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About a year ago five of our adults left our small income-sharing community on the Big Island of Hawai'i. One departing member settled next door, thus maintaining some continuity between her two children and our three. Still, our eight adults had become three; a significant change.
For nine years Shivalila had operated with several important principles: each adult had more than one lover, and as I wrote in Communities, ("Lovers, Friends, and Parents." Summer '03), we equally valued co-parenting, raising our children with other children of various ages, pursuing rural self-sufficiency and ecological sustainability, and sharing decision-making about our common resources.
Today we're still focused on our relationships, generating an income, community outreach, building our house, and reorganizing.
Our relationships seem simpler than ever. Ma'ayag, Kaika, and myself have all lived together, sharing fundamental values, for about 10 years. We continue to raise each other's children (now 16, 8, and 5), share all assets and income, and share a primary sexual bond. We have learned a lot about how we cooperate and how we conflict with each other, and so far have found that we enjoy each other and this communal lifestyle enough to want to keep living together.
In the last two years we have needed to focus more than ever on making money, and so launched two businesses-producing an organic ginger and hibiscus cooler beverage, and custom-milling local woods. The juice business...