- We'll start by setting our place, followed by a quick circle conversation.

I've often heard this quote that if you know what breaks your heart, you've found your mission.

And so for me, when I was working with Nashville Pride, I would consistently hear these stories of people in our community who were suffering, people in our community who didn't have the connection to resources that they needed or they lived 30 miles outside of Nashville.

And their lived experience was completely different from the lived experience that I have as a white gay man in Nashville proper.

The Nashville and Middle Tennessee Community Visioning Project was really started out of this mindless mindset that we didn't really have a good understanding of what our community needed in order to thrive.

And so for us, it was really important to get a really deep understanding of where there were gaps in these services and where there could be collaboration.

I heard a lot from members of our community around wanting to create a space of belonging, a space that where they felt included and welcomed.

What really surprised me was that members of our community specifically identified age ranges that needed more services.

A majority of survey respondents said that there was a need for programing for older adults 50 plus.

- So I was part of a Community Visioning Project.

I worked on the task force that focused on needs of older adult issues.

Probably the thing that people first talk about is a community center, someplace they go to identify for people to go a safe space.

One of the things that struck me about that task force and the information that we got through the surveys was how widely shared some of the experiences of feeling isolation, sometimes loneliness.

I'm not really sure whether or not I was, you know, as an older adult, I was recognized and had a part in the community.

I think we all feel those things, but sometimes we feel that we may be the only person experiencing them.

And I found exactly the opposite to be true.