When we started learning about Transition Towns and resilience there was a lot of thinking about growing food community gardens and saving energy.
But the more I do this ‘go local’ thing the more that local culture comes to the fore as a critical aspect of resilience-building.
A key is families especially the parents’ marriages that underly them.
I’ve listened to lots of professionals and locals in the last month raise the issue of families – in relation to mental health sport youth welfare homelessness how well kids learn and integrate at school in relation to people needing care.
It caught me up in reflecting for hours today on the value of a strong marriage. How it is like an oak tree starting from an acorn it grows deep roots in the soil and strong wide branches which provide a home and food for all the birds and insects and little creatures and pleasant shade.
We have some very strong marriages in this valley and we could do a lot worse than share our experience of what makes a marriage a strong safe place to raise a family.
I know that every day I count the blessing of my marriage. If I had done nothing else in life I got it right by aspiring deeply to have a good marriage and then setting out to learn how to be the sort of woman who could attract the sort of man who would be a good husband. Someone to admire and respect and work with every day of my life.
This I want for all the families in this valley – strong marriages.