talk without checking the time, and someone always seems to be outside enjoying the evening. Years from now, I hope people won’t remember the square footage of their homes nearly as much as they’ll remember the friendships they built, the conversations they shared, and the life that happened between the buildings.

Like many people, I fell in love with the idea of cohousing long before I ever imagined helping create one. Whenever I had the opportunity, I visited communities, read books, attended presentations, and quietly imagined what it would be like to live in a neighborhood where people actually knew and cared about one another. I loved the idea of private homes combined with shared spaces, neighbors who gathered for meals, celebrated birthdays together, helped each other through life’s ups and downs, and intentionally created a sense of belonging. If you had asked me just a few years ago where I saw myself in the future, my answer would have been simple. I hoped to become a resident of such an existing cohousing community.

Starting one had never crossed my mind.

The problem was that the more I looked, the more I realized the community I was hoping to find either wasn’t available or wasn’t affordable. The few new communities being developed in Colorado were beautiful, but they were priced well beyond what I could afford. After spending ten years as an elementary school teacher and another ten years leading a math learning center, I had the retirement income of an educator—not a developer, real estate mogul, or tech executive.

I remember wondering how many other people were having the exact same experience. How many teachers, nurses, social workers, young families, retirees, or adults with disabilities were also looking for a neighborhood centered on connection, sustainability, accessibility, and belonging but simply couldn’t find one within reach? That question stayed with me for a long time until it slowly became another question.

What if I built one myself?

Even now, I smile a little when I think about that question.

At the time, it felt almost ridiculous. I knew absolutely nothing about real estate development. I couldn’t have explained what an entitlement was or told you the difference between a Phase I Environmental Site Assessment and a geotechnical report. Zoning? Utility studies? Development financing? I knew none of it.

What I did know was education. I knew how to bring people together around a shared vision. I knew how to build relationships, solve problems, ask questions, and keep moving forward even when I didn’t have all the answers.

As it turns out, those skills mattered more than I realized.

That one question eventually became Gratitude Village.

Over the past two years, I’ve watched something that began as a simple idea grow into an organization with an incredible Board of Directors, an experienced professional development team, dedicated volunteers, generous donors, and Founding Members who believed in this vision long before there was much to see. Together we’ve incorporated as a nonprofit, placed our first property under contract in Brighton, built wonderful relationships with the City of Brighton, and begun the long and often complicated process of turning a dream into a neighborhood.

Those are exciting milestones, and I’m proud of every one of them.

But if I’m being honest, there was still a part of me that thought of Gratitude Village as something we were working toward rather than something that already existed.

That changed during our Site Design Workshop in June.

There was one moment that has stayed with me ever since. I found myself standing quietly in the back of the room just watching everyone. Nobody noticed because they were completely absorbed in what they were doing. Groups of future neighbors were gathered around maps of our Brighton property covered with wooden blocks representing different housing types, garages, the common house and commercial pads, pipe cleaners for paths and vegetation, black fabric strips for parking, brown ribbon for roads and other items symbolizing things like a fire pit, detention pond, picnic tables, and more! They were talking about where homes should go, how the walking paths might encourage people to stop and visit, where children could safely play, how we could make the community even more accessible, and where gardens and gathering spaces would fit best.

Not everyone agreed.

Honestly, I wouldn’t have expected them to.

What impressed me wasn’t that everyone had the same ideas. It was how they worked through their differences. People listened to one another. They asked thoughtful questions. Someone would suggest moving the Common House to create a stronger sense of arrival. Someone else would point out how another location better preserved open space or made it easier for people with mobility challenges to navigate the site. Every conversation seemed to make the design a little stronger because every perspective mattered.

As I watched those conversations unfold, something clicked.

For the first time, I realized I wasn’t looking at a project anymore.

I was looking at a community.

We just don’t have the buildings yet.

That’s one of the things I love most about cohousing. In most neighborhoods, the houses are built first and the neighbors meet later. Sometimes those relationships grow, and sometimes they don’t. In cohousing, we do it the other way around. We begin by getting to know each other. We learn how to listen, make decisions together, work through disagreements, celebrate milestones, and build trust. The physical neighborhood simply grows around the relationships that already exist.

By the time people receive the keys to their homes, they aren’t moving into a neighborhood full of strangers. They’re moving into a community they’ve already helped create.

I think another realization surprised me just as much.

Gratitude Village no longer feels like my project.

That probably sounds like a strange thing for a founder to say, but I actually think it’s exactly how it should be.

Every Founding Member has shaped this community in ways I never could have on my own. Our board members bring wisdom and expertise that make every decision better. Our consultants challenge us to think differently. Our volunteers, donors, and partners all leave their fingerprints on this journey. The neighborhood that eventually rises on our Brighton property won’t look exactly like the sketches I made a couple of years ago.

And I’m incredibly grateful for that.

It will be better than anything I could have imagined by myself because it has been shaped by so many thoughtful, caring people who all want the same thing: a place where people genuinely know, support, and care for one another.

When I look back now, it’s amazing to think that all of this started with one simple question. I thought I was searching for a place where I belonged.

Somewhere along the way, that search turned into helping create that place alongside an extraordinary group of people. We still have a long road ahead. We have financing to secure, permits to obtain, homes to design, and eventually streets, gardens, and a Common House to build.

But after spending that weekend watching future neighbors imagine their lives together, I don’t think anyone could convince me that Gratitude Village is still just an idea.

The buildings may still be ahead of us.

The community is already here.

And I can’t wait to see what we build together next.

During that season of my life, I was struggling in ways few people knew. After retiring earlier than I had planned, I spent more than a year looking for work. I submitted hundreds of applications, hoping someone would see value in the experience I had spent a lifetime building. Instead, I received hundreds of rejections. It was discouraging, humbling, and, if I’m honest, one of the hardest periods I’ve ever walked through.

Somewhere in the middle of that uncertainty, I started drawing.

At first it wasn’t anything formal. I wasn’t trying to design a community. I was simply giving shape to an idea that wouldn’t leave me alone. I would sketch little clusters of homes around shared green spaces, imagining neighbors gathering on porches, children safely exploring the neighborhood, gardens overflowing in the summer, and a Common House that would become the heart of daily life. The first sketches were based on a couple of twelve-acre properties I had been looking at in Golden and Wheat Ridge, but they were really about something much larger than any particular piece of land.

They represented hope.

Those drawings reminded me that even though I couldn’t control what happened next in my own life, I could still imagine creating something that might make life better for others.

As Gratitude Village slowly grew, those sketches evolved into conversations. Conversations became presentations. Presentations became a nonprofit organization, a board of directors, Founding Members, architects, city meetings, grant applications, and eventually a piece of land that somehow seemed to be waiting for us all along.

Through all of those changes, though, I quietly carried those early drawings with me.

Not literally, but in my mind.

When we gathered for our Site Design Workshop in June, I thought I was coming prepared to help facilitate a conversation. What I didn’t realize was that I was also bringing years of expectations about what Gratitude Village should look like.

I noticed it almost immediately.

As our Founding Members began moving architectural blocks around the tables, exploring different possibilities, and asking questions I hadn’t considered, I found myself reacting internally. There were moments when I wanted to steer the conversation back toward the picture I had been carrying for so long. I wasn’t trying to control the process, but I was surprised by how attached I had become to an image that had lived in my imagination for years.

That realization was uncomfortable.

From the very beginning, I’ve told people that Gratitude Village would be a resident-designed community. The nonprofit’s role is to bring people together, create the opportunity, and provide the framework. The community itself belongs to the people who will eventually live there.

It’s easy to say those words.

It’s much harder to live them when you realize you’re being asked to let go of your own picture so something larger can emerge.

Saturday was emotionally harder than I expected.

Part of that was simple exhaustion. We covered a tremendous amount of ground that day, moving from the recreation center to the property, sharing lunch beneath the shade of the cottonwoods, participating in our blessing ceremony, and then returning to hours of concentrated design work. By the time I finally drove home that evening, I was physically and mentally spent.

But another part of the exhaustion came from the quiet work happening inside me.

Every time someone suggested an idea I hadn’t imagined, I had a choice. I could compare it to my own vision, or I could become curious about what they were seeing that I wasn’t. Those are two very different ways of listening.

Somewhere during that process, something began to shift.

Instead of asking whether each new idea matched the picture I had been carrying, I started asking whether it helped us create a better community. Once I made that shift, I began noticing things I never would have discovered on my own. Someone recognized how the cottonwood grove naturally wanted to become the heart of the village. Someone else saw relationships between the Common House and the surrounding homes that immediately made sense once they were pointed out. Questions led to new ideas, and new ideas led to conversations none of us could have anticipated when the weekend began.

By Sunday afternoon, I found myself looking at the evolving site plan with a completely different perspective.

The design wasn’t becoming less like my vision.

It was becoming more complete.

The picture spread across those tables carried pieces of every person in the room. It reflected dozens of conversations, thoughtful questions, moments of disagreement, laughter, compromise, and shared imagination. It was richer than anything I could have drawn on my own because it no longer belonged to one person.

It belonged to all of us.

As I drove home that evening, I found myself thinking about leadership in a new way.

For a long time, I believed my responsibility was to carry the vision for Gratitude Village. In many ways, that was true. Someone had to keep believing in the possibility of this community when it existed only as a few rough sketches and a dream that seemed far bigger than my circumstances.

But leadership changes as a vision grows.

There comes a point when holding onto it too tightly can actually prevent it from becoming everything it was meant to be. My role isn’t to protect every detail of the picture I first imagined. My role is to protect the values that inspired those early sketches while creating space for other people to shape the community alongside me.

Looking back now, I realize those first drawings served their purpose.

They gave Gratitude Village a place to begin.

They were never meant to define where it would end.

The vision that helped me find hope during one of the most difficult seasons of my life has become something far more beautiful than I could have imagined alone.

It has become our vision.

And I can’t think of a better way for an intentional community to begin.

The funny thing is, Gratitude Village doesn’t have a Common House yet.

Or at least, that’s what I thought.

During our recent Site Design Workshop, we spent Saturday morning inside the Brighton Recreation Center wrestling with some surprisingly difficult questions. What experiences did we want people to have in our community? What activities would support those experiences? What kinds of spaces would make those activities possible? By lunchtime, our brains were already full, but the conversation was only beginning.

We packed up and drove to the property, where we set up two simple pop-up tents adjacent to a magnificent although overgrown grove of heritage cottonwood trees. We unfolded camp chairs, unpacked picnic lunches, found patches of shade, and settled into conversation.

Somewhere during that meal, I looked around and realized we were already sitting in our first Common House.

It didn’t have walls.

There wasn’t a fireplace or a gourmet kitchen. There were no guest rooms, dining tables, or children’s play areas. But it was serving exactly the purpose a Common House is meant to serve. It was bringing us together. We were sharing food, telling stories, laughing, asking questions, and beginning to know one another in ways that simply don’t happen over Zoom.

That realization stayed with me for the rest of the weekend.

The community had asked me to create our blessing ceremony, and I felt deeply honored by that trust. As we gathered in a circle beneath the shade of those cottonwoods, I found myself speaking words that had lived on paper for a while but somehow carried a different meaning once we were standing together on the land.

“Today we gather not as owners of this land, but as its future caretakers.”

For weeks, this property had existed mostly as maps, surveys, environmental reports, engineering documents, and conversations with city staff. Standing there together, it became something entirely different. We could hear birds singing in the trees, feel the breeze coming off the irrigation ditch, notice the changing character of the landscape, and begin to imagine children running through these open spaces someday.

It no longer felt like a piece of property.

It felt like the beginning of home.

One of my favorite activities followed the blessing. Each of us dropped a small stone onto a map of the property, and wherever our stone landed became the place where we would spend the next ten minutes alone. There was no agenda beyond paying attention. We listened. We watched. We noticed what drew our eyes and ears. What did we smell? What did we feel? When we gathered again, every person described a different experience.

Some talked about the peace they found near the trees. Others noticed the sound of traffic along Bromley or the wind moving through the grasses. What struck me most wasn’t that we experienced the land differently. It was that every perspective added something valuable to the conversation. None of us saw the whole picture alone, but together we began to understand the land more fully.

That lesson stayed with us as we returned to designing the community.

I have to admit something. By Saturday evening, I was completely exhausted.

Part of it was physical. I had driven from home to Brighton, then to Denver, and finally back home after spending hours in the sunshine. But much of the exhaustion came from something deeper. Creating an intentional community requires far more than deciding where buildings should go. It asks us to listen carefully, to remain curious, and to hold our own ideas loosely enough that something better can emerge.

There were moments when I felt frustrated because the conversation wasn’t heading in the direction I had imagined. After carrying this vision for so long, I discovered how easy it is to become attached to your own ideas. More than once, I found myself taking a deep breath and reminding myself that Gratitude Village has never been about creating my dream community.

It’s about creating our community.

Looking back, I’m grateful for those moments of discomfort because they changed me as much as they changed the design.

Sunday felt different.

The conversations had a different rhythm. Instead of defending ideas, people were building on one another’s thoughts. The architectural blocks moved around the tables, layouts came together and fell apart, and then slowly, almost imperceptibly, something began to emerge. The grove of cottonwoods became the natural heart of the community. The Common House found its place facing the trees. Four clusters of homes seemed to settle into the landscape as though they had been waiting for us to discover them.

By the end of the afternoon, we had reached consent on a direction for the community. That didn’t mean every person got exactly what they wanted. It meant we had listened carefully enough to arrive at a solution everyone could genuinely support.

I remember standing back and looking at the final layout with an overwhelming sense of pride—not because it was perfect, but because it wasn’t the product of any one person’s imagination. It reflected dozens of conversations, moments of disagreement, thoughtful questions, laughter, patience, and a shared commitment to creating something better together than any of us could have created alone.

As I drove home that evening, I realized the biggest accomplishment of the weekend wasn’t the site plan.

It was the people.

I’ve known many of our Founding Members for months, some for years. We’ve shared Zoom meetings, potlucks, governance discussions, fundraising conversations, and dreams about what Gratitude Village could become. Yet somewhere during those two days, something quietly shifted. They stopped feeling like people who planned to live in the same community someday.

They started feeling like neighbors.

At the end of the blessing ceremony, each of us held a stone and reflected on two simple questions: What intention do I hold for this community? and What gift do I hope Gratitude Village will offer the world? We placed those stones into a basket, where they will remain until our Grand Opening a couple of years from now. When that day comes, we’ll bring them back out and remember that before there were homes, sidewalks, gardens, or a Common House, there was simply a group of people gathered beneath a grove of cottonwood trees, choosing to build something together.

People often ask me when Gratitude Village will finally be built.

After this weekend, I think I have a different answer.

The buildings will come in time. The Common House will eventually have walls, a kitchen, guest rooms, and a dining hall filled with laughter. But the community itself has already begun. It started beneath two pop-up tents, over a shared picnic lunch, where future neighbors gathered in the shade of old cottonwood trees and, without quite realizing it, found their way into the first Common House.

One of the questions I hear most often these days is:

“Now that you have land under contract, what’s next?”

It’s a fair question.

After all, when people imagine creating a new neighborhood, they tend to picture construction equipment, foundations being poured and homes beginning to rise from the ground. They imagine visible progress.

The reality is that before any of that can happen, there is an enormous amount of work taking place behind the scenes.

Over the past several weeks, much of our focus has shifted toward a phase of development known as due diligence. While it may not be the most exciting part of creating a community, it is certainly one of the most important.

In fact, I’ve come to believe that due diligence isn’t a delay in the development process—it is the development process.

Every successful community begins with a foundation of good information and thoughtful decision-making. Before we can finalize designs, secure financing, or begin construction, we need to understand the property from every possible angle. We need to know what opportunities exist, what challenges may lie ahead and how to make the best decisions for the future residents who are placing their trust in this vision.

That work is now well underway.

In the last month, we’ve hired environmental consultants, surveyors, engineers, and other specialists to help us better understand the Brighton property. We’ve reviewed title reports, coordinated site investigations, explored utility connections, discussed access and traffic considerations, refined financial models, and continued conversations with city staff about zoning and future approvals.

To someone driving past the property, it may look as though very little is happening.

In reality, some of the most important decisions of the entire project are being made right now.

One of the things I’ve learned through this process is just how interconnected everything is. A survey informs the engineering work. The engineering work influences the site design. The site design affects costs. Costs influence affordability. Affordability affects who can participate in the community.

Every answer seems to generate three new questions, but that’s exactly what this phase is supposed to do.

The purpose of due diligence is not to prove that a property is perfect. The purpose is to replace assumptions with facts and uncertainty with understanding.

Sometimes people ask why development projects take so long.

The simple answer is that creating a neighborhood is a tremendous responsibility.

Imagine designing homes before understanding the soil conditions beneath them. Imagine creating a site plan before knowing where utilities can connect. Imagine developing a financial model without understanding infrastructure costs or municipal requirements.

Those aren’t small details. They are the foundation upon which every future decision will rest.

Taking the time to ask difficult questions now helps prevent expensive mistakes later. It allows us to move forward with greater confidence and helps ensure that the community we eventually build reflects the values that brought us here in the first place.

And those values matter.

The truth is that Gratitude Village has never been simply a real estate development project. If all we wanted to do was build houses, there would certainly be easier ways to go about it. What we’re trying to create is something much more ambitious: a community intentionally designed around connection, belonging, sustainability, accessibility, and mutual support.

We envision children who can safely move between homes and common spaces on their own, older adults who can age in place surrounded by people who know and care about them and neighbors who share meals, celebrate milestones, and support one another through life’s challenges. We want to create a place where people feel seen, valued, and connected.

Those outcomes don’t happen by accident.

They require thoughtful planning, careful stewardship, and a willingness to ask hard questions long before construction begins.

As I’ve worked alongside our growing team of advisors, architects, engineers, consultants, and future residents, I’ve become increasingly aware of how many people it takes to bring a vision like this to life. Every study completed, every report reviewed, every meeting attended, and every conversation held represents another step forward.

Some progress is easy to see.

Other progress happens quietly in conference rooms, spreadsheets, engineering reports, and planning meetings.

Both matter.

In many ways, this season feels a lot like planting a garden. Before anything blooms, there is soil to prepare, seeds to select, and countless decisions to make. The work may not be visible to others, but it creates the conditions necessary for future growth.

That’s where we are today.

We’re learning about the land. We’re building relationships. We’re assembling a team. We’re asking questions. We’re gathering information. We’re making decisions that will influence this community for decades to come.

And while there are still many steps ahead, every environmental assessment completed, every engineering study reviewed, every utility question answered, and every conversation with city staff brings us one step closer to turning vision into village.

Thank you for following along on this journey. We look forward to sharing more as the process continues to unfold.

And yes, architects do all of those things.

But in a cohousing community, their role is much bigger.

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The architect helps shape how neighbors will interact. They influence whether children naturally gather in common spaces, whether older adults can comfortably age in place, whether spontaneous conversations happen on pathways and front porches, and whether the community feels connected or fragmented. In many ways, the architect helps transform a collection of homes into a neighborhood.

That is why selecting an architectural partner has been one of the most important decisions Gratitude Village has made so far.

Over the past couple of months, a team of Founding Members and Board Members invested many hours interviewing firms, checking references, comparing proposals, and asking difficult questions. It wasn’t a decision we took lightly because we knew this choice would influence the community for decades to come.

In the end, we selected Studio Co+Hab of Bozeman, Montana.

But getting there was quite a journey.

Five Outstanding Firms

One of the things that impressed me most during this process was the quality of the firms we interviewed.

Our Founding Member selection committee spoke with five firms from Colorado and around the country. Three were Colorado-based firms: Caddis in Boulder, NoMiLab in Englewood, and Yes And! Architecture in Denver. We also interviewed Schemata from Seattle and Studio Co+Hab from Bozeman.

Each firm brought something unique to the table.

After the initial interviews, the committee narrowed the field to three finalists: Caddis, NoMiLab, and Studio Co+Hab.

Then the Board stepped in for another round. Actually, two more rounds of interviews.

By that point, we weren’t simply asking whether a firm could design attractive buildings. We wanted to know how they approached sustainability, accessibility, affordability, community engagement, conflict resolution, decision-making, and collaboration.

We wanted to understand how they would work with us—not just for us.

There Was No Wrong Choice

One of the most challenging parts of the process was that there truly wasn’t a bad option.

Every finalist had glowing references.

Every firm had completed impressive projects.

Every team brought strengths that aligned with some aspect of our vision.

Caddis has completed numerous cohousing communities throughout North America and currently has several projects underway in the Denver area. Their experience in cohousing is extensive, and they have a deep team capable of supporting large and complex projects.

NoMiLab brought tremendous creativity and enthusiasm. Their urban design perspective was refreshing, and they had meaningful experience in the affordable housing world. We were also excited by the diversity represented within their leadership team and their genuine passion for what we are trying to create.

In many ways, narrowing the field became less about identifying weaknesses and more about determining which strengths mattered most for Gratitude Village.

Why Studio Co+Hab Rose to the Top

Several things stood out about Studio Co+Hab.

First, their roots in the cohousing movement run deep.

The firm’s principals were trained by Charles Durrett and Kathryn McCamant, the individuals who introduced cohousing to the United States and helped launch the movement more than thirty years ago. They also designed and helped develop Bozeman Cohousing, widely recognized as the first Net Zero cohousing community in the country.

Second, their sustainability expertise aligned beautifully with our vision.

As many of you know, Gratitude Village hopes to become a model for environmentally responsible neighborhood design. We care deeply about energy efficiency, accessibility, resilience, and reducing our environmental footprint.

Principal architect Erik Bonnett’s experience with the Rocky Mountain Institute gave us confidence that Studio Co+Hab understands not only community design but also high-performance building strategies and sustainable development practices.

Third, we appreciated their nimbleness.

As a smaller firm, they demonstrated an ability to be responsive, flexible, and highly engaged. Throughout the interviews, we got the sense that they were genuinely excited about our project and eager to help us succeed.

And finally, we appreciated how they communicated.

This may sound like a small thing, but it mattered.

Development projects are complicated. There are countless moving pieces, technical terms, regulations, and design considerations.

Throughout the interview process, Studio Co+Hab consistently provided answers that were thoughtful, detailed, and easy to understand. They explained complex concepts clearly without oversimplifying them. Their responses felt transparent, practical, and grounded.

By the end of the interviews, many of us found ourselves returning to the same conclusion: these are people we want to spend the next several years working alongside.

The Real Work Begins Now

Selecting an architect feels like a major milestone because it is.

But it is also just the beginning.

In the coming months, Studio Co+Hab will help facilitate a series of community design workshops where future residents, with input from board members and members of the development team, will come together to imagine what Gratitude Village can become.

We’ll discuss everything from home layouts and pedestrian pathways to gardens, gathering spaces, accessibility features, common house amenities and sustainability goals.

Some of the most important decisions have yet to be made.

And that’s exactly as it should be.

One of the beautiful things (also a challenging aspect) about cohousing is that future residents help shape the community long before construction begins. The neighborhood doesn’t emerge from a developer’s office. It emerges from hundreds of conversations, shared values, creative ideas, and collaborative decisions.

That’s what we’re beginning now.

As we move into the next phase of the journey, I’m excited to see our vision gradually take shape on paper—and eventually on the land itself.

Thank you to everyone who participated in the selection process, offered feedback, asked thoughtful questions, and helped us arrive at this decision.

The village is still being imagined.

And that’s one of the most exciting parts.

Before the Bell Rings Again...

Every major milestone in this process reminds me that Gratitude Village is being built long before the first foundation is poured. We are building relationships, trust, shared vision, and collective wisdom. The architect we selected will help shape the physical neighborhood, but it is the people gathering around this dream who will ultimately bring the village to life.

Those early conversations often feel light. There’s room to imagine, to reflect, and to consider something different without needing to make a decision.

And then, gradually, the tone shifts.

The conversation becomes quieter. More grounded. People begin to look more closely at what it would actually take to step into something like this, and that’s where a different kind of reality comes into focus. It’s no longer about whether the idea resonates. It’s about whether it fits within the structure of someone’s life as it exists today.

I’ve sat with a lot of people in that space.

People who can clearly see themselves here. People who light up when they talk about shared meals, about knowing their neighbors, about raising kids or aging in a place where they’re not doing it all alone. People who understand, at a very real level, why this kind of community matters.

And then we start looking at the numbers.

The shift is subtle, but it’s there. A pause. A recalibration. The quiet realization that something that feels deeply aligned might not actually be within reach.

That’s the part that’s been hardest for me.

Because I don’t believe this kind of living should be limited to a small group of people. I don’t believe that connection, support, and a sense of belonging should depend on whether your financial situation happens to line up in a particular way. I believe all people should have the opportunity to live like this if they want to.

And yet, here we are, working within a system that makes that difficult.

There are moments when it feels like we are trying to build something more equitable while still standing inside structures that aren’t. We can design for connection. We can be intentional about accessibility and sustainability. But when it comes to cost and entry, the constraints are real, and they shape who is able to participate.

Sitting with that has not been easy.

It creates a tension between what we are trying to build and what is currently possible. It asks us to hold both the vision and the limitations at the same time, without pretending either one doesn’t exist.

That’s where Gratitude Village’s Equity Access Fund comes in.

Not as a perfect solution, and not as something that removes every barrier, but as a way of responding to that tension with intention. It is a recognition that there is often a gap between alignment and access, and that if we don’t address that gap, it will quietly determine who gets to be part of this community.

The goal is to create a bridge.

For some, that may mean support with an initial deposit. For others, it may mean a different pathway that makes participation possible in a way that better reflects their current reality. It won’t look the same for everyone, and it won’t solve everything.

But it is a step toward something more inclusive.

Because if we don’t take steps like this, then over time, the community we build will reflect only the people who were already able to say yes without hesitation.

That’s not the vision.

The vision is broader than that. It includes people who value connection, who want to live more sustainably, who are looking for a different way of being in community, even if their financial path doesn’t look exactly the same.

Making that real takes more than intention.

It takes acknowledging where the barriers are, even when it’s uncomfortable, and being willing to do the work to address them in practical ways. It requires us to stay in the tension long enough to find solutions that are thoughtful, sustainable, and aligned with what we say we care about.

I don’t believe this solves the problem. I do believe it moves us in the right direction.

Because this isn’t just about building something that works on paper.

It’s about building something that people can actually be part of.

Because the more I’ve been in this process, the more I’ve realized that what we’re building isn’t just physical. It’s not just land and homes and site plans. There is something else taking shape alongside those pieces, something that has more to do with how people experience daily life than how a neighborhood looks on paper.

I’ve lived in the same neighborhood for many years, and in many ways it reflects what most people would consider a good place to live. I know a lot of people by name. I’ve had conversations on walks, waved from driveways, and had those small, friendly interactions that are often described as community. And in some ways, they are. But I’ve also had moments that made me pause and realize that something was missing.

There were times when life shifted — whether that meant something difficult or simply something different — and there wasn’t a natural structure for people to notice or step in. Not because anyone didn’t care, but because the way our neighborhoods are designed doesn’t always support that kind of awareness. Everything is optional, and everything takes effort. If you don’t actively maintain those connections, they tend to fade over time.

That’s not a criticism of anyone. It’s simply the system most of us are living within.

What we’re trying to build with Gratitude Village starts from a slightly different premise. Instead of asking people to work harder to create connection, we’re asking what it would look like if the environment itself made connection easier. Not required, not forced, but more naturally part of daily life. The kind of connection that comes from proximity, shared spaces, and repeated, low-pressure interactions over time.

That shift may sound small, but it changes the experience of living in a place.

When I think about this now, I don’t just think about the homes we’ll build or the layout of the site. I think about the small, everyday moments that shape how life feels. Running into someone on the way to get the mail. Sitting down for a meal you didn’t have to cook. Knowing who you could call if something unexpected came up. These are not dramatic moments, but they are meaningful, and over time they shape a sense of belonging and support that is difficult to create in more traditional settings.

The same perspective applies when I think about accessibility and sustainability. Designing a place that works for people across different stages of life, or that reduces long-term energy use, isn’t just about meeting a standard or checking a box. It’s about creating something that holds up over time, something that allows people to remain in place without constantly having to adapt or relocate as their needs change.

That kind of thinking shifts the purpose of the project.

It’s no longer just about building homes. It’s about building a foundation for how people live, one that supports both independence and connection in a more integrated way. It’s about recognizing that housing is not just a product, but part of a larger system that influences health, relationships, and overall well-being.

And I don’t mean that in a grand or abstract sense. I mean it in the quiet, everyday way that life is actually experienced. The way your day feels, the way your week unfolds, and whether or not you feel supported by the place you live.

That’s what this has come to mean to me.

Not just something to build, but something to live.

And maybe, over time, something that shows that there are other ways to design neighborhoods — ways that support not just where we live, but how we live.

Could I actually do this?

And not long after that, another question tends to follow.

What would it take for me to say yes?

I’ve had to sit with those questions myself.

Not just once, but multiple times as this adventure of developing a cohousing community has evolved. Because even though I’m leading this work, I’m also making a decision about my own life. Where I want to live, how I want to live, and what kind of environment I want to be part of long term.

That makes the question real in a different way.

For me, the answer hasn’t been one single thing. It’s been a combination of factors that have come into clearer focus over time. Some of them are practical. Understanding the financial structure, the timeline, and what it actually means to move from interest to commitment. Those pieces matter, and they’ve taken time to understand fully.

But there’s also been an internal side to it.

A willingness to move forward without having every detail finalized. Trusting a process that is still unfolding. Being open to building relationships before there is a physical place to gather. Those are not things most of us are used to when making decisions about where we live.

And they don’t come naturally to everyone.

They didn’t all come naturally to me.

There were moments where I found myself asking whether I needed more certainty before moving forward. More clarity. More defined outcomes. More assurance that the finances will line up. And at the same time, recognizing that waiting for everything to be fully known (dare I say, perfect?) would mean missing the opportunity to help shape what this becomes.

That’s part of the balance.

Not moving forward blindly, but also not waiting for a level of certainty that doesn’t really exist in something like this.

Another part of the question has been about alignment.

Not just whether the concept makes sense, but whether it fits how I actually want to live. The balance of connection and privacy. The idea of shared responsibility. The type of relationships that form in a setting like this. And whether I can see myself as part of that, not just in the beginning, but over time.

That’s not something that can be answered quickly.

It takes experience, conversation, and sometimes just sitting with the question longer than feels comfortable. I’ve come to believe that’s how it should be, because this isn’t a decision that should feel rushed.

For some people, the answer will become clearer over time, and it will be a yes. For others, it may be a no, or not right now. Both of those outcomes are valid. What matters is that the answer comes from a place of clarity, not pressure.

That’s something we’ve tried to be very intentional about in this process.

This isn’t about convincing people to join.

It’s about creating a space where people can explore, ask questions, and decide what is right for them. Because ultimately, the strength of a community like this comes from people choosing it intentionally.

So if you find yourself asking that question — what would it take for me to say yes? — you don’t need to have the answer today.

But it might be worth staying with the question a little longer.

Sometimes that’s where the clarity begins.

Who else is actually doing this?

It’s a natural question. It’s one thing to be drawn to an idea, and another to imagine what it looks like in real life — who is showing up, what they care about, and whether you might see yourself among them.

Right now, we have 11 founding households who have chosen to take that step.

What’s been most encouraging is not just the number of households, but the alignment we’re seeing in those who are choosing to move forward.

These aren’t people who all look the same or come from the same stage of life. There are individuals, couples, and families. Some are thinking about raising children in a more connected environment. Others are looking ahead to how they want to age and what kind of support and community they want around them. Some are drawn to sustainability, others to the social fabric, and many to a combination of both.

What connects them isn’t one reason.

It’s a shared sense that the way we’ve been living doesn’t always support the kind of life we want over time.

But there’s another part of this process that doesn’t get talked about as often.

And that’s what it feels like when people decide this isn’t the right fit.

Like any project at this stage, our group is evolving. People join, take time to explore, and make decisions based on what feels right for them and their lives. That’s how it should be. This is a significant decision, and it’s important that people move forward with clarity and alignment.

At the same time, it isn’t without feeling.

When you spend months getting to know people, sharing ideas, imagining what something could become together, and beginning to build trust, those connections are real. Even at this early stage, they matter. So when someone decides to step away, it’s not just a logistical change. There’s a human element to it.

You feel it. It can make you sad. Some people might feel abandoned (especially our more vulnerable community members). It might make some people feel anger or disappointment.

And I think that’s worth acknowledging those feelings.

Because it says something about what’s being built here.

This isn’t a transactional process. It’s not just about securing land or designing homes. It’s about people coming together around a shared vision and beginning, even now, to form the relationships that will shape the community.

That means there will be moments of connection, and moments of letting go.

Both are part of the process.

Over time, I’ve come to see that this is actually what creates a stronger foundation. When people move forward because it truly aligns with what they want, rather than because they feel unsure or pressured, the group that forms is more cohesive and more resilient.

It becomes less about numbers, and more about fit.

And that matters.

Because what will ultimately shape Gratitude Village is not just the physical space, but the people who choose to be part of it. The culture, the relationships, and the day-to-day experience of living there all begin long before anyone moves in.

That’s already happening.

For someone considering whether this might be a fit, the question isn’t just “Do I like the idea?”

It’s also:

Do I see myself among these people?

And just as importantly:

Do I feel aligned with how this group is forming?

Those aren’t questions that need immediate answers.

But they are the kinds of questions that matter.

That has now changed.

We are under contract on nearly eight acres of land in Brighton, Colorado.

Even writing that still feels a little surreal, not because we didn’t think we would get here, but because of how we got here.

Over the past 18 months, we looked at 45 different properties. Some were promising but too expensive. Others were kind of affordable but too far from services or transit. Some simply didn’t fit what we were trying to create. Each one helped clarify what mattered most, but none quite aligned in the way we needed.

Brighton wasn’t even on my list at first.

In fact, for about a year, I avoided looking at anything east of I-25. I’ve spent most of my life on the west side of Denver, and I had a set of assumptions about what I wanted and where this community should be located. If I’m being honest, I also had some pretty negative connotations about Brighton, despite never having actually spent time there.

It took a while — and a willingness to expand my thinking — before I agreed to go take a look.

And then something shifted.

After visiting twice, my perspective changed completely. What I found was a city with a charming downtown, a level of diversity that stood out compared to many of the other places we had explored, a community that felt more dynamic than I had expected and a city that is forward-thinking and looking for the type of community we are proposing. It is more car-centric than we would ideally like, and that’s something we continue to consider carefully. But there are also emerging solutions, like BOLT vehicles (Brighton On-demand, Local, Transit) and the increasing viability of electric bikes, that begin to change how mobility for the community can work day-to-day.

And perhaps just as importantly, this site gives us the opportunity to think creatively.

If we are able to include condos above small-scale retail spaces or other services along Bromley, we could create a level of walkability within the community itself that supports daily life in a meaningful way. A small grocery option, a café, or other neighborhood-serving amenities would not only benefit residents, but could also contribute to the surrounding area.

That possibility matters.

Because what this process has reinforced for me is that there is no perfect site.

There are only places that align more or less with what matters most.

And this one does.

Being under contract doesn’t mean everything is decided. It doesn’t mean the work is done. In many ways, it marks the beginning of a more detailed, time-consuming and complex phase — due diligence, entitlements, design, approvals, and the many steps required to bring a community like this to life.

But it does mean something important. It means this is no longer just an idea we’re talking about. It’s something we are actively building.

And for those who have been following along, this is often the moment when things start to feel more real. Not finished, not certain in every detail, but tangible enough to begin imagining what it might be like to actually live there.

For me, it has also been a reminder of something I probably should have known all along. Sometimes the thing that ends up being right doesn’t look exactly like what you had in mind at the beginning. Sometimes it requires letting go of assumptions, being willing to explore, and allowing your perspective to change.

That’s been part of this process, too.

And in a way, it feels fitting.

Because building a community has never just been about finding the right piece of land. It’s about being open to what becomes possible when you look a little more closely.

That sounds obvious, but it feels very different when you’re the one making the decisions in real time.

When we first started talking about Gratitude Village, it was easy to focus on what we wanted to create — connection, accessibility, sustainability, a different way of living. Those things are still at the center of everything we’re doing.

But as the project has taken shape, what’s become just as important is being clear about what we’re willing to compromise on… and what we’re not.

And if I’m honest, this has been harder than I expected.

Part of that is practical. Land is expensive, especially in the Denver metro area. Finding 4 to 8 acres that are both affordable and well-located is a real challenge. Sites that are closer to services and transit tend to cost more, while more affordable land often comes with trade-offs in accessibility or proximity.

So we’ve had to wrestle with how to balance those things in a way that stays true to what we’re trying to create.

For example, affordability isn’t optional for us. If we want this community to be attainable for a broader range of people — not just a few — then cost has to be part of every decision we make. At the same time, proximity matters too. Especially for older adults and people with disabilities, being near services and everyday needs is part of what makes a community work over the long term.

We’re not choosing one over the other. We’re trying to hold both, which isn’t always straightforward.

In some cases, that’s meant thinking more creatively. If a site meets many of our needs but isn’t within walking distance of everything, we’ve started asking a different question: what would it look like to create some of that proximity ourselves? Live/work spaces, small-scale retail, or other services integrated into the community are all possibilities. Or maybe the decision includes purchasing electric bikes and/or electric vehicles for the community to share or making a commitment to being intentional about our use of vehicles and sharing rides or offering to combine errands for someone else to our plans so they don’t have to drive.

There isn’t a perfect site. There are only sites that align more or less with what matters most.

But the harder part, for me personally, hasn’t just been the external decisions. It’s been the internal ones.

I tend to be a pleaser by nature. I want people to feel heard. I want things to work for everyone. And in the early stages, that showed up as trying to accommodate every idea, every suggestion, every concern that came my way.

What I didn’t fully realize at the time was how quickly that can become unsustainable.

At a certain point, trying to hold all of that — every preference, every possibility — started to feel overwhelming. Not because the input wasn’t valuable, but because not all decisions can be made at once, and not all ideas can be incorporated into a single plan.

That’s been an important shift for me.

Understanding that part of building something like this is knowing when to listen, and when to step back and let the right people carry the next phase. Architects, engineers, development professionals — there are moments when their expertise matters more than my instinct to make sure everyone feels accommodated.

That doesn’t mean people aren’t heard.

It just means the process has structure.

And honestly, that’s been a relief.

Because it allows me to focus on what matters most at this stage, instead of trying to solve everything all at once.

The same pattern shows up in other areas too. Our commitment to a mixed-income model adds complexity, but it’s not something we’re willing to let go of. Accessibility across the entire community influences design and cost, but it’s foundational to what we’re creating. Sustainability requires more intention upfront, but it matters over the long term.

None of these are the easiest choices.

But they are the ones that align.

And that’s really what this comes down to.

Not avoiding trade-offs, but being clear about which ones make sense.

Because there are always trade-offs.

More interaction, but also more support. More shared responsibility, but less isolation. More intention in how we live, but also more connection in the day-to-day.

This isn’t going to be the right fit for everyone.

And it doesn’t need to be.

What matters is that it works well for the people who are drawn to it — not because it’s perfect, but because it aligns with what they’ve been looking for.

For me, that clarity has been hard-earned.

But it’s also made everything feel more grounded.

When I first started looking into cohousing, I kept coming back to a pretty simple question:

Is this something I could actually build a life around?

Not just something that sounded appealing, but something that would hold up over time. Something that would still make sense a few years in, not just at the beginning.

I don’t think I’m alone in that. When something looks different from what we’re used to, it’s natural to wonder if it really works in real life. Not just for a certain type of person, or for a short period of time, but in a way that can handle the day-to-day realities of life.

What helped me get past that question wasn’t reading more about the idea. It was seeing what had already been done.

Cohousing has been around in the U.S. since the 1990s. Most of those communities are still going strong. People raised families there. They stayed. They aged in place. Over time, what probably felt new at the beginning just became normal.

That changed how I saw it.

It wasn’t theoretical anymore. It was something people had already chosen and lived with over decades.

What feels different now is the context.

There are a lot of pressures that have intensified over time — housing costs, isolation, the need for more sustainable living, and the reality of aging without the kind of support many people would like to have. None of those are small issues on their own, and together they’re changing what people are looking for.

In that sense, cohousing doesn’t feel like a new idea.

It feels like something that fits the moment we’re in.

I’ve also noticed that the people who are interested in this aren’t all the same. It’s not just one demographic or personality type. It’s families, individuals, older adults, and people from different income levels who are all trying to solve for similar things — connection, support, affordability, and a way of living that feels more sustainable.

That part surprised me at first.

It made me realize this isn’t about a specific kind of person. It’s about a set of needs that a lot of people share.

Another shift for me was understanding that cohousing isn’t built on everything going smoothly. There are still disagreements, changing needs, and the usual complexities of living near other people. What makes it work is that there’s structure in place to handle those things — decision-making processes, shared agreements, and a physical layout that gives people both privacy and opportunities to connect.

That’s when it started to feel more grounded.

Less like an ideal, and more like something designed to work in real life.

At Gratitude Village, we see ourselves as part of what I’d call a second wave. We’re building on what’s already been proven, but also trying to respond to what people need now. That includes accessibility across the entire community, a mixed-income approach, and a focus on long-term sustainability.

We’re not starting from scratch.

We’re building on something that already exists.

So when I think about that original question — is this something I could actually build a life around? — the answer feels clearer than it did at the beginning.

It doesn’t feel like a passing idea.

It feels like something that has already worked, and is becoming more relevant again.

You don’t have to be completely convinced.

But if you’re curious, it might be worth taking a closer look.

I’ve been thinking about that moment recently. Thinking back ten years to when I decided the cohousing lifestyle was what I wanted and thinking back two years to when I decided to find a community for myself and my daughter and back to just 18 months ago to when, having not found a community, I committed to developing a community!

While we talk about becoming a Founding Member in practical terms — deposits, timelines, contracts — there’s also a very human side to it.

It’s the moment where something starts to feel real.

And with that comes a different set of questions.

Not just, “Do I like this idea?”
But, “Am I ready to take a step toward it?”

If I’m honest, that’s not always a comfortable place to be.

Even as the person helping to bring Gratitude Village to life, I’ve felt it, too. That pause. That internal negotiation between what I want… and what feels certain. Because saying yes at this stage isn’t the same as buying a finished home.

There’s no model to walk through. No street to visit. No completed version to step into and evaluate.

There is a vision. A plan. A growing group of people. And a path forward that is becoming clearer — but is still unfolding.

And that requires trust.

Not blind trust.

But thoughtful trust.

Trust in the process. Trust in the people. Trust in your own sense of alignment.

For me, that’s been the most interesting part. Realizing that this decision isn’t just financial. It’s personal. It’s about how I want to live. Who I want to live near.
What kind of daily experience I want to create — not someday, but over time.

And it’s also about timing.

Right now, we are preparing to move forward on nearly eight acres in Brighton, CO. It’s a big step. One that shifts this from something conceptual into something tangible. And with that, the structure around becoming a Founding Member is becoming more defined.

Today, the initial deposit is $12,000, applied toward the future purchase of your home.

For those who join by June 13, 2026, there’s an early adopter bonus — that $12,000 becomes $14,500 toward your home.

After June 15, the initial deposit increases to $15,000.

That change reflects where we are in the process. As the project becomes more real, the level of commitment changes with it.

I think it’s important to say this clearly.

This step is not risk-free.

Any time you choose to be part of something early — before it is fully built — there is uncertainty. There are milestones that still need to be reached. There are decisions that will be made along the way.

But there is also structure.

The funds contributed by Founding Members are used to move the project forward — securing land, completing due diligence, engaging architects and engineers, and building the foundation for what will eventually become a community.

There are also safeguards.

If the project does not move forward, those funds are treated as contributions to the nonprofit. If someone chooses to step away earlier in the process, there are pathways for repayment structured into the model.

It’s not without risk.

But it is not without thought.

For me, what brings clarity isn’t eliminating uncertainty entirely.

It’s understanding what I’m saying yes to.

Not just the financial structure.

But the process itself.

The opportunity to shape something early. To build relationships before move-in day. To be part of creating a place that reflects the values I care about — connection, accessibility, sustainability, and shared life.

That’s what makes this feel different from a typical housing decision.

It’s not just choosing where to live.

It’s choosing how to live.

And choosing to begin before everything is finished.

I don’t think there’s a single moment when that decision becomes easy.

But I do think there’s a moment when it becomes clear.

Not certain.

But aligned.

And sometimes, that’s enough.

It feels responsible. Thoughtful. Even wise. Stay where you are a little longer. Gather more information. Let things settle. Wait until the timing feels clearer.

I’ve done that more than once in my life.

There is a kind of comfort in believing there will be more time. More time to make a change. More time to create something different. More time to move toward the life you can almost picture, but haven’t quite stepped into yet.

And sometimes, there is.

But not always in the way we expect.

I’ve been thinking about this more as I look back on different seasons of my life — especially the years when my parents were aging. At the time, everything felt like it was unfolding gradually. There would be time to adjust. Time to figure things out. Time to be more present once life slowed down.

But life didn’t really slow down.

Responsibilities continued. Schedules stayed full. And before I fully realized it, those years had passed in a way that felt both inevitable and surprisingly quick.

I see it now with more clarity than I did then.

Time doesn’t pause while we’re deciding.

It keeps moving, shaping things in the background.

That shows up in very practical ways.

Housing costs change. Land becomes harder to access. What once felt financially possible begins to shift. Waiting can quietly move something from within reach to just out of it.

But the more meaningful shifts are often less visible.

Relationships evolve. Children grow up. Parents need more support, and then, sometimes, they’re no longer there in the same way. The window for living in closer proximity to the people we care about doesn’t stay fixed. It changes, often without announcement.

And then there is the quieter layer.

The daily experience of how we live.

The meals eaten alone when we would prefer company. The routines we maintain because they’re familiar, even if they’re not ideal. The ongoing effort of managing everything independently, even when it feels heavier than it used to.

Not because life is wrong.

But because it could be different.

I recognize this in my own life as well.

There were years when I was simply doing what needed to be done — raising my daughter, building a career, managing a household. It didn’t occur to me that there might be another way to structure daily life. I assumed that if I wanted something different, I would create it later.

Later is a quiet assumption.

It feels flexible. Open. Available.

Until it isn’t.

Because while we’re waiting, patterns take hold. Responsibilities deepen. Energy shifts. What once felt like a small change begins to require more intention, more coordination, more effort.

This is something I think about often now.

Not with regret, but with awareness.

Because waiting isn’t just about postponing a decision.

It’s about postponing the life that decision could begin to create.

Community, especially, is something that takes time to grow. Relationships form gradually. Trust builds through shared experience. The earlier that process begins, the more space there is for it to unfold naturally.

Waiting delays that process.

That doesn’t mean decisions should be rushed.

There are real considerations — financial readiness, life circumstances, timing. Those things matter.

But it may be worth asking a different question.

Not just, “Am I ready?”

But, “What am I hoping will change if I wait?”

Because sometimes the answer is clarity.

And sometimes the answer is simply that time will pass.

At Gratitude Village, what we are creating will take years to fully come into form. Land, design, community — all of it unfolds over time. Joining early doesn’t mean moving tomorrow. It means becoming part of something while it is still taking shape.

It means allowing your future to evolve alongside it.

There is something meaningful about that.

Not urgency.

But intention.

Because the life you are imagining doesn’t arrive all at once.

It grows, slowly, through the choices you make over time.

And the timing of those choices matters more than we often think.

It doesn’t appear on a resume or a calendar, and it isn’t something you can easily point to at the end of the day and say, “That’s what I accomplished.” And yet, it fills the spaces between everything else.

It is the work of remembering, anticipating, coordinating, and carrying.

What needs to be picked up. What needs to be scheduled. What is running low. What someone else might need before they even realize they need it. It is the quiet, ongoing awareness that keeps a household, a family, or even just a life moving forward.

This experience isn’t limited to one kind of household. Anyone who has carried the primary responsibility for keeping life moving — whether as a single parent, a working parent, or a caregiver — knows how constant it can feel.

For many years, I didn’t think of this as work at all. It was simply what needed to be done.

When I was raising my daughter as a single parent, there wasn’t much space to question it. The days were full, and the responsibility was constant. Every decision, every plan, every adjustment lived in my head. If something was forgotten, there wasn’t another layer of backup. It was just me.

At the time, I wouldn’t have said I felt overwhelmed. I was capable. I was organized. I was doing what needed to be done.

But looking back, I can see how much energy was going into holding everything together.

It wasn’t just the visible tasks. It was the mental tracking behind them. The constant awareness of what was next, what might go wrong, and how to keep things moving if it did. Even in moments that were supposed to feel like rest, part of my mind was still working.

At the time, I thought it was just my situation. Now I understand how common that pattern is — for anyone carrying the bulk of the responsibility, regardless of how their household is structured.

What I understand now is that this is not an individual experience.

It is a structural one.

Modern life, as it is currently designed, places a significant amount of responsibility on individuals and households to manage everything independently. Even in neighborhoods where people are friendly and well-intentioned, the day-to-day work of living stays contained within each home.

Meals are planned and prepared separately. Schedules are coordinated in isolation. Errands are handled individually. The systems we rely on require constant input, and that input rarely gets shared.

So we adapt.

We become more efficient. We learn to juggle. We find ways to carry more without dropping anything important. And over time, that effort becomes so normalized that we stop noticing it.

Until something shifts.

A schedule changes. Energy drops. Life becomes more complicated. And suddenly the system we’ve been maintaining reveals how much it depends on us alone.

That is the part that stays with me.

Because it suggests that the issue is not just how much we are doing, but how much we are doing without support.

What draws me to cohousing is not just the sense of connection, although that matters. It is the way it quietly redistributes the work of daily life.

Shared meals are one of the simplest examples. Instead of planning, shopping, cooking, and cleaning every night, those responsibilities are distributed across a group. You might cook once every couple of weeks and, in return, have access to meals on multiple other nights.

That shift alone changes the rhythm of the week.

But it goes beyond meals.

When people live in closer proximity and see each other regularly, small forms of support begin to emerge naturally. Someone is already going to the store. Someone has extra time one afternoon. Someone notices that you’ve had a long day. These are not formal exchanges. They are simply the result of being in relationship.

That kind of support doesn’t depend on one role or identity. It grows from proximity and shared responsibility.

Over time, those small moments begin to reduce the overall load.

Not by eliminating responsibility, but by softening its edges.

I often think about how different those earlier years might have felt if even a small portion of that mental and practical load had been shared. Not removed, but distributed. Not replaced, but supported.

A meal here. A conversation there. A bit of breathing room.

Those things add up.

At Gratitude Village, when we talk about community, we are not only talking about belonging or shared values. We are also talking about the practical realities of daily life — the things that have to get done, whether we acknowledge them or not.

The meals that need to be made. The schedules that need to be managed. The small decisions that fill our days.

When those are shared, even in modest ways, the impact can be significant.

Because the hidden labor of modern life may never fully disappear.

But it doesn’t have to be carried alone.