You've seen what your Five Villages look like right now. Now you can start exploring them.
You don't need to work on all five at once, and you don't need to start with your lowest score. Use your results as a guide and begin with the village that feels most useful to you right now.
Below you'll find resources to help you understand each village and build more of the support you need.
Expand Your Five Villages
The Starter Village
Your local community: the places, people and resources around you that help you feel part of where you live.
Your Starter Village is about becoming part of the social fabric around you. It doesn't have to begin with close friendship. Familiar places, familiar faces, local groups, activities and small points of connection all count. Proximity before friendship.
Here are some podcast episodes to help you explore and build your Starter Village. If you don’t have Spotify, you can also listen here.
The Service Village
The practical support that makes everyday life easier and gives you more time and energy.
Your Service Village isn't just about hiring help. It can be people, services, systems, shortcuts or anything else that reduces the amount of time and energy everyday life demands from you.
Practical support is still support. If you don’t have Spotify, you can also listen here.
Plus…
Dinner Without the Mental Load
A meal-planning spreadsheet and ChatGPT prompt to help take some of the thinking out of dinner. Track what you have, update it in minutes and get meal ideas based on what’s actually in your kitchen.
👉🏽 Get it here
Overwhelm Busting Bingo
25 playful, low-energy ways to help interrupt the mental spiral when everything feels like too much.
👉🏽 Get it here
I’ve also sent them to your email inbox.
The Safe Village
Your emotional support network: the people, communities and spaces where you can be yourself, feel accepted and turn when you're struggling.
Your Safe Village is about the quality of the connection, not the number of people in it. You don't need a huge circle. Sometimes one person or space where you don't have to edit yourself can matter enormously.
Your Safe Village isn't defined by who loves you. It's defined by where you feel able to be yourself. If you don’t have Spotify, you can also listen here.
Plus…
The Good Enough List
15 reminders for the days when guilt, pressure and impossible standards start creeping in. Because good enough really can be enough, for your kids, for dinner and for you.
👉🏽 Get it here
I’ve also sent it to your email inbox.
The Financial Village
The support, knowledge and systems that help you understand your money, build stability and create a safety net for you and your family.
Support here can include your own knowledge and systems as well as benefits, financial professionals, shared family resources, savings, insurance and people or organisations you can turn to for help.
Financial wellness is part of family wellbeing. If you don’t have Spotify, you can also listen here.
Plus…
Get your money sh*t together
As the Financielle girls say. If you’re ready to do that, I cannot recommend the Financielle Playbook and their podcast, The Vault, enough as its been instrumental in me feeling more and more secure with my money (not an ad, I just genuinely love them)
👉🏽 Find out more here
The Chosen Village
The connection you create around the life you have now, wherever it comes from.
Your village doesn't have to be limited to whoever happens to live nearby. Friends in another country, online communities, WhatsApp groups, podcasts, workshops, technology and other forms of connection can all become part of the support you build around yourself.
Your village should adapt to your life, not the other way around. If you don’t have Spotify, you can also listen here.
Your Five Villages Will Change With You
Your villages can overlap. One person, place or resource might support you in several different ways, and your five villages don't need to be equally strong.
What you need will change too. A village that feels solid now might need more attention later, while something you've worked hard to build might eventually become one of the strongest parts of your support network.