The Village Is Not a Metaphor — It's Infrastructure
Everyone says you need a village. Nobody tells you how to actually build one.
It Is Not Who Shows Up. It Is Who You Build Around You.
Let's start with what a village is not. A village is not grandma coming for a week. It is not a friend who texts to check in. It is not whoever happens to be available when you are in crisis.
A village is the deliberate, constructed network of people who hold specific roles in your life. Who know what their job is. Who you trust to do it. And who show up — consistently — because you have built a relationship with them that has earned that consistency and reciprocity. As much as your village shows up for you—you must also show up for them.
Mine looked like this:
A nanny — The kind of care infrastructure that a lobbying firm requires when your calendar is not your own and you still have a kid at home full time that requires care.
Nakia — who moved in, who became one of the two people in my life I trust completely to get things done. The kind of trust that is built slowly and held for a long time.
Ebony– Who will tell you herself that she had to learn how to think like me, write like me, anticipate me. That is a tall order and was built on years of proximity and intentionally cultivating a relationship.
Deidre, my older sister — who moved in to help support me in what I needed and– more importantly– what Lexington needed in that season
My parents in Dallas — the out-of-town part of the village. The people who held Lexington across the distance in seasons when the support needed to stretch.
My DC community — the professional and personal world that made room for both me and Lexington in those early years.
That is a village. Not a metaphor. Infrastructure. And to be clear—some members of the village are paid and others volunteer 😊
You Have to Actually Let People In
Here is the part that took me the longest to learn: having people around you is not the same as having a village. A village requires that you actually let people take responsibility. And if you are a woman who is wired to handle everything — to make the plan, write the plan, and then implement the plan herself — letting go of the implementation is the hardest part.
I was so prescriptive that I was giving people scripts instead of guardrails. A prescription tells someone exactly what to do, how, and when. It accounts for every variable. It leaves no room for interpretation. Guardrails tell someone where the edges are and trust them to move inside them.
When you give someone a script, you're still doing all the writing. The weight doesn't actually leave you. The move from prescription to guardrails is the move that makes a village real. It requires you to tolerate the uncertainty of someone else's interpretation. It requires you to trust that the people you've chosen can hold part of your world without you supervising every corner of it.
If you are building a village and it still feels like you're doing everything yourself — look at whether you're prescribing or setting guardrails.
Distance Doesn't Disqualify
My parents were in the Dallas area. That meant small seasons of separation. It meant learning how to ask for help across a flight. It meant teaching Lexington that love doesn't have to be in the same zip code to count. And it meant letting go of the guilt that comes with not having everyone close.
Your village does not have to be in the same city. It has to be real — consistent, trusted, and clear on what their role is.
Long-distance village means being intentional about when the distance closes. It means not waiting for a crisis to reach out. It means building relationships in ordinary seasons so that when you need it in the hard ones, it's already there.
Your Work Community Is Part of It Too
Before school made the schedules rigid, Lexington came with me to professional events. Fundraisers. Community gatherings. Meetings where it made sense. I did not apologize for it. I did not make her someone else's problem. She was present because I was present.
The people who made room for that — who saw Jennifer-and-Lexington as a unit in those early years — were part of the village too. The professional community that didn't require me to perform a separation that didn't yet exist.
Include your professional community in your village audit. Who are the people in your work world who make room for your full life? Who are the ones who require you to perform compartmentalization? The village is not only at home.
Having a Co-parent Does Not Guarantee Having a Partner
Two parents in the home is not a guarantee that the load is shared. Co-parenting is a legal fact. Partnership is a practice. They are not automatically the same.
Building a village means being honest about the difference — and not expecting your co-parenting relationship to carry more than it structurally can. Fill the gaps with people who can. Do not leave gaps unfilled because you feel like they should be covered by something that isn't actually there.
Your Village Audit
Who are the two people you trust completely to get things done?
Do they have guardrails — or do they have your script?
Is your support local, or does it need to stretch across distance?
Who in your professional world makes room for your full life?
Where are the gaps in your co-parenting or partnership arrangement?
Who is filling those gaps — or who needs to be?
What would it take to let the people you've chosen actually do their job?
Build the village deliberately. Person by person. Guardrail by guardrail. Season by season.
It will not show up on its own. But when it's really built — when the people inside it know their roles and you have given them the space to hold them — you will feel it in your sleep. Literally.