Village Care Styles™
You give care in one way and you receive it in another. Most of us never learned the difference—or that there was a difference at all. This awareness and distinction directly impacts how we not only take care of ourselves, but how we engage in relationships within our own ecosystem. The Care Styles Quiz provides insights for your specific care styles and how to incorporate them into your everyday life.
Free to take • Takes ~ 3 minutes to complete • A profile to share
What are Village Care Styles™?
The 7 Village Care Styles
Seven ways we show and receive care
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Showing up and staying around (for as long or little as needed). Simply being with someone without immediately jumping to fix an issue or provide advice. May also include physical touch (based on the person’s boundaries, comfort level, and preferences), such as a hug, hand on the shoulder or knee, high five or a fist bump
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Doing the necessary task(s). Maybe it’s cooking or bringing the meal, providing the ride, or just making sure the “thing” is taken care of (quickly and without reminders).
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Using oral, sign, and/or written language to communicate what needs to be said. Saying it out loud - the affirmation, the check-in, just being told (with respect and consideration).
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Providing room to breathe, protecting someone’s rest, and/or lifting any pressure that’s present.
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Item description
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Someone in your corner, providing advocacy, and/or holding the line on someone’s behalf.
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Made to feel secure and steady—mentally, physically, financially, and/or emotionally. Opportunity to lower your guard.
Care is a language. Most of us speak it in two dialects.
There’s the way you show care to others—how you instinctively reach for the people you love when they’re struggling. And there’s the way you receive it—what actually lands for you when it’s your turn to be held.
For many of us, those two aren’t the same. You might give care by doing for someone else, and receive care by being in someone’s presence. You might hold everyone around you steady, and rarely allow anyone to make you feel safe. Village Care Styles gives you language for both sides—7 ways of caring, named—so that the people in your village can finally know how to reach you, and you can know how to reach them back.
Why it matters…The Give/Receive Gap
A house full of handled tasks can still feel lonely, especially when what you needed all along was for someone to simply be there with you.
That’s the gap. It’s rarely that no one cares - it’s that care keeps arriving in the wrong currency. When you can name how you give and how you need to receive, you stop translating alone. You hand your people the key. That’s what villaging is all about.
Free to take • Takes ~3 minutes to complete • A profile to share
PART OF A BIGGER VILLAGE
Village Care Styles is one doorway into the Village Noire ecosytem. Once you know your Care Styles, you can carry them into the Villaging app - where your Care Card lets you tell your people how you’re doing and what you need, in the moment, in a shared language.
Because care was never meant to be carried alone.