Why Breathing Life into Community?
Breathing Life into Community™ is an initiative born out of the Borderline shooting with 12 lives lost followed the next day by the Woolsey fire which devastated communities from the coast of Malibu to the valley of Thousand Oaks and miles in between. This tragedy impacted people through loss, evacuation, displacement and trauma; 97,000 acres burned, 1,643 structures perished, three people died, and 295,000 people were evacuated and forced to make pivotal, life-altering decisions amidst tumult and great emotion.
Community, and the nature of community, was suddenly a concept and a reality that begged to be considered and comprehended. What is community? What does it mean to the individual, the family, to the collective group? What and where do you choose your community to be, as it surely is an active choice? And how do we become a light and positive influence within the community of others? This is not original thought, but an increasingly vital one as we choose each day whether to act with grace and love, recognizing we are all connected, or whether our choices create division and chaos.