Dear readers,

It was just the start of summer when I wrote you the last time.

I am sorry for my absence. I have been on an emotional rollercoaster in the ecovillage project that I lived in, which took mental and emotional capacity away from documenting and writing.

The news: my partner and I are leaving the project. We made the decision about 2 months ago. This is an honest, personal account of how things went down. I am writing this from my perspective; those of others surely differ.

I hope it may inform your community or ecovillage building dreams and activities.

First off, I feel grateful for the experience of ecovillage and community life:

• For the people I met
• The personal and interpersonal development I have gone through
• The time I could take to reorient myself after my old startup went bust and I knew I did not want to keep working in Growth Marketing
• The learning about permaculture, bio-construction, local ecosystems, bioregioning,
• and the challenges and beauty of building community

The time there was full of adventure, of hard times, of joy and laughter and of sadness and hardship.

Here is the story

Two high school friends of mine started this project together with the owner, who lived there alone for 7 years. They told me in Spring 2023 that they would go on a road trip to find land for a community project. In September 2023, I visited for the first time.

Living there for a few months in 2024, I fully arrived in February 2025 to stay full-time.

During some time alone, because the others in the community were traveling, I was able to arrive at the land beautifully and had an amazing time and space to read, to meditate, and to process. This is when I learned more about bioregioning.

Already in the first summer, we had some conflicts. I thought these were solved after talking through them. But they were mentioned by the owner again this summer.

We started living together in the caravan on the land. Going into autumn with rainier and colder days arriving, we realized the caravan is not really working for us, and we started renting a room in the house that is close by.

We also figured we really need to build community.

Just having dinner every once in a while is not really doing the trick. My partner got deep into how to build community and, during the winter, found the Community Compass from Eva Stützel, which is a great book that I can wholly recommend for everyone wanting to start a community.

In January, we committed to becoming a core group of 6 people to start this community process together.

We went through an intense phase of meeting multiple times a week to decide what our shared vision is and what our cornerstones are (the rules of the community). We evaluated which part of the seven dimensions that Eva Stützel recommends looking at we need to do work on.

At the end of February, investors, who want to support places of hope, came to visit. We had a really good time with them. They're still connected to the project, and they're supporting it.

The first time I thought, "Okay, maybe this is not going to work," was in March this year. The owner of the land basically exploded, saying he doesn't want meetings anymore. He doesn't want to have a talking stick. (We used to do these emotional sharing circles with a talking stick to talk about how we are and to create more connection in the group).

After that, everything went on pause. This is the first time I have experienced the power of ownership consciously. My partner, who was leading the community process, said, "Okay, we need to talk about this and meet next week," but another member said, "No, this is not what Manolo wants. Let's not meet."

This is the first reason why I'm leaving:

Unhealthy ownership dynamics creating unhealthy governance

So far, the land is still privately owned by one person (although we were working towards the land being held in community ownership). This creates unhealthy relationship, power and decision-making dynamics.

Imagine you talk to your landlord that you rent your house from. With this power dynamic of him having the power over your basic need of housing, how real can you be? How much decision-making power do you really have?

Now imagine that without having a contract that clarifies some of the rules and responsibilities of each party.

For the next community project, this is the first thing I would look at: who has the legal ownership? What are the agreements among owners & stewards? How formalized is that

No matter how trusting your relationship is, when shit hits the fan, it goes down to the legal structure.

I've heard about various projects where people invested a lot of time and energy. When there was a conflict in which the owner was not committed to solving it, they needed to leave, losing money and energy in the process.

No concrete shared vision & plan

So, with this happening in March, everything became a bit shaky. We're thinking, "Okay, if we can't have meetings to build community, how are we going to do it?"

My partner and I were thinking about our future, maybe wanting to have kids at some point. But realizing that without having security in where to live, or the future option to build a house, and no process moving forward in order to get to this vision, we felt stuck.

Although there was trust with the owner, on a subliminal level there was this constant insecurity because there was no "legal" security for my partner and me to be able to stay for the long-term or build a house.

For the next community project, this is the second thing to look at: to be more concrete in the vision, not just "let's give some love to the land and protect it from eucalyptus monocultures."

• What's the project about?
• Where are people going to live?
• How many houses?
• How is it going to be financed?
• How much shared economy will there be?
• What's the day-to-day life and progress like to realize the vision?

The community compass mentioned above moves you through questions and topics like these to get to this clearer and more concrete vision and plan.

Lack of personal development needed to build community

Along the way, there were other conflicts coming up in the community. In this process, I learned a lot about different patterns that can happen in community.

We all have a lot to unlearn coming from an individualistic society and going back into community. I believe living in community is one of the biggest personal growth opportunities there is. You are constantly in contact with other people who reflect back to you how something you did made them feel, and that causes you to reflect and adapt. (Ideally, that's what's happening, but it didn't always happen in this case.)

That makes emotional intelligence (the skill of feeling, communicating, and taking responsibility for your emotions) a key skill needed in community life. Hence the sharing circles that we tried to establish.

What happened in this case, with a lack of emotional intelligence, is also related to the unhealthy ownership dynamics. It is a pattern called deflection: the art of not owning your part in something but putting it on others.

It's a valuable characteristic to really own your shit if something happens. To not to look at the mistakes or the faults of other people, but to think about yourself: What is my role in this?

In my next community project, I will watch out for the pattern of deflection.

Are people owning their shit? Are they willing to work on themselves and look at their patterns, past traumas, etc.? Or are they constantly saying it's the other people's fault when conflict arises?

Lack of agency

So, what happened after all of this reflection and the feeling of being in the air, starting in March?

We decided to put forward a proposal. Jolle and I sat together, and we asked ourselves: what do we need in order to move forward in this process and project?

We included:

• becoming part of the association running the project
• having equal decision-making power and no hierarchy or veto power from the owner
• having the security to be able to build a house on the land where we had the caravan, once the licenses were there
• keeping going with the community process and meetings again, while at the same time having regular sharing circles to support the community-building process

If you ask me, nothing out of this world, just covering our basic needs and having a way forward. We also included all the things that we could help with in the community, from how much work we can put in, how much finance, how we can support the community process, and so on.

After that, it took some time for them to get back to us. During that time, we felt a lot of grief and sadness. It already felt like this was not our project anymore, but there was still a spark of hope.

We then met with the core team to talk about the proposal. Just a few days before, they went through a process with the potential investors as well, who are also organisational consultants. Without us being present, they did a constellation. I'm not sure if you know what a family constellation is, but a constellation is basically seeing how people relate in a group - physically played out in a room. It's a great tool as it also incorporates bodily wisdom.

What they then communicated to us is that they realized they want to go back to a smaller team. The founder plus my 2 friends as the main core team, and the girlfriend of the owner as a facilitator or mediator on the side.

Our first reaction was relief because we finally had clarity. And with that, there came the realization: we don't have what we need here. We don't have our basic needs covered, and at the same time, we have no way of contributing to this getting better in the future because we're not part of the core team anymore. We realized we didn't have any agency anymore.

It became clear to us that we need to move on.

With love, with compassion, with appreciation for the people, and with all the learnings that we gathered through this process.

It's the most important thing about land-based community projects that I am learning:

It is hard to work from a relaxed nervous system as long as existential questions are not answered. Questions like "Do I have a home that I feel comfortable and safe in?" "What is the long-term vision?" or "Will I suffer repercussions if I discuss a conflict topic with the owner of the land?"

Within this process, there is a lesson about life: nobody gives you a deadline to make a hard decision and take the next step. You have to do it on your own.

It's time for my partner and me to go.

We will be renting a safe and warm place for us for the winter in the area. To come back to ourselves, rest, and take the next steps from a place of strength, trust, and courage.

My mind is already racing about what possibilities there are. I have started to share the news in our network, and new properties and options are arising, but I advise myself to go slow.

I am thinking about starting a new land-based project with other people who also stayed in the community and left, incorporating all the learning that I have gathered over the course of these last years.

A land-based project built in community with the goal of self-sufficiency, including bioregional organizing and learning: A biohub.

"The future belongs to those who can imagine it, design it, and execute it. It isn’t something you await, but rather create."
- HH Sheikh Mohammed

I am tired of waiting while the world around me is burning. But I know that I need rest to start something meaningful after.

It has been a great experiment. I have learned so much, especially about dealing with all kinds of emotions and dealing with insecurity on an existential level. I have unlearned so much of my individualistic conditioning. This whole process has given me life experience that I could have never gotten living in a flat in the city.

I deeply believe that community life is the biggest chance for personal growth if you see it that way and stay connected even if there is conflict.

It feels like a conscious breakup now. There is sadness, there is some anger, there is disappointment. But here is also appreciation, understanding, and love.

For what I am seeing in the development of the village now is that our leaving has led to personal reflections and growth. I wish them all the best and a fruitful future. I believe it will be a beautiful project; it just needs more time.

So regarding my writing, it might be less about ecovillaging in the future. If you are still interested in the topic, I can recommend Nicole Reese's Newsletter, which has been an inspiration.

On to the next experiment in this beautiful life.

Happy regenerating,
Jonas