“That sounds like a TV show,” people often say when I describe the street I live on.

Aesthetically, there’s nothing remarkable about it. The houses are pretty, modest, and brick; the sidewalks are lined with trees that shed leaves and toxic horse chestnuts in the fall, and fill the air with pollen in the spring. The yards are neat and varied: some with grass and hedges, others xeroscaped, a few bursting with desert flowers that feel as natural, elegant, and free-spirited as the homeowners themselves. It’s pleasant. But if you drove through without stopping, you wouldn’t notice anything special.

What makes the street feel unreal isn’t how it looks. It’s how it behaves.

The people who live here are wildly different from any neighbors I’ve ever known. They’re from Ohio, New York, Colorado, San Francisco, and France. They work as pilots and nurses and lawyers and journalists and librarians and engineers and hairstylists and teachers and small business owners. Some have children. Some have dogs. Some have plants they treat like children. Some disappear every weekend into the mountains to cling to the side of a cliff “for fun,” like many Utahns do. Politically, culturally, temperamentally, no two households are the same. Our diversity is our strength.

The only thing everyone seems to have in common is that they give a shit. About the street. About the people on it. About what happens here.

In an era when most of us barely know the names of the people living next door, this already feels like a small miracle. Research has shown that Americans have fewer close social ties than they did a generation ago, and loneliness has become so widespread it’s now described as a public health crisis. Against that backdrop, my street feels like an anomaly. The kind of place people assume must be exaggerated for effect. The kind of place that only exists on television.

But it’s very real.

“I’m in my pearl-clutching era,” a neighbor said recently after noticing an unfamiliar car parked too long at the curb. He’d investigated it and sent me a message, hoping I might know the owner. I texted the street’s group chat, and within minutes we’d figured out it belonged to someone’s brother, who’d be back in a few days. Our street is the neighborhood watch on steroids, but not in a negative, condemning way. Not the kind where police are called because a person of color is walking down the sidewalk. No. This is about protection and care.

One night a few years ago, my phone buzzed after dark: There’s someone walking up your porch. It was a neighbor letting me know my friend had arrived before he even had a chance to knock.

In a culture that insists we mind our own business, on our street, we do the opposite. We watch. We notice. We text. We show up.

There’s a group chat that mostly consists of practical questions: Who has basil? That one lady is selling drugs on the corner again—does anyone know if her kid is okay? Can someone help me carry this thing? Does anyone have ideas for a geriatric dog door? Half my neighbors have keys to my house, and they use them. One will let herself in to walk my dogs without asking first. I’ll be at the grocery store when my front door camera pings, and I’ll see her—beautifully dressed—pop inside and leave with my dogs on leash.

One neighbor travels often for work, so I’ll run next door to bring his packages inside and check on the construction projects underway. When I run out of coffee—which happens often, because I have raging ADHD—I walk into another neighbor’s house and make a cup while she pauses work at her furniture business to tell me about her morning and the credenza she’s restoring to perfection. Cakes are baked for every birthday by one neighbor, a Sicilian New Yorker who might be one of the best cooks I’ve ever met.

None of this is announced or ceremonial. It just happens. The trust is assumed, then reinforced again and again through small, unremarkable acts.

The street spans generations, which is another secret weapon. A few weeks ago, the first wave of kids came home from college. They stood in loose groups on the sidewalk, talking and laughing, and every neighbor who turned onto the block reacted the same way: full, toothy grins; cars whipping into driveways; people rushing over with open arms. There were warm embraces and rapid-fire questions about classes, professors, and roommates. Someone muttered, for the tenth time, “It was just yesterday that you were eight.” When they come home, it’s a reunion that belongs to all of us.

In the winter, we do a food tour. Multiple houses host—whoever volunteers—and we move from home to home drinking, snacking, and laughing. The college kids talk about coursework and majors. The youngest kids dart around our legs, making Gen Alpha jokes, cackling and hyper from their little glasses of pomegranate juice. At the final house, there’s always Latin music, dancing, and one too many glasses of champagne.

In preparation for our annual food tour this past December, one of the college kids texted me that he needed to use my kitchen. “It’s all yours,” I told him. He cooked his curry fish recipe while my young son followed at his heels. When my son was a toddler, he used to let himself into that same neighbor’s backyard to play on their playground, or wander into another house to ask for snacks because he loved their whole nut dish. It was never treated like an annoyance, but like an opportunity—to say hello, catch up, and spend time.

And when something goes wrong, the street mobilizes.

This past year, one of our beloved neighbors was involved in a very serious ski accident. Within days, people had organized yard care, meal trains, coffee drop-offs, and quiet visits to offer companionship and support. No one asked what needed to be done. They simply showed up to fill the gaps. Care here isn’t performative. It’s logistical. It’s beautiful.

The part that fascinates me most is this: how did this happen?

I didn’t grow up this way. My family was not LDS in a deeply religious area, and many of our neighbors simply chose not to speak to us. We moved often, too often to build roots, and by the time we arrived somewhere new, it was already time to leave again. My mom never had close friends, and for a long time, neither did I. Not really. Not until my teens, and even then, I was probably a terrible friend. My ADHD went undiagnosed for years. I lived in a constant state of sensory overwhelm that made me irritable and reactive, and I was so intensely interest-driven that I dragged my friends along behind me, convinced that what I loved should be what we all loved. It took time—and modeling, and watching other people do it better—for me to understand what it meant to be a good friend. To listen. To make space. To show up for things that weren’t about me. Finding community didn’t come naturally to me. I had to learn it. And then I had to practice it.

Community doesn’t appear by accident. It’s a choice. We don’t all act the same, think the same, or move through the world in the same way. We are unified by a simple idea: this is our street, these are our people, and this is our community. It’s healthy and safe and deeply human, and it feels increasingly rare. It doesn’t come from luck. It comes from expectation.

When we bought our house, the street’s culture was handed to us fully formed. Introductions were made. Invites followed. Text threads appeared. And when new people move in now, the same thing happens. There’s an accidental onboarding process—informal but unmistakable—that teaches you how things work here. You are invited in. You are watched over. You are gradually shaped into a pearl-clutcher yourself. One moment you’re a stranger; the next, someone is banging on your door with biscotti.

Does everyone always get along perfectly? Of course not. Sometimes there’s too much wine, and an argument spills out. Sometimes people irritate each other. Things crack. Then they’re repaired. Differences aren’t erased; they’re accepted and managed in service of the group. This is not a place of passive, doe-eyed humans. Some of the strongest, most intense personalities I know live here. What triumphs is that the community matters more than ego.

I’ve taken these lessons in community into my friendships. No two people in my inner circle are alike. They differ in background, temperament, ambition, and worldview. The only real through-line—aside from what appears to be a shared spectrum of ADHD symptoms—is that we’ve made a mutual decision to be harmless to one another. To show up. To tell the truth. To offer a space free from shame and judgment, and to be the action.

There is equal effort and equal authenticity. We are all busy. Many of us are single moms. Many of us have neurodivergent children. We have careers, PTA meetings, and soccer games, but we make time. Recently, I stayed on the phone with one friend for three hours while we both moved through our morning routines—talking about parenting and careers and goals while cooking, cleaning, and prepping for ballet and doctor appointments. Later that day, another friend came over with her son. She brought lunch. I assembled furniture with her child while she focused on a project in my office.

We get pedicures with our kids, because our kids need to see what friendship looks like—what being a friend looks like, too. One friend comes to watch my son skateboard simply because she knows it matters to him, and because it gives us time to catch up while he throws himself into a half pipe. When my best friend told me she needed me a few years ago, I was on a plane. After my divorce, she was on one, too.

My friends are writers, scientists, directors, technologists, and business owners. They are from everywhere. What binds us isn’t similarity. It’s intention. It’s that we value each other, and we show it.

Community is self-care, and it will take you a hell of a lot further than a facial. Loneliness doesn’t always come from being alone. Often, it comes from being surrounded by people who don’t really know you, or who you don’t trust to stay when things get inconvenient. The communities that sustain us are rarely easy. They require time we absolutely do not have, attention we’re told to reserve for ourselves, and energy we think we should conserve. In the United States, individualism runs rampant. We are told that what matters most is us, and we are in a mental health crisis because of it.

To get the community you’ve always wanted, you have to be the community.

That means watering your neighbor’s yard while they’re on vacation, even when your own house feels like it’s on fire. Dropping off soup for a sick friend when you’re exhausted. Sitting on the phone longer than planned. Letting people see your mess. Choosing, again and again, to believe the best of each other.

It took me a long time to learn how to do that. I wasn’t raised in this kind of care. I had to watch it, practice it, get it wrong, and try again. I had to learn that belonging isn’t something you wait to be offered—it’s something you build, slowly, in public, with other people.

It’s not always convenient. It’s rarely optimized. But it’s how friends become family, how streets become villages, and how ordinary places begin to feel—improbably—like home.

Love this? Go here for tips on building community.