“Because true belonging only happens when we present our authentic, imperfect selves to the world, our sense of belonging can never be greater than our level of self-acceptance.” ― Brené Brown
“Some of us aren’t meant to belong. Some of us have to turn the world upside down and shake the hell out of it until we make our own place in it.” ― Elizabeth Lowell
“A generous heart is always open, always ready to receive our going and coming. In the midst of such love, we need never fear abandonment. This is the most precious gift true love offers – the experience of knowing we always belong.” ― Bell Hooks
During my second year in Canada, just before I decided to become a coach, I had a conversation with a coach about life purpose. In the coaching model she was trained in, they were taught to narrow down your life purpose to ONE word that summarises what you are all about or what you are trying to create in your lifetime. A one-word life purpose sounded absurd to me. Could you really narrow it down to just one word? And of course, I was surprised when she shared what she thought my life purpose was. She observed that it sounded like mine was connection.
At the time when she said it, it deeply resonated with me. (And I was pleasantly surprised at how powerful ONE word could be). All my life, I have felt disconnected from my family of origin, from my peer groups, from my home country, even from myself, from life and the universe, and all I’ve ever been trying to do, was to connect. Ever since I can remember, I’ve been seeking deep connection, deep conversation, deep friendships, deep relationships, deep understanding, a deeper connection with nature and life, and a deeper connection with myself. So, I will say that connection surely is a theme in my life.
I’ve discovered two things since then. Firstly, connection is not just a theme for me. It’s a theme for ALL of us. We are social creatures and it’s built into our DNA to seek out connection. From the moment we come into this world, we are seeking ways to connect. Our very survival depends on connecting with our caregivers. And all throughout our lives, we seek to belong somewhere.
Secondly, often when we are seeking something or really wanting to create something, because we feel the lack of it in our lives, there is a fear underneath. And when I slowed it down, I discovered that my search for connection, stemmed from a fear of being alone. I was abandoned at a very young age and grew up feeling like an outsider in my own family. The theme of outsider perpetuated all through my school years – more specifically in high school, where I never really found a place that I felt I belonged.
Now, I know that feeling different, weird, out of place, and disconnected, is also a theme for teenagers as they make sense of their own identity. And, I will say my experience of that was amplified by remaining on the outside and being too different, by not being able to find a place I could fit. If you have ever been bullied or marginalised in any way, you know exactly what I’m talking about. Our innate fear of disconnection gets amplified in an environment that feels hostile to us, and where we don’t see a way to connect, or where we can’t find a place to belong.
I think it’s important to be mindful of what it does to a young person when they feel they have nowhere that they belong. Most young people want to belong with their friends or peers. Some don’t feel like they do. And that’s when having a safe space to turn to at home becomes so critical. If there is no safe space at home or no sense of belonging in family either, that young person goes through life believing they don’t belong anywhere.
I’ve sat with clients who tell me about the shame they feel about not belonging. I’ve heard stories of struggle, and I’ve witnessed the courage it takes for people who feel like they don’t belong, to ask for and receive help and support. If you’ve spent your whole life believing that you are on your own, or that no-one will come, or that no-one has your back, it is hard to open yourself up to trusting and receiving. And yet, that is exactly what needs to happen, because even though you might be holding on to a belief that you are alone, you are never really alone. I had to discover that for myself too.
For most of my life I have felt like I was living on the outside looking in. I haven’t felt like I belong anywhere. It took time for me to create my own family and circle of friends and to cultivate my own sense of belonging. I had to go searching for it. It was never simply there. And sharing this, I realise that it very seldomly is simply there, because even if you are fortunate enough to have a family that makes you feel safe and allows space for you to be your authentic self, YOU still need to do the work to stay connected. You still need to show up and be real and vulnerable, and put in the work to maintain those important relationships in your life.
Now, the wonderful thing about creating it when it isn’t simply there, is that you appreciate it so much more when you do have it, because you spent years longing for it, and you know the level of work that went into creating it. Most importantly, I had to connect with myself first, make peace with myself first, allow myself to be seen first, before I could deeply connect with others and create the relationships I now have.
And yet, in many ways, this theme of connection still feels like a life-long curriculum for me, because I still haven’t figured it all out. It’s a process that is still unfolding for me, despite having learnt so much and feeling far more connected in my life now than I did when I was younger.
I have put in the work to notice the impact I was having on others. I’ve worked through my anger and resentment at not having what I perceived everyone else did have growing up. I’ve sat with my own fears and insecurities around not being able to trust, not believing I am worthy, not knowing how to ask or stay open to receiving. I’ve had the courage to ask for help and support. I’ve had the courage to lean into the discomfort of creating trust and connection in relationships.
And yet, I still struggle to tell my story. My clients are the only ones who get to hear parts of my story when I believe it serves them to hear it. And it’s because I know that for them to hear my story, normalises the feelings of disconnection and alienation that they sometimes feel. It helps them know they are not alone. Outside of those sacred conversations though, I don’t share the story, because it feels too vulnerable. It’s often received with shock or disbelief, and I instantly feel disconnected from others when I do share. So, I don’t. And ironically, I then keep myself disconnected, which is the opposite of what I want.
Recently I attended a Day of Miracles with the lovely Amber Krzys and the theme of connection was present for me again. I found myself among a group of truly incredible women and I felt again as if I was the outsider. I sat listening to their stories and felt myself pulling away on the inside. If ever there was a time to feel like an imposter, then this was it. I was unable to relate to their worlds as it was so different from my own, and yet I could relate to their struggles as humans, their fears, their desires, who they were trying to be in the world. I can always see the human underneath the story. And sometimes my own story gets in the way of connection.
Brené Brown shares that love and a sense of belonging are two components or two expressions of connection. In other words, when we feel loved and a sense of belonging, we feel deeply connected. When love and a sense of belonging is absent, then we feel disconnected. For me, this deeply resonates.
The way I tend to connect with others, is through love. I choose to see the person in front of me through the eyes of loving. I choose to see their humanness and what I have in common with them. I look below the surface to their fears, their worries, their insecurities, their beliefs, their dreams and yearnings and I see what makes them them; what makes them human. And I love that part. I love the person who feels fearful and insecure, or who falsely believes they are unworthy. I see how incredible they actually are, and how they are not seeing it, and when I am in that space of love, I feel deeply connected.
It is the most sacred space of connection, because it’s a judgement-free zone. It truly is what Marcia Reynolds would call a thy-to-thy connection. The divine in me sees the divine in you and we recognise that even though we may be so different on the outside, on the inside we are the same. We are love. We are essence. We are innocence. We are joy.
Love comes easy now. It didn’t always come easy. It took tremendous inner work to get to this point. Most of the inner work involved facing my own Inner Judge/Inner Critic and understanding where it comes from, and why I feel the strong urge to judge and criticize. And here is the caveat, if you find that you are always judging others, or if you notice you have a hard time being accepting and loving towards others, you might want to slow down to notice how you treat yourself. My guess is that if you are hard on others, you are probably harder on yourself. A judgmental person usually has a super strong Inner Judge. They are hard on others, because they are so hard on themselves.
Recently, I had a client run an experiment where she was tasked to look at a photo of herself as a child younger than the age of seven. She did that for two weeks and in her feedback, she said this: “By day ten, I started to de-escalate the forcefulness, no viciousness, I was feeling towards myself. I can’t believe how hard I’ve been on her” (meaning the little girl in the photo). She continued, “I don’t know if this is normal, but I started to see other people as little children too…”
It’s perfectly normal by the way. When we start to recognise our own innocence, we open ourselves up to seeing it in others too. And what I found truly profound in her share was the powerful words she used. She described how she was treating herself by using words like ‘forcefulness” and “viscousness”, and it was apparent in how she was showing up in her life. The scary thing about that is that how you hold yourself, how you treat yourself, is how others will treat you, because people in your world are mirrors. They mirror back to you what is going on inside of you. You don’t see the world the way it is. You see the world the way YOU are with yourself on the inside.
When we heal our own inner wounds, we open ourselves up to meaningful connection. Not before. No meaningful connection is possible if we are still walking around with those inner wounds that prevent us from seeing ourselves with love. When we can see ourselves with love and compassion, it becomes easy to extend that same love and compassion to others, because you recognise yourself in them and you can then relate to their struggles with openness and understanding.
As I’ve shared, I discovered that the pathway to connecting with another human, is to look for their humanness. Look for how you are similar, or what you have in common as humans, instead of how you are different. Often culture, religion, roles, or titles, status in life, and other beliefs can become barriers to connection if we use them to separate ourselves from another; if we use them to compare.
Comparison is the thief of joy and compassion because it robs you of appreciating your own uniqueness, and seeing another person’s vulnerability and humanness, because you are so focused on the comparisons you are making in your own head. And, in reality, the comparisons you are drawing, are all in your head. They are all made up because none of it is real. We created culture. We created religion. We created our perceived status in society by deciding that certain things are more valuable than others. As a society, we have collectively bought into the money game, into the scarcity game, where we believe that those with more money, or more power, are more important or more valuable than those without it. And it’s all made up. None of it is real.
Personally, the other component of connection – i.e., sense of belonging – felt a little more difficult to access. I had become accustomed to always being on the outside looking in. Ironically, it was only in immigrating to Canada and starting my coaching business that I was finally able to create a sense of belonging. And once again, it started with some inner work around this.
All my life I had struggled to trust myself, to lean into my own inner wisdom and internal strength. Working with my coach and having to find my own way here in Canada, presented me with so many opportunities to discover my own inner wisdom and strength. I had no-one else to rely on, so I had to learn to trust myself more. When I finally stopped waging an internal war with myself, when I learnt some self-compassion, I was able to access inner resources that had always been there, but that I didn’t always notice or appreciate.
And in recognising those inner resources, I was finally able to connect with myself in a meaningful way and I truly believe that that is what helped me cultivate a sense of belonging. I had to belong with myself first. I had to accept and love and forgive myself first, then it became possible for me to truly connect with others.
And Brené Brown speaks about this in her powerful book Atlas of the Heart. She draws a distinction between belonging and fitting in, by explaining that belonging happens when I feel safe to be myself. I can show up authentically and I feel accepted for who I am. Fitting in, on the other hand, is when I try to be like you, and I hide my authentic self. When we try to fit in, we work very hard at being what we believe others want us to be, and we don’t really feel accepted for who we are. And the truth is, that is not a sustainable way to build a relationship. Your connection to another is then always dependent on you having to be what you think others want you to be, by you always having to play a role, instead of having full permission to show up as your real self.
All of us are yearning to belong somewhere. All of us are yearning for those places where we can be ourselves, where we can be authentic and vulnerable, without risking being ostracised. And the biggest irony is this: until you accept yourself, until you learn to love yourself, until you belong to yourself, you will always feel like you are on the outside looking in. We belong with ourselves first. Then we learn how to invite others in to get to know us. Brené Brown says it best: “Because true belonging only happens when we present our authentic, imperfect selves to the world, our sense of belonging can never be greater than our level of self-acceptance.”
References:
- Breytenbach, C. (2020). Getting to Know your Inner Critic. Available online at: https://chantalbreytenbach.com/getting_to_know_your_inner_critic/
- Brown, B. (2022). Atlas of the Heart: Mapping meaningful connection and the language of human experience. New York: Random House.