Three cups of courage
One ounce of emotion
Seven scoops of honesty
A sprinkle of humor
It just doesn’t work that way. Vulnerability looks different for each individual person. The depths of our experiences, the spaces we occupy, and the support systems we have in place all play a role in how we engage in vulnerability.
When we choose to be vulnerable, we must do so knowing that we are ready for whatever awaits us on the other side. How other people choose to respond in those moments is beyond our scope of control. This means that we must relinquish expectations and embrace that just as others may not be aware of our hardships and experiences, we may not be aware of theirs. Give grace and be empathetic.
As a student in this process, I have a huge list of notes, messy and muddled after years I’ve spent opening up and peeling away the masks that for so long I thought would keep me safe. In my experience, I’ve found success in starting small and flexing my vulnerability muscles slowly over time.
Start with yourself.
Often, in the pursuit of being vulnerable, we struggle with where to begin and who to open up to first. My advice? Start with yourself. Check in with your head, heart, and gut. Ask yourself how you’re feeling. Use your preferred method of processing to unpack your thoughts and experiences first before sharing outwardly with others.
When you’re ready to take things to the next step, wade slowly into the deep end rather than jumping in headfirst.
When sharing with others:
• Opt for one-on-one, face-to-face conversations when possible.
• Begin with your inner circle and work your way out as you feel more comfortable sharing.
• Do not feel pressured to reveal more than you are ready and willing to; saying no is okay, and moving at your own pace, on your own terms is valid.
• Hold space for others to respond after you’ve shared your story.
• Respect the vulnerability of others and thank them for having the courage to share their thoughts, feelings, and experiences.
Be comfortable with saying no.
The emotional work that accompanies vulnerability is not something that should be demanded of you. You have the power to choose who is safe and who is not. You have the ability to determine when and where you are ready to step beyond your comfort zone into the unknown.
You are the only one who can determine when it is the right time to open up and when protecting yourself no longer benefits you. Although I will always champion vulnerability, I believe it is up to each individual to determine when, where, and with whom personal information is to be shared.
Honor the vulnerability of others.
Healthy relationships and communities encourage and honor vulnerability. When someone opens up about how they are feeling or what they are experiencing, that is the time to stop speaking and start listening.
Respect the feelings and experiences of others in those moments. Hold space for them. Be attentive. When it is time to respond, meet them with love, empathy, and kindness.
The quickest way to kill vulnerability in a community, company, or friendship is to respond in a manner that makes the contributor feel unsafe, unwelcome, or unheard. Don’t leap to judgment or reach for prescriptive advice. Thank them for having the courage to share and encourage others to respond in kind.
Thank you for sharing that with me. I am honored that you trust me enough to be so vulnerable.
The more we welcome vulnerability into the spaces we occupy and the communities we are a part of, the more that people will bring all of themselves to the table, and that is precisely the goal.
Cultivating belonging means seeing others not just for who they are, but also for the person that they are becoming. It is our responsibility to fight for environments where honesty is applauded and everyone feels welcome.
CHAPTER EIGHT
FITTING IN IS OVERRATED
It all started the day my mother marched into the family room where I sat munching on DunkAroos with my chin-length bob and bangs that stretched straight across my forehead.
“You turn that garbage off right now,” she hollered as the yellow Power Ranger karate kicked a bad guy. Pow! Boom! Boo—and then everything went silent as the screen faded to black.
“That is far too violent. I don’t want you wasting your life in front of the television,” she said as I pleaded with her to turn the show back on. I dramatically cried out, flailing my tiny arms in the air, but to no avail.
That was the last day I ever watched the Power Rangers.
It was also one of the most defining moments of my life.
Look, I know what you might be thinking.
“Defining moment, Natalie? Give me a break!”
There are eyes rolling all over the world reading those words.
Yep, I get it.
Some of you think I’m about to dive into a story about how getting out from behind the screen can change your entire life. Some of you are waiting for a cheesy metaphor to drop, while others are stuck on the fact that I mentioned DunkAroos and now you’re cursing me for igniting a nostalgic childhood food craving that will likely last until you finish this book. (I’m sorry about that. Truly, I am.)
However, before you write this off as a story about how a little girl became a more social and connected human being who valued the power of community and learned how to reject worldly values of violence, I want to clarify that this isn’t one of those stories.
When my fierce single mother turned off the Power Rangers, she took the remote from my hands and replaced it with the Encyclopedia of Dog Breeds, a massive book that she likely bought in the clearance section of the bookstore because no one else wanted to read it.
At that moment, my mother made me a deal. “Once you have memorized every dog breed in this book,” she said, “you can watch the Power Rangers again.”
That was the day my obsession with dogs began.
I opened the crisp pages of that dog breed encyclopedia and I never looked back. I spent the next few months learning about every different type of dog, its unique characteristics, life span, and personality traits. Something turned on in my nerdy little brain, and I couldn’t put the book down.
Even to this day, I can tell the differences between a wolfhound, an otterhound, and an elkhound. I know which dogs thrive while living in apartments and which need space to roam. I can even tell you why your husky keeps trying to run away or why your Australian shepherd won’t stop nipping at the ankles of your rambunctious toddler.
As a kid I dragged that darn book everywhere with me. I made lists of my favorite types of dogs and studied their unique personalities. When our family would go into town for Sunday brunch, I played a little game of counting how many different types of dogs I could identify and tried to beat my high score from the week before.
This obsession led to a bit of teasing from my friends at school… you know, the ones who were allowed to watch the Power Rangers.
I quickly learned that it was “uncool” to be the girl obsessed with dog breeds, so I did my best to hide it. It wasn’t bullying by any means, just small comments here and there that socially conditioned me to understand that some things were cool to talk about and others—in this case, my obsession with dogs—were not.
So I stopped sharing what I was passionate about. At school, I would nod when friends talked about the Power Rangers.… While at home, I would stay up late flipping through the pages of my dog encyclopedia. Day by day, I became a little less myself and a little more how the world wanted me to be.
Can you relate?
From a very young age, our need for acceptance and our fear of rejection dictate how much we are willing to share about ourselves with others. And slowly, interaction by interaction, we begin to craft an external version of ourselves that limits the possibility of being outcast and maximizes the chances of being liked.
We go from running into kindergarten blissfully wearing tutus wit
h mismatched socks and gum in our hair to graduating high school feeling insecure about every single part of ourselves. In the process of growing up, we trade an innocent confidence in who we are for a fear about what makes us inadequate or different in the eyes of others.
We do our best to conform and fit the mold of what others expect to see in us. From the mean girls in the lunchroom to the bosses in the boardroom, we learn the art of fitting in.
There is science behind this. In early human history, being outcast from your tribe meant nearly certain death. Humans relied on one another in early societies for access to scarce resources, and being liked and respected meant having more power in the social hierarchy.
In the case of my quirky childhood obsession, the survivalist reference sounds a bit extreme. My life wasn’t in jeopardy. No one was going to beat me up for lugging around a big book filled with pictures of dogs, but the sheer thought that they might think less of me because of it… was enough to convince my elementary-school self to leave my passion at home.
Our subconscious mind, correlating inclusion in our social group as necessary for survival, informs our conscious brain to modify our behavior in order to be accepted. If being excluded is unsafe, then therefore it seems plausible that fitting in is our only option to success in adulthood.
A vision is cast of who we should be, and so we fight unceasingly to become that.… We lose ourselves in the pursuit of being liked. Our uniqueness, our bold and defiant qualities peeled away little by little… until there is nothing left but the shell of who we once were. We slowly begin to accept the false premise that we must be like someone else in order to be liked.
Slowly, interaction by interaction, we are molded into a version of ourselves that is more palatable to the masses. In the creative world, we call it selling out. In the human experience, it’s often called growing up.
Our world over time tricks us into equating fitting in with belonging—two concepts that couldn’t be farther apart. We don’t need to conform in order to connect. We don’t need to hide our truth in order to be seen, loved, and accepted. We need to find spaces where we are welcome and cultivate those spaces for others.
Ask yourself: Who would you have become if you were never taught to feel ashamed of what makes you different?
Think about it. I want you to sit down and have a heart-to-heart with yourself right now. I want you to uncover the essence of your being that has been buried deep beneath, protected from the piercing judgments of the world.
Who would you be if you hadn’t spent years of your life seeking the approval of others?
Who would you be if someone hadn’t teased you for the way you look on the outside or for who you are on the inside?
Who would you be if you thought the world would love and accept you for who you truly are?
I want to meet that person—the fierce, bursting-at-the-seams authentic version of you. The quirky, flawed, imperfect human that you keep buried behind the rule book of how you’re supposed to act and how others want you to be.
My fear for you is that in the pursuit of fitting in, you will leave the most beautiful parts of yourself behind. That somehow you will mistake the hollow happiness of false friendships for the rich and unrelenting companionship that you truly deserve.
No matter how similar it appears, from the outside looking in, fitting in and belonging are not one and the same. Fitting in means being who others expect you to be. Belonging comes from being who you truly are.
Fitting in means doing whatever it takes to be accepted. Belonging means being genuine even if it means risking rejection.
Belonging cannot be achieved while wearing a mask, hiding your heart, or putting on a show. It is built from self-acceptance and grows when we meet the world as we are—not as it wants us to be.
Chasing the feeling of belonging by mastering the art of fitting in is like baking a cake with salt instead of sugar. It may look the same on the outside, but there is no way that you’re going to enjoy it when you go to take a bite.
Fitting in cares about how things look.
Belonging cares about how things are.
In order to find a community where you belong, you must embrace who you truly are, free of shame, guilt, and fear. We have to rediscover ourselves and chip away at who we think we’re supposed to be.
This isn’t an easy task. We construct our perceptions of self from a young age, and the impact of our external environment is deeply rooted in how we’ve grown to understand our being. Let’s look at it this way:
It’s been nearly two decades, and I can still hear the societal mantras of my childhood ringing in my ears. Be a good girl. Don’t rock the boat. Don’t make waves. Do what you’re told. Color inside the lines. Follow the leader.
Now that I’m an adult, those mantras consciously sound so different to me.
Be a good girl. Conform to what a woman should be.
Don’t rock the boat. Don’t assert yourself.
Don’t make waves. Don’t challenge authority.
Do what you’re told. Be obedient and submit.
Color inside the lines. Avoid trying something new; the proven path is the right one.
Follow the leader. You, little girl, aren’t meant to blaze your own trail. You’re a follower.
These phrases seem so simple when spoken in our early years, and yet it becomes clear that their impact reaches deeper within us than we previously thought. Before we have the ability to determine who we are, many of us are told who we should be. We adopt that narrative as truth without questioning the long-term implications.
I want to be clear about one thing as well. Not all internalized narratives are inherently negative. Amid all of those sayings that are ubiquitous with growing up lies a different one—a phrase that became a hallmark of my own childhood and that I remember framed on the walls of many classrooms in my Catholic elementary school. It is the golden rule.
TREAT OTHERS AS YOU WANT TO BE TREATED
It’s a single sentence that isn’t so much about our own well-being as ensuring the well-being of others. In the case of discovering a place where we belong, it reminds us that we too have a role to play in cultivating communities where others feel welcome.
We must also fight to create these spaces in our world. We must challenge mindsets that both consciously and subconsciously encourage others to give up their uniqueness in the pursuit of acceptance.
Fitting in means uniformity. Belonging means acceptance and inclusion.
Cultivating spaces where others truly feel welcome means being forced to step beyond what is familiar and comfortable. It requires us to stop talking and start listening. It demands that we default to empathy and kindness rather than defensiveness or resistance.
Fighting for true belonging in our world will require us to dismantle systemic barriers and inequalities. For many, that will mean confronting parts of ourselves that we are afraid to admit are there or acknowledging areas where we have caused harm. For others, that will mean getting the courage to finally speak up without fear of saying the wrong thing or being judged for doing what is right. For some, it will mean leveraging your success to amplify the voices of the unheard—to build a stage that elevates the ideas and contributions of others.
It is the harder journey, but it is the right journey. And I want to be clear, “journey” is an intentionally chosen word.
Belonging isn’t a destination. You can’t arrive there. It is a long and hard-fought process. It is a daily decision that each of us must make when we open our eyes in the morning, both for how we choose to see ourselves and how we choose to treat others.
Fighting for true belonging means confronting a broken world and building a better tomorrow—together.
SO, WHO ARE YOU, REALLY?
Self-awareness is the gateway to a deep and meaningful sense of belonging and success in life. So, before we can cultivate community or engage in meaningful relationships with others, we must first understand who we are.
Asking critical questions is one of the simplest ways to bring our internal thoughts into the physical world. Up for the task? The steps are simple: guide yourself and, if you are an overachiever, three of the people who know you best through a series of questions.
You can use the ones provided below or develop a set of questions on your own.
Personal reflection questions for self-discovery:
• What is my greatest gift to offer this world? Am I using it to make an impact? How can I amplify that impact and lean into that gifting more fully?
• What has been holding me back? What is keeping me from showing up fully in community with others?
• How do others describe me? What are some of the compliments and words of encouragement that have been shared with me over the last few years?
• What relationships am I most grateful for and why? What is it about those connections that enrich my life?
Questions for those closest to you:
• What is my greatest strength or superpower?
• What are three words that you would use to describe me?
• When I’m having a bad day, what is one thing that you want me to remember?
Sometimes we overlook what we have to offer this world because we fail to see the extraordinary in what we’ve been conditioned to believe is ordinary. We are so quick to write off our gifts as insignificant or diminish our abilities out of fear that somehow they don’t qualify.
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