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Community Shows Up in the Dip

Hi Reader,

This weekend, I stood at mile 11 of a half marathon, cheering for my son and hundreds of strangers.

Mile 11 is the dip. The fun of the starting line is long gone. The finish line isn't close enough to feel real yet. Your legs hurt. Your mind is playing tricks on you. This is where people start wondering if they can actually finish.

And this is where I stood—fuzzy white hat, big smile—calling out the names on people's bibs.

"Go Maya! You've got this!"
"Looking strong, Marcus!"
"Almost there, Kelsey—keep going!"

Runners I'd never met looked up, smiled, found a little extra push. Some waved. Some laughed. One woman shouted back, "I needed that!"

Races have such a fun vibe! Nobody was running alone. Sure, they each had their own race, their own pace, their own reasons for being there. But the crowd mattered. The other runners mattered. The stranger with the fuzzy hat at mile 11 mattered.

That's community. And it's infectious—I got so inspired, I downloaded a running app and started running myself.

I got home from the race and opened Threads to see this story from Chelsea Stevison:

She posted that she was baking 10-15 loaves of bread a week to give away to neighbors losing their SNAP benefits in November. Bob's Red Mill—a company she'd never contacted—saw her thread and sent her a package. Not just for her, but for anyone in her community who was also trying to help. Eight bags of flour, a whole bag of yeast, and a note: "We got you."

Chelsea shared: "This is what showing up looks like. In a world like ours, it matters."

It reminded me of a story I read earlier this fall about Community Loaves—a Seattle-area nonprofit that started pairing home bakers with food pantries during the COVID-19 pandemic and hasn't stopped. Nearly 900 bakers across four states have donated over 200,000 loaves of fresh bread. One baker, a 75-year-old named Cheryl, has donated nearly 800 loaves in less than two years. When asked why, she said it addresses "the spiritual hunger for connection with neighbors."

There it is again. Community showing up in the dip.

This year has felt heavy for a lot of people. A small few are celebrating. Many are grieving. Most are somewhere in between, just trying to figure out what comes next.

If you're feeling that weight, please keep going. You're at mile 11. And you don't have to run alone.

Look around. The world is kinder than the algorithms want you to believe. Face-to-face—at the farmers market, in your neighborhood, at your kid's school—people are almost universally kind to one another. The struggles are real, but that pervasive tone of hyped-up anger you see online is manufactured. Please don't fall into the trap of believing it's the predominant reality.

It's not what I see when people actually gather in groups and crowds.

Community is all around us. People baking bread for neighbors who just lost food assistance. Companies noticing and saying "we got you." Strangers with fuzzy hats at mile markers. People committed to the common good, who are doing what they can to help out their neighbors.

And yes, community happens online too—when we build spaces intentionally. Not algorithm-driven feeds designed to keep you scrolling, but actual gathering places. The kind where people show up for each other.

This week we kicked off momentum pods in The Hive, where members pair up to encourage each other through their hard middles. Real friendship is possible through screens; it just requires a bit more architecture.

So the next time you’re struggling, slow down and look around. Notice where people are creating community. Notice who might need someone calling their name at mile 11. Pay attention to the small, everyday moments of kindness.

Because that's how we get through the dip. Together.

We never have to struggle alone.

Laura

P.S. If you're building community—online or off—and need people in your corner cheering you on, The Hive is here for that. We're a community for community builders who believe kindness, curiosity, and possibility matter more than metrics.

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