Chorus Consultant Community: Building Bridges in the Social Impact Space
Why I Left Paradise (And Why Community Matters More Than Perfect Weather)
Dear friend,
Welcome to the Chorus Consultant Community newsletter, created specifically for independent consultants in the social impact sector.
This newsletter brings together the community and resources I wish I had throughout my consulting journey—field-tested frameworks, collective wisdom, and strategic guidance tailored to the social impact ecosystem rather than corporate consulting or general freelancing.
What you can expect
On Tuesdays, I’ll send something helpful: practical tools, guides, and resources to help you build a sustainable consulting practice while navigating the unique challenges of our field. You can see all of the ones I’ve already created here.
On Thursdays, I’ll send a piece meant to be a little less actionable and more thought-provoking, addressing everything from combating isolation to explorations of our role in advocacy and social change to updates on technology's impact on our work.
Once a month, I’ll share something bigger, like our rate-setting report or consultant tech stack resources.
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Thanks for being part of this community with me. I’m interested in testing other ways to deepen our connections and bring more benefits to this group. More to come on that!
But on Thursdays, I said I’d send something a little more thought-provoking, and I intend to keep my word. So this week, I am going to share some reflections on a big life change.
Thanks for reading The Chorus Consultant Community! This post is public so feel free to share it.
Thursday Thoughts: Why I left paradise
Normally, I live in Brooklyn with my partner, Amy, and our almost 2.5 year old, Marlow. But this school year, Amy (usually a public elementary school teacher) took a leave of absence to be home full-time with Marlow. Naturally, we moved to Hawaii for 6 months!
We did it through a home exchange website, so the plan was always to be there for a while but to come back home to Brooklyn. We lived in Koloa, which is on the south side of Kauai.
I’ve never lived in a place where the weather is nearly perfect every single day. That amazing weather changed my relationship with time. I realized that I perceive time’s passage through weather-related reference points. I would mark how far we were from the big snowstorm, or the blooming of the magnolias, or the first peaches at the farmers market.
There were little seasonal changes on Kauai, but they were less noticeable to me at first. We arrived at the height of pineapple season (lucky!), and we left at the start of mango season. But the weather was pretty much the same every day, or at least I never needed to really adapt to the weather because of how lovely it almost always was. Each day felt endless, so I often felt shocked when we turned the calendar from one month to the next. Where had the time gone?
Although I had to wake up really early for work, that also meant I finished up around 3pm local time. In the afternoon, we would walk to Poipu Beach or hike down to Lawai Bay or Mahaulepu. Instead of shooing away pigeons or dodging litter, we had to keep our distance from the honu (Hawaiian green sea turtles) or monk seals napping on the sand. Without any hyperbole, it was paradise.
About 4 months into our home exchange, the family with whom we were swapping reached out. They were loving Brooklyn as much as we were loving Kauai. Would we extend our exchange by another full year?
We said no. It was a heart-wrenching decision. But not a hard one.
It was heart-wrenching because we loved our life on Kauai. Not only did we love it, but we could imagine our future there. We’d need to buy a car (annoying, expensive). We wouldn’t see too many more New York Liberty games, at least not in person. But we’d have so much more. There was a car with a bumper sticker I often walked by on our street in Koloa that read, “The Ocean Is My Playground.” We wouldn’t have bagel shops, but we’d have that! Our little one would grow up outside and in the water, not on a screen.
Double rainbow? From my back porch? All the time? Yep!
It’s heart-wrenching to say goodbye to something you love and cherish. We left a piece of ourselves on Kauai. But our time in Kauai made it so clear that we could have an amazing life in so many ways, but the need for community outweighed it all. So it wasn’t a hard decision to leave, because our community wasn’t there.
In Brooklyn, I watched Liverpool matches every weekend with two of my buddies, no matter how early the start time. Amy had friends over every Friday night to cook dinner. We have our Passover traditions and our Easter traditions – all foregone this year since we were 5,000 miles away.
We could have formed a new community. Marlow made friends with many children her age. She and Amy found a weekly dance class, various story times, and regular Monday playground meet-ups. Yet so much of any relationship is shared experiences and memories. How long would it be before we reached a level of comfort with our new friends that equaled what we had with our friends and families? Would we ever get there?
That’s not all. I believe that being known and understood by others is one of the most profound needs we all have. I’ve done a lot of different things in my life and grown and changed. Someone meeting me today would just see one dimension of me, whereas the people who have known me for 10 or 20 years or my whole life have witnessed more and know me in a deeper way. That’s the irreplaceable thing about Brooklyn I could never find on Kauai.
I am trying to create something like this with this consultant community. I’ve written elsewhere about the joy of being solo and the burden of loneliness that comes with independent consulting. Forming a community with others grappling with similar challenges feels meaningful and valuable.
For the first newsletter in this new home on Substack, it feels right to end with a call to make this community more and more real. Here’s to seeing each other and being seen.
Our 10th annual Halloween party in Brooklyn with our community — let me know if you want an invite this year!
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