Sawyer Welch

As early as six years old, I had the thought that isolated nuclear families weren't the best idea. I wanted adults to stop having babies long enough to put their heads together and come up with a better way for new souls. I identified as a healer and, growing up, I thought I wanted to be a doctor. After studying philosophy in college, and before applying to medical schools, I realized that I did not want to pull people out of the river one by one; I wanted to "go upstream" and prevent them from being pushed in. I pursued Public Heath. I soon deduced that Public Health was an economic issue, so I decided to go further "upstream" and teach Economics for highschoolers (people young enough and smart enough to make a difference in the world). To that end, I got a Masters degree in Education and "Social Ecology," which emphasized localization ("human scale" economy and democracy). In my studies and experiences, I came to believe that "human scale" society was the key to health and harmony, and that a network of "intentional communities" best approximated it. During my free summers, I walked my talk and visited over a dozen intentional communities in the U.S. I soon quit teaching and lived in a series of six of them for over a year each. I found that they struggled mightily due to deeply embeded individualism and unexamined psychological dynamics. I wanted the field of psychology to support the creation of healthy "human scale" communities and became a therapist in the hopes of influencing the movement and the field of psychology to partner in that direction. In 2009, I traveled to Scottland, England and Ireland to interview the President of the Global Ecovillage Network in Scottland, the founder of Transition Towns in England, and the co-founder of The Village in Ireland. I learned that the "intentional community" movement was evolving rapidly to meet the global challenges of a rapidly evolving mass global society in crisis (see my blog: www.villagerelationships.blogspot.com).

Today, as a therapist, I have worked with over 100 families. I am not married and I do not have children. I want to return to my question as a child and host a conversation about "what is family"? I also want to create economic environments suitable to human beings.