Wide Spaces: Belonging, story sharing, seeking pride committee members

By Janaki Jane Redstone Review

LYONS – In the last few years, the Wide Spaces Community Initiative (WSCI) has been offering events, community conversations, and mental health/suicide prevention workshops to support this vision.

We are currently offering Lyons Listens Storytelling events monthly – the next two are on Saturdays, February 25 and March 25, at 7 p.m. at the Lyons Community Library; the SEED project seminars “creating conversational communities that drive change,” a group of local residents who meet monthly at the Library to examine their beliefs and create a more equitable community – a new group will be starting in September if you are interested; and we are seeking members for our Pride event planning committee.

Last year, a committee of youth and adults created a community event attended by more than 200 people in June. For 2023, WSCI applied for and received a grant for $2,500 from the Community Foundation for Boulder County, with the funds to be applied to creating an even more eventful Pride month in June 2023. We are seeking members to join our Pride Planning Committee, and especially encourage anyone who identifies as LGBTQIA+ or is an active ally of that community to join us. Please a nerve, her vulnerability and assumption of belonging paid off. Not just newcomers, but people who have lived in Lyons for one, two and three decades have shared with me that they feel lonely, unwelcome, or unseen. This person created a new Facebook group “Conscious Lyons” – you thought we already had enough Facebook groups, admit it, but maybe we did not –and at the time of this writing, there were already close to 150 members of that group. Some are meeting for coffee on February 16 at Moxie. may also benefit from a more structured meeting, where there is a chance to feel they belong through structured conversation, study, sharing, or planning. contact WSCI’s Associate Director Pastor Jackie Hibbard, at dancingspirithorse@outlook.com or at our email below if you want more information or to join in the planning.

Wide Spaces Community Initiative creates meetings that invite everyone, regardless of their interaction preference, to come together to share in a purposeful way. Our Lyons Listens Storytelling events give attendees a chance to share more deeply in a more regulated environment, and to hear others sharing in the same way.

We envision a community where everyone feels they belong without being invited. What does that mean? On February 2, a person who moved to Lyons during the pandemic exemplified our vision. She courageously wrote a vulnerable post in Lyons Happenings, asking how to meet others in the area when she did not want to go to bars, and including a “feeling lonely” emoji.

In response, the post received more than 175 likes, and 200 comments. Her post hit

Although we all have a sense of what belonging feels like, it is hard to define, because it means different things to different people. Extroverts may feel a sense of belonging in informal gatherings. Introverts may need one on one or more structured meetings.

When introversion/extroversion is measured in a large group of people, the results create a bell curve – just like height and IQ do. According to one study, about 50 percent of Coloradoans are each, and we can assume that most of them – 68 percent on a bell curve – are clumped around the middle. Which means that most of us have some of both introversion and extroversion in us.

That large group of people in the middle, who are neither completely introverted or extroverted, may get some feeling of belonging from an informal gathering, but

The SEED Project seminars likewise encourage deep introspection and sharing. Belonging is often described as feeling acceptance and support so that we can be our authentic selves in that place. Belonging is an essential human need. It can be difficult or impossible to be our authentic selves in our current culture of social media and internet and quick coffees. Structured meetings with a purpose, especially a purpose that allows or requires creativity, support everyone present to bring their authentic self.

We will soon be starting to have monthly planning meetings again, as we did before March 2020, and also to have Community Conversations on Belonging, which the pandemic also suspended. Please watch Lyons Happenings and follow our Facebook page Wide Spaces Community Initiative to see when future events will happen, or reach out to me, Janaki Jane, at the email below.

The Wide Spaces Community Initiative is a program of the Lyons Community Library and is supported financially by grants from the Lyons Community Foundation, the Town of Lyons Goodwill Fund, and the Community Foundation of Boulder County. Pride Month events are supported by donations from local individuals, Out Boulder County, Rise against Suicide Boulder County, and OASOS Boulder County, with in-kind support from The Lyons Community Church.

Janaki Jane has been a Lyons area resident since 2004 and writes on issues of society and mental health. She is the Director of the Wide Spaces Community Initiative, a program of the Lyons Community Library. The Initiative’s vision is “A Community of Belonging and Personal Safety for Everyone.” She leads community groups, teaches suicide prevention, and can be reached at widespacescommunity@gmail.com.