By Sukriti Wahi Wellness 09.09.2025

"The Surprising Way I Found Community in My 30s"

How one simple concept gave writer Sukriti Wahi the support she didn’t know she needed.

Allow me to take you back to 2017 (strap in).

I had just moved to Sydney after a year of living in Italy. I was single (loving it), living alone (loving it a lot), healthy (perhaps taken for granted), had just started an exciting new job and was fortunate enough to make a good group of friends through my samba dance classes.

And while those things each shifted in varying degrees over the following few years until the pandemic hit – going in and out of a relationship, between each other’s places, chronic fatigue issues emerging, jobs and friendship groups changing – I always felt like something “bigger” was missing when it came to feeling like I “belonged” in Sydney, and would frequently fly home to my family in Brisbane on weekends.

(And I wouldn’t know what it was until 2023 – but we’ll get to that.)

This feeling carried on throughout the COVID years, although softened because I moved back to Brisbane when the borders closed and stayed there for a year and a half. While it was an immensely difficult time for me health-wise, with the worst of my chronic fatigue peaking during 2020, I was, despite my solo-living-and-loving-it self, very happy to be home with my family, our dogs and my aunt, uncle and cousins who lived just around the corner. I also bonded deeply with my colleagues at the time, despite only connecting via Zoom, and made another great set of friends in them throughout the experience.

Moving back to Sydney in 2021, I was less fortunate when it came to the second lockdown, I spent those four months completely alone in my small apartment. In the latter half of the year, I turned the big 3-0 (petition to subtract two years for COVID) and, eventually, life resumed something resembling the pre-pandemic years.

But still that elusive “something” felt amiss. That “something” that made me really feel like I had roots in Sydney. That I didn’t just “exist” and work there while my real home was back in Brisbane.

Fast-forward to January 2023.

I now present to you the two catalysts for the “Eureka” moment in my longstanding Quest for the Missing Something.

1. My chronic fatigue problems were nearly completely gone (hooray!).

2. A “situationship” (thankfully) ended, but I was going through it.

So, I decided enough was enough. I finally had energy again after years of feeling like a bag of bricks, and I couldn’t waste any more emotions on something that never truly was (again, thank *goodness*).

The answer? I decided to sign up for Latin dance classes, specifically salsa and bachata, as well as kizomba, a dance from Angola and the style that would eventually become my true love of the three. It was something I had always wanted to do but had never done, as I’d long been hesitant about partner dancing (coming from a background of solo dance), and it seemed like the right time to make a change.

And did things change indeed.

From the moment I walked into that dance studio, I felt an energetic shift. The warmth of the instructors, the joy of the music, and the connection with my fellow students as we learned together, made mistakes together and built our skills together. The classes were addictive, and after a day of feeling low, stepping into a salsa class was like hitting the reset button in my brain, wiping the slate clean of any overwhelming emotions and forcing me to be present to learn, all while listening to vibrant, forget-your-tears music.

It barely took a month before I realised I was practically living at the studio (it didn’t hurt that it was a five-minute walk from where I lived), attending classes nightly and social dance events every weekend. A few months down the line, I was taking part in performance teams, which meant rehearsals on top of classes and evenings spent bedazzling costumes together. Without me realising at the time, all of this had begun filling the void that I had long felt was empty.

The studio was my long-searched-for “third place” – a term I came across in 2024 that finally described what I’d needed all these years.

What is a third place, you ask? Coined by author Ray Oldenburg in his book The Great Good Place in 1989, a third place is a familiar public place outside of home and work, where you frequently connect with people (known and unknown) over a shared interest or activity – something many of us lost during the pandemic and something I lacked when I moved to Sydney.

To put it in another, more familiar word, what I had finally found in the studio, in this third place, was a community – something very different to friendship. While friendships stem from enjoying another person’s company (which doesn’t necessarily involve having shared interests), community is built on a greater reason for existing beyond the individual, hinging upon having that shared activity, purpose or belief (such as places of worship). And as social beings, having a community comes with many benefits, including a sense of belonging, support and identity, as well as reduced stress and isolation.

I can honestly tell you that, while many people at the studio are now real friends today, for the first year or so, we didn’t share much beyond smiles, laughs, dances and the goal of showing up to class and working on our skills. In fact, I didn’t know a lot of people’s names for the longest time (when you rotate partners in class every minute or so, it’s pretty tough to retain!), but I knew their faces, and there was always a welcoming smile or hug to be shared when we’d meet at the studio.

Two-and-a-half years later, its impact has taken me well beyond Sydney. Finding my third place has opened up a whole new side of me and allowed me to meet people around the world. Because of it, I’ve begun my journey as a dance teacher. I’ve travelled across the globe to attend dance festivals with people I befriended through classes. I’ve gone overseas to participate in choreography projects and train with incredible artists whom I’ve also become close to. I’ve walked into kizomba parties in Paris, Madrid and Bali (to name just a few) and instantly clicked with fellow dancers over our love of a song or a cheeky moment of footwork.

It’s given me community, connection and care – on an international scale – and truly changed my life.

And it all started in that studio.