And What It Should Be Instead

The other day, I was in conversation with a friend about something that’s been sitting heavy on my heart...

This idea of “selling community.” The word is everywhere now. It’s used in marketing language, in memberships, in branding. Join our community. Buy into our community. And while I understand the intention behind it, something about it has never fully landed for me.

Community, to me, has never been a product.

I remember once someone attended a circle and said, “It’s strange to have to pay for this- usually community gatherings are free.” And I understood what they meant. There is something sacred about people gathering simply to gather. But there is also a reality: space costs money. Time costs energy. Renting rooms, preparing materials, childcare, tea, insurance- it all exists in the real world.

I’ve experimented with different models. Set fees. Sliding scales. By-donation offerings. Each time trying to find the place where it feels honest, where it doesn’t feel like I’m charging for belonging, but rather sustaining the container that makes belonging possible.

Because I am not selling community.

What I offer are spaces. Spaces where a new mother and a grandmother might sit beside each other. Spaces where a teenager, an elder, a healing practitioner, and someone just beginning their journey can breathe the same air. Spaces where different abilities, different life phases, and different stories can coexist.

But I’ve also seen how language can be used to bypass deeper work. I’ve sat with people who speak of “love and light,” but beneath it, I sense ego or avoidance. In these spaces, I aim not to bypass, but to invite honesty. It’s easy to say “we’re all one,” but true community asks us to hold both light and shadow. In our gatherings, we don’t just say “community” we build it by showing up authentically.

My work doesn’t sit neatly inside one niche. It weaves through many seasons of life; children, parents, elders, those grieving, those celebrating, those seeking, those simply needing a place to land. I gain perspective from this seeing that, regardless of where we stand, we all want to be seen and belong.

When “community” becomes a buzzword, it risks turning relationships into transactions. That’s not the heartbeat of what I do. Authentic community isn’t something I create and sell to you. It emerges when we show up when our stories are shared, when our tears are witnessed, when our laughter ripples, when someone stays after to stack up the chairs.

I provide the structure. I hold the container. But the community itself? That’s co-created.

This shift from transaction to authentic relation happens in intention. It happens when I commit not to bypassing the hard stuff. It happens when I measure success by the depth of connection. We can charge for space while still honoring that belonging cannot be bought.

What I am building is not a brand of community. It is a practice of gathering. And that makes all the difference.

Angela K.