2024: A year for community

What does community mean to you?

Y’know how people have a word of the year to help guide their year and how they want it to go?

Well, last year, I didn’t pick a word. But standing at the end of 2023 (well, at the start of 2024) and looking back, I would say something that featured prominently for me was “community”.

At the start of the year, I flew to Puerto Rico on a whim to attend a conference for business owners from typically underestimated communities. It was the first time I had been in a room full of Black and brown people, mostly women, who were running thriving businesses and doing incredible things in the world.

It was a powerful experience.

A few months later, as I fell apart in the aftermath of my breakup, I was again held up by a community of random women in Cancun. I didn’t know any of them, except the lady who had organized the retreat, but they all came together and comforted me, cared for me, and lifted me up in a way that I couldn’t have even imagined.

In Xalapa too, I was moved by the outpouring of sup…