Lemonade & Lavender

We have each other, and that's a lot.

In 2009, I bought a community land trust home with my partner. A local housing nonprofit had moved and renovated two 1920s Craftsman bungalows from a future affordable housing site into a nearby low-income neighborhood.

A few years later, that same nonprofit hired me to carry out a community livability survey in my neighborhood. I went door to door, asking questions about neighbor relationships, transportation access, lighting, safety, and more. Half the doors never opened, but the other half led me into conversations that went far beyond the questionnaire. Those moments became a window into the lives of the people around me. They built empathy, deepened my compassion, and filled my heart in ways I never imagined. Over the next ten years, they hired me two more times to do the survey.

Around 2015, a dear friend, Kriste, invited me into a project she was building: The Big Listen. On selected Saturdays, we picked a different neighborhood in Corvallis, Oregon, and knocked on doors, asking people what they loved about where they lived and what they wished could change, if anything. We told them we’d gather their stories and share them on a website, then handed them a card with the address.

One day, I walked up to a house that desperately needed a paint job, I watched my footing as I navigated a rotting ramp to the door and knocked. An older woman answered. She seemed a little lost at first, but she lit up at the chance to talk. I noticed food on her face and stains on her shirt, but when I asked about her garden, she became more present. The garden was overgrown, but you could tell it had once been tended with love.

She told me her children had moved away. She had a son in Portland who came down sometimes to mow the lawn. She wished she could still work in the garden, but her body didn’t move like it used to. Still, she came alive as she pointed out her favorite plants, naming them and telling me when they blooms would be at their peak.

When she closed the door, I walked away with a deep sadness, knowing she was going to be alone again. I wondered how long it would be before someone knocked again.

Around that same time, I had just started working at the housing nonprofit that made my own homeownership possible. The organization was part of a national network, NeighborWorks America, and we also had an active Habitat for Humanity serving our county.

I began to imagine a project. What if we chose a neighborhood and asked residents to nominate someone who could use a little help? Maybe they were overwhelmed by deferred maintenance. Maybe the house needed paint, the fence needed repair, the garden needed tending.

The housing organizations could team up, fundraise for supplies, recruit volunteers and neighbors could join in too. New connections could form. Small acts of care could ripple outward into something beautiful. One household could get a moment of relief, a reset from the weight of it all and everyone would benefit, seeing the rewards of their efforts as they admired a blooming garden on their neighborhood walks.

I made the pitch and liability concerns stopped it in its tracks.

When I started making comics, I did it because I wanted to tell the stories from my twenty years of community building. I had gotten caught in a conflict, and my silence left space for others to tell stories about me that weren’t mine.

As I discovered illustration as a language, I realized something else: I could draw the projects I still wanted to bring to life, the ones like this - that felt too big, too blocked, too tangled to work some community building magic.