Hi Friends,
I’m wondering what in your life you have had to pretend in order to stay safe, stay secure, or stay sane. How weary has it made you?
One brutal variety of loneliness that I’ve experienced for the last 12 years is the kind that comes from needing to live a lie because telling the truth is too dangerous. It makes me feel like my experience of life is only ever half seen. And that the part that’s seen isn’t even rightly understood because the context is missing.
Specifically, since Noah turned 2, I have had to hide what my day-to-day life is really like in order to keep myself and my son safe. To keep myself “professionally viable.” To keep my social circles intact. To keep everything from falling apart if I even acknowledged to myself how bad things really were. Only my family, soul sisters and therapist have been let in. I’ve felt like I’m living two lives with no bridge. But now that I’m finally out of danger, and in an effort to heal, I’m able to start sharing here. To live into the fuller truth little by little. And that feels like the greatest gift.
We all need vast swaths of unhurried time to be honest with ourselves and with each other about the beautiful mess we experience as humans. Without it, no amount of neuroscience findings, public health campaigns and social psychology tips will have ground on which to gain traction.
Honestly, my heart has no use for research. It doesn’t need a thought leader to explain something. It doesn’t need an app. Can I just sit down with tea and tell you how hard it’s been? Then tell you a joke? Then say that beyond the pain I’ve found a deeper world of impossible goodness that can, if not take the pain away, give it purpose. That’s the part of my belonging frontier that I am exploring next.
I hope you’ll come along as I take a new bend in the road. I will still link to cool things I discover that may be of help to you. I’m also co-hosting a podcast in 2025: “A place to belong,” fusing personal stories and practical wisdom. And I will also still be consulting, coaching and speaking through The Belonging Studio, if you have need.
Thank you for being there. Being open. Being so committed to the fact of our bare belonging and to the process of becoming people who help free others into living their full truths.
Take Care,
Cat
Coach with Cat
Part of living the truth for me is admitting what I really want to do and don’t. Turns out, I really want to be your coach. I like 1:1, personalized work where you are at the center charting your own path. It’s also the most transformative form of belonging work that I do.
Who do I coach? Anyone wanting to create meaningful connection and a sense of belonging for themselves, for their organization
/community… or both.
