Posts from November 4th, 2025
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Community in a Small Town
When I was a younger person, growing up in Small Town USA could feel so boring at times. I would have given anything to live near a shopping mall, just to have a place to hang out with my friends that wasn't one of our parents' basements. The mall was like an exclusive foreign club, and every other teenager I met from anywhere-but-here had a membership to it. I was desperate to be in that club; desperate to have that club nearby to even have the option to be in it at all. Back then, I truly never thought I'd want to stick around my hometown of 500 people—all who seemed to be my parents' age or older, too.
But then I grew up, and now I'm the age my parents were then, and I get it. In this phase of my life, I am often reminded why I love living here so much, and one main point of that is the closeness of the community. People show up for one another in times of need but also in times of celebration. I am sure that exists in other places, but it's hard to envision an entire city coming together for somebody in the same way a small town does.