We're Sylas and Nia with our 3 1/2 year old daughter (and hopefully one on the way soon). We travel full-time in our renovated fifthwheel, exploring places in the US that could be good for an intentional community of our kind. Sylas is from the Hudson Valley area of New York and Nia is from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Sylas is a structural engineer by trade, working on natural building practices becoming more commonplace in the engineering world and always gaining hands-on natural building experience. He loves archery and challenging himself physically and mentally in every which way. He'd kill for a good conversation around a fire at night. Nia has a degree in Intercultural Communication and a Bible degree that she uses to help people who have left literalist Christianity discover what they truly believe and then create clear pathways for integrating those beliefs. She is a traditional mineral pigment artist and bone carver in her spare time when not connecting and gathering people or learning languages.

 Together, we are very passionate about bringing "alternative" practices and perspectives of life from around the globe into the wider landscape of the Western world, with a focus on how people connect and the level of belonging humans were made for- all spurred on by the birth of our daughter. 

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When we were pregnant with our daughter, it made us, like many new parents, reevaluate our values and life goals. We started shifting into things that just felt right based on intuition and any books we could get our hands on. Our shift in thinking is outlined in one of our blog posts on ofbreathandbelonging.wordpress.com here. It truly changed every little thing about us. When she was born it only increased as we were able to see how our society is only constructed for adults and the flow of money in every way, including the structure of schooling, the insane number of hours both parents are encouraged to work to just scrape by- even pushing the responsibility of our child's health into the hands of someone "more capable" and incentivizing sickness/dependency on pharmecuticals and delegitimizing maternal instinct on how to care for our children. We could write for ages. Basically, observing our daughter and using clear critical thinking, without looking through the lens of religion or Western culture, led us on a very long trail to this place... a deep conviction that there is no other option for the health of us all than to re-village, specifically with families. Everything else only partially satisfies, if at all, and has led our entire society into mental illness, identity confusion, physical sickness, addiction, and so much more (with many other things contributing to it as well, like chemical-ridden food with no nutrients, very little hands-on experience with anything, kids of all ages overcontrolled and watched by authority figures, definitely not out in nature, too much screen time, processed grains, sugar, meat, and dairy, and the list goes on...). It creates immature, indulgent, erratic adults and... we know the stereotypes of toddlers and teens... but they aren't that way all over the world- we've seen the proof.

 

There ARE answers for getting out of this mess, but they aren't found in anything we can see in Western society as it's running currently. We believe the answers are in  communal life, access to like-minded families without the use of cars, hands-on interest-based learning, Indigenous parenting practices (that are now hailed by on-top-of-the-game psychologists), and a relationship to the natural world- what we put into our bodies and what/who we surround ourselves with. Basically... getting back to some things that are just human. Moving in nature and with each other in a natural way (we're inspired by Evolve, Play, More by Rafe Kelley), eating ancestrally, learning through experience and play...

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Let's do it together :)

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As we gain families we will put their bios below as well