In the US, it is Thanksgiving week. A week to express gratitude for the year that has passed. It’s a wonderful time to honor and appreciate our loved ones, those with us, and those no longer with us. It’s a time to recognize our friendships and all those that make up our circle of support. It is also a great time to offer gratitude to those people or situations throughout this last year that was challenging to work with, get through, and deal with ongoing. Every situation we come across in our life is here to teach us something about ourselves, about love, about overcoming adversity, being resilient, heartache and healing, forgiveness, and so much more. 

This time of year is also a great time to think about community. Our personal community is made up of those we consider our crew, our support system, family & friends. Our bigger community can be made up of our local town, groups we may belong to officially and unofficially, and those that we love but don’t make up our personal community. Human beings are social creatures. Our ancestors bonded together in, not pairs, but in loose groups of both sexes (wired.com, How Humans Became Social) due to safety in numbers. As we continued to evolve in groups and our neocortex formed more connections, people literally became wired to socialize and connect, and developed skills of empathy and love (universalclass.com, Why do Human Beings Need to be Social?). 

With the advancement of the internet, video connection, work from home, going off the grid, etc., more and more people are finding themselves surrounded less by physical community. With the rise of individualism, which has been a beautiful movement of personal empowerment and standing out and up for your individuality, more and more people have continued to separate themselves from their community in one way or another. Then we were hit with the pandemic, increasing our physical distance from even more of our community. Put that all together and we have an unprecedented increase in loneliness in our society. Loneliness will amplify mental health issues and has a direct impact on the mental health epidemic in our country.

As social creatures with a strong sense of individual self, a community can be a source of support and healing. As we continue to transition out of the last two years of separation from each other, it will be hard for some to reconnect to a community and may need encouragement and external support. Rebuilding mutually satisfying relationships and feeling connected to various groups can be intimidating, even overwhelming at times. If you know folks that might be struggling, this is a great time of year to reach out/check in with them. Expressing your gratitude for those individuals and their importance in your life can be quite impactful to someone in need of connection. Coaching and therapy or finding small support groups can also be a huge supportive step for anyone finding it challenging to build a sense of community. 

I wanted to take this moment to express my gratitude to my community. I want to thank the love and continual support of my husband, my family, and close friends, for helping encourage me when building my own business gets difficult. I want to express my gratitude to my coaching colleagues for sharing ideas, and encouragement, and helping create a community of compassion, which I am so humbled to be a part of. I want to thank my past and current clients. I am so grateful for your trust, vulnerability, and willingness to face and/or do hard things. I am inspired and in awe of each of you. 

In the spirit of gratitude, I am offering a 25% discount off all my coaching programs through December 31, 2022. To take advantage of this opportunity, please email me at Tamra@innerdepthscoaching.com or schedule a complimentary discovery call at Contact Me to see if one of my coaching programs would be right for you by December 31. If you know anyone else who might be interested in coaching, please share this special with them as well.

Lastly, thank you, to all my blog readers. I am truly grateful for your kind words and support of my blog. Sharing my inner thoughts this way has been a bit of a leap of faith for me, trying not to focus on whether others will like what I have to offer or not. It has been a vulnerable and exposing feeling. And yet, with each article published, I have had the benefit of reaching at least one person where my words have had an impact. I am humbled by this experience! 

If you found this article supportive, please consider sharing it with a friend or loved one. It truly takes a village to help support each other. Let’s share our gratitude and build that community with compassion!