Growing closer turned Journey from offering groups to becoming a community
The growth we experienced wasn't limited to overcoming fear. A sense of family also developed. People like me who had no real family, suddenly had brothers and sisters who cared. I felt feelings that were completely new. Bonnie comes from a very close family. These feelings weren't new to her, but she welcomed her new family with warmth and enthusiasm. She is one of those people who spends her life acting as the glue that holds families and friends together. It's an amazing skill and fit perfectly into the Journey experience.
Having her in my life meant having a large, close family of friends and relatives. It was the only time in my life that I had that. For the record, she and I have two wonderful kids, grown up now. We divorced after 15 years of marriage. It was a very difficult break up and one of the very few among the Journey family. Losing her meant losing my connection with all of the people in Journey who had become my family. I lost them because I don't know how to sustain extended relationships. I guess the 15 years with Bonnie wasn't enough to teach me that. She maintains contact with them to this day. I wish I had that contact. I miss my friends from Journey. Not a day goes by that I don't think about the people who became my brothers and sisters.
In those early years, the intensity of family feeling grew and it became clear that just running and participating in groups wasn't all we wanted together. The group's founder also realized that his dreams for a life of ease wasn't going to be financed by the modest fees collected for groups. He began pushing for a "Journey Family" which would live together and run a business beyond the groups. That idea resonated with about a dozen of us and we began to plan.
One of the big misunderstandings about the human potential movement is that one of the central activities was promiscuous sex. Certainly there were groups that supported open and free sexuality. Why not? In those days, AIDS didn't exist and the birth control pill was in very wide use. Journey was not one of those groups. The concept of family was central. Members married, had kids, and raised them just like regular middle class people. The difference in our case, was the idea we could do this together.
Most of us had apartments in the city. A few lived in the suburbs. The first idea for a way to become a full time family was for us to open a store in the city and sell crafts and giant pillows. The same ones we made and used for groups. People seemed to like these giant floor pillows, some as big as 3 by 4 feet. The idea was that we could make and sell these, make planters - Sven had designed some really beautiful Lucite planters - make and sell greeting cards and other craft items.
A store was for rent just a block away on Sixth Avenue. It was 1,200 square feet, in poor condition, but the rent was low. We decided to give it a try. Not everyone quit their jobs, but there were some who were out of work at the time, and others ready to leave full time work. We all worked day and night to clean up, wire, paint, build displays, and create a sign for our new store: The Journey Store.
It wasn't an instant hit, but we sold enough pillows and planters to pay the rent and pay the rent of our erstwhile founder. It even bought him Champaign a few days a week. Gradually we increased our offerings to include house plants. They were a natural to go with our planters. People loved them. Within a year we rented the store next door and had a thriving business. The idea was that we would all quit our jobs, work in the store and be supported by it. Most of us did quit. I did. Bonnie continued seeing patients part time. Good thing because even though the store was selling well, there never seemed to be money for anyone but our founder. We had problems because we couldn't pay all of our suppliers. Once or twice a day nick would wander into the store, open the register and remove most of the money. That money was never seen again.
Between part time jobs, help from families, and the occasional few dollars from the store, we did manage to survive. One of our customers was an eccentric man from Eastern Long Island. He loved the store and the concept of our community. He offered to rent us a big house with several acres of land in East Quogue Long Island for a very reasonable price. The house was big enough so that at least half of the Journey Family could live there. The other half would stay in the city and run the store.
Planters, pillows and crafts would be made in East Quogue by the members there and those of us in the city would run the store and sell them. This is what we did, always staying just this side of bankruptcy and starvation. The Champagne kept flowing for Nick, good times and bad. Several members had babies and without food stamps and WIC (a federal program for women, infants, and children) the kids might have starved.