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Gina Tang trust-falls into the good life with Little Shepherds
She sees it as part of her life and her dream, not as a job that can be isolated from those things
Gina Tang has spent a lot of time thinking about what makes a good life, and trying to effect changes accordingly. Much of her career has involved working on projects that she believes in, whether they are ecological, educational, or wellness-related. But she was bothered by what she felt was an excessive focus on the individual, as opposed to the individual’s environment and community.
When Covid arrived, she realized, “Now’s my chance. I got rid of all my stuff, with the exception of my books, my art, and my journal collection, which I put in a storage unit. I took my kids and my car, drove to Northern California, and moved onto a small permaculture farm in the mountains with no wi-fi.” There, about 20 minutes outside Willitts, she stayed in a tent, using an outdoor kitchen and an outdoor bathroom. “I spent my days in the garden learning herbalism. There were goats there; there were chickens there. I integrated myself. I connected to life so directly that I was like, ‘I’m never going back in the box, never going back to the city thing.’”
Circumstances demanded her return to San Diego, so she set out to make the kind of life she wanted for herself and her family wherever she was. That’s when she launched Good Shepherds, a way to “draw my circle outside of the box, but next to it.” A way to bring some wildness and nomadic freedom into her current circumstances.
As a mother of three, Tang found herself needing to bring education into her vision and out of the conventional school system, where “we really can’t pretend that the dominant practices are really working”. Thus, Little Shepherds, to which she is radically committed. She sees it as part of her life and her dream, not as a job that can be isolated from those things — to the point where she plans to make her home wherever Little Shepherds ends up finally settling down after (hopefully) generating enough momentum over summer to grow into a full-time program. “It’s been an incredible journey. It’s been a total trust-fall.”