“Community needs a soul if it is to become a true home for human beings. You, the people must give it this soul.” -- Pope, John Paul II.

As a leader and mental health clinician in Iraq, I quickly learned that Soldiers and Marines healed quicker and better in communities. In well led units, there is a strong sense of bonding, cohesion, and esprit de corps – a sense of community. Isolation is unhealthy. Isolation, like complacency, kills.

So why is community so important in the healing process and why is the building of community so important?

Communities, authentic communities, I believe have an invisible and sacred code embedded within them that unlocks the secret and bridges the gaps between the dichotomies and contradictions in life. For example, the paradox of “being alone” and “being together”, needing to “feel unique” and needing to “feel you have something in common with others”, wanting to be “a part” of a group and wanting to be “apart” from the group. Between these treads the healing aspect of wanting to be understood, appreciated and valued for who we really are. Moreover, the ability for transformation is nested in community. Trauma has a way of significantly altering the natural trajectory of one’s life. Being in community, like gravity, has a way of grounding us and supporting us where we land after we experience traumatic change. Community is where healing begins.

As I see it, creating community is what good and great leaders do.