Creating Poly Community & a Wish for 2010

The topic of poly community has been a hot one recently, both in the media and among my friends and acquaintances here in British Columbia. As a networker and someone who enjoys getting people together (I need very little excuse to do this, btw -- a good dinner will suffice!) facilitating the growth of poly community poses challenges and also rewards for me and my fellow poly organizers. Learning as I go along, I've gotten to thinking about what keeps a community strong yet flexible enough to accommodate change.

I started up the Victoria Poly 101 discussions as a way to both meet people who were interested in responsible, honest, multi-partnered relationships and as a way to help provide information about this relationship choice. What I didn't expect when I started hosting meets was the overwhelming sense of "community" that would grow between the very diverse members of the group which gathered every month to discuss a rather limited topic.

This got me thinking about the role of diversity within communities, and how it can lend strength if it exists in the right proportion to the sharing of a common goal or interest. While VP101 is a diverse group, it's also becoming a strong community -- one that shares the goal of self-exploration and growth as well as learning about what it means to be polyamorous. Learning about ourselves, no matter how diverse we may be, is the other common thread in our community, and this, more than any other shared passion, is what keeps our diverse group going strong. After all, there are (as we are fond of saying in all our discussions) as many ways to be or practice poly as there are people.

I want to thank every person who has come out to a Poly 101 meet in the past year -- each of you has contributed a unique and strong piece to the larger puzzle of our ever-changing community. As we continue to grow and change as individuals and as a group, I think we can feel confident it will always provide a place to explore not only the challenges of different relationship structures, but a haven for the diverse, the loving, and the courageous of our community at large.

Happy 2010!

~Kiki