Before 8:00AM on October 22nd, I found myself sitting in a minivan for the first time in years with 5 other members of my Leadership Athens County 2026 Cohort. Founders, executive directors, and other leaders sat with me in what we lovingly began referring to as The Party Bus.

Driving around Athens County, we had a packed day of community building, hard conversations, and reflection ahead of us as we dove into our theme for the day: what makes a community healthy.

But first, we had to make it there.

The party bus started out as a practicality: if we were all going to the same place, it made the most sense. But as the day went on, The Party Bus taught me some of the most important lessons about what makes a community healthy.

During our opening circle, we read Robin Wall Kimmerer’s The Serviceberry, an essay about abundance, reciprocity, and gratitude. What really stuck with me was some of the first lines in the essay, where Kimmerer reflects on the pureness of the natural gift of serviceberries—"I have not earned, paid for, nor labored for them... And yet here they are—along with the sun and the air and the birds and the rain."

I kept thinking about this idea throughout our day, and how I didn't do anything to earn a spot in that car—it was an abundance created out of simply sharing what our cohort had—even something as simple as a seat in a car.

In our gratitude, we shared stories, laughter, and experiences we wouldn't have otherwise. We learned little things about each other, our histories, and our experiences being members of the Athens community.

Small moments together became increasingly meaningful as we moved through a day designed to help us understand the complexities of a healthy community. We dove into how assumptions, requests, and expectations affect how we navigate our lives, and how public health touches every facet of a community's ability to thrive. We learned about how leadership, people, and organizations all fit together into this complex tapestry to create real change.

Health is shaped by geography, the environment, politics, income, and more— none of which occurs in a vacuum. But these systems include all of us, and health is also shaped by the abundance, gratitude, and reciprocity we bring to our communities.

A healthy community needs these systems to work together to truly serve our people. But it also needs people inside of these systems to have trust, hope, and resilience in times of hardship.

And, sometimes, what our community needs is a Party Bus!

The Party Bus truly opened my eyes to how simple it can be to begin forging a healthy community myself. Our October sessions on leadership gave me the words to understand how our communities thrive, and the tools to engage with them in my own life.

In the Serviceberry, Kimmerer makes it clear that the serviceberries she picks ask nothing of her in return. Their sweetness demands no gratitude.

But it's in that gratitude and abundance that allows our communities to thrive through the compiling and sharing of our resources, care, and time.

As a leader, it isn't about creating what a community needs from scratch, but being able to recognize its strengths and build reciprocity.

I am so grateful for these lessons in becoming a leader—but I'm even more grateful to The Party Bus for driving that lesson home.