We’re a small group of people concerned about how we manage our energy as part of a community. We are sick and tired of the frustration and isolation that comes with chronic fatigue. And we’re looking for ways to live that are sensitive and positive about energy issues. We hope by designing Resilient Cohousing to suit us, we can create a way to live with other people interested in prioritising how we use our energy.
This website explains how we see a community open to anyone interested in managing energy and sensitivities, whatever their health status. Most people involved have ME, Long Covid or similar, (which tends to make us especially sensitive to our environment). But you don’t have to 😏
We think it needs to be cooperative, rural, with individual dwellings and a shared house … at its heart, a retreat for people with severe energy issues… Preferably some dwellings will be off-grid to avoid emf radiation and other forms of toxin, but not all. Like many other cohousing projects. But we need to design it with specific differences – in particular, no compulsory work hours nor meetings.
We plan to use permaculture for health, creativity for inspiration, and rewilding for peace… to be eco-aware and focused on understanding and respite.
Cooperating with little, differing and variable energy is relatively new and how it evolves will depend very much on the individuals involved. It’s essential that people with more energy don’t feel under pressure to take on more. Equally, we want to ensure more restricted people can influence decisions even if they can’t attend meetings.
So we’re planning the project with this in mind, including …
…. having someone work part-time, doing the tasks more restricted people can’t do, or payment for specific tasks.
…. We’ve set up a Hare and Tortoise site, specially designed to help cooperation between people with different and differing energy levels.
…. using permaculture principles – these aim to support communities of humans as well as plants – energy efficiently. It’s focus on energy and being in harmony with natural rhythms make it very relevant to most people with chronic fatigue.
We’re especially concerned that the community should be set up so that more energetic people don’t feel pressured into sharing the energy they have. And – equally important – we want to ensure it isn’t dominated by those with more energy.
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It’s still early days for the project, so if you have your own ideas, they’re very welcome – we’re happy to be flexible. What we describe is a suggestion of how we might go about cooperating with varied and variable energy, but other ideas/adaptions are very welcome.
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The rest of this site gives more detail and discussion – there’s an outline of how we think it could work on the How it Could Work page. And an positive perspective on working together in Social Permaculture, however there are many ways to explore.
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Interaction, the Action for ME magazine, published a great article on our project, which gives a good brief overview of what’s involved. You can read it here.
Please feel free to share our site with anyone interested.
… or to contact us at resilientcohousing@gmail.com
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