Values and Belonging Pt 2
In Part 2 of this episode, Libby shares her journey to getting clear on her values, figuring out how to act within her integrity and how that led her to find her way to true belonging.
SHOW LINKS
Braving the Wilderness by Brene Brown
Southwest Love Fest (Use code "GOSLOW" for a 10% discount)
Transcript
This episode is part two of a two part series on values and belonging. If you haven't listened to part one, I recommend you pause this episode right now and go, listen, otherwise, this episode might not make a whole ton of sense. Before we jump into part two of this episode, I wanna let everyone know that I have been invited along with my partner Kyrr Kark, to teach at Southwest Love Fest in Tucson, Arizona.
I'm so excited to be invited to this conference. I think it is an amazing conference. It's in April, the dates are April 14th through the 16th, and there are going to be an amazing collection of presentations and speakers and stuff to do. And Sarah and Kate, who are the organizers, just put on a phenomenal event. I have never regretted being part of Southwest Love Fest. This is my third year teaching with them, and it is my fourth year attending, although it's really only my second year attending in person because of covid. I mean, I was able to teach virtually, but I am so excited about being in person with people again. And I hope that if you're able, if it work for you, if it's within your means, that you will join me there. And if you are looking for extra added incentive, I can hook you up with a 10% off discount code. When you wanna get a ticket, just use my code, which is goslow. That's all one word. goslow. That's a coupon code that you can use to get a discount. And that, that is the code for, for me because, kyrr and I's Workshop that we're teaching is on how to slow down and why that can be so important in relationship.
Okay, now we're gonna get on to part two of Values and Belonging.
So where I left off on part one was I was telling you about this friend group that I was part of creating, and that ended up being so important to me, like something that I had desperately wanted when my kids were very small. And also about how as time went on, things started not feeling so good in this friend group. And, you know, I shared also, that I feel like what I went through kind of connects to what the character that Claire Danes plays in Fleischman is in trouble, uh, struggled with. Um, and Fleischman Is In Trouble, is a mini series on FX that if you are a relationship nerd like me, I highly recommend watching it. That's really good on so many levels. But also really triggering for me to watch for sure on so many levels before I get into like, what happened next.
I want you to know a couple things. Even though I told you numerous ways in which I acted outside my values, when I was part of this friend group, and there were many, I want you to know that I at this time, hold myself in loving compassion for the choices that I made. I really believe that I was doing the best that I could with the information and resources I had available to me at the time. And I also want you to know that I've been accountable to the people that I need to be accountable to for my actions and the impact that they've had. I've had probably like hundreds of conversations about this with the people that I'm close to, with some people who I was friends with at the time. And I also want you to know that I hold in compassion everyone else who was involved, because I truly believe that they were all doing the best they could with the information and resources that they had.
The folks who acted in ways that felt not okay to me had their reasons, their own reality, their own traumas and their own fears. But I'll tell you something else, which is, I was aware of some of those things at the time. And one thing that, one effect that, that had on me was that it sometimes caused me to back off of setting my own healthy boundaries and acting in my own integrity, because I didn't wanna be harsher and kind to someone who had messed up, but who was also clearly struggling. I wanna say that like, you know, this world that we live in, no one gets through it unscathed or unhurt and you know, sometimes that hurt that we experience leads us to act in harmful ways. But I let my deep desire to be kind sometimes cause me to act in ways that I don't think are actually very kind at all.
And I say this because I think it happens a lot. I think we often will make excuses for truly harmful behavior because it's clearly coming from a broken and wounded place. But y'all, that's most harmful behavior, if not all, you know, in Fleishman is in trouble from early on in the series, you get hints that that Rachel's character, that Claire Danes' character, Rachel, has some wounds, there's some loneliness, there's fear of being alone. And that's a wound that so many of us carry. And in the show, it causes Rachel to act in some really, really ways towards her partner, towards her partner's friends, towards her kids. And, you know, the show eventually does spoiler, spoiler, spoiler, ask you to see her side of it. And I did. And I do. And I still think the way she treats her husband played by Jesse Eisenberg is like, truly awful.
And we see throughout the show how much her behavior hurts him. And I wanna say naming harmful behavior doesn't have to mean vilifying a person, but we do have to name it. And sometimes we do have to stick up for ourselves or stick up for what we think is right. And sometimes we have to change what we're doing in order to stop enabling it, not participate in it, or let it cause us to act outside of our integrity. And the next part of this story is how I learned all of that and what it took for me to learn all of that.I still remember where I was when I had the conversation that I think really changed everything, but I didn't know what it was gonna change at the time. I remember I was sitting in my upstairs bonus room space with my friend Seth.
Seth was a part of the parent group, but he, like me, was generally not wrapped up in a lot of the drama, but more, just sort of adjacent to it. And we were both kind of commiserating together about how things just kind of kept erupting in our group and escalating, and how we both felt like we were exhausted trying to support our friends through it. I shared that I wished that people would just slow down and be more intentional about how, how they were handling things. And he you know, he nodded thoughtfully and said, yeah, that'd be nice. Meanwhile, this was 2017 and, and I had just discovered Brene Brown. I was learning about shame and vulnerability and boundaries, and I was working on my conflict resolution skills because I figured someone needed to. And I honestly really didn't know how to make things better, with, with people.
And so, I was really trying to figure out how not to keep making a mess of things when I wanted to help. I really wanted to round everyone of my friends up and have us all sit down together and create some norms and expectations for how we were gonna treat each other and handle ourselves and support each other. What I, what I really, really wanted was for us to come up with some kind of agreement or charter or something for our group. But that got totally shut down The times when it got brought up. In fact, one of the group members said, they, very, very much were, it was, they were against that. They didn't want anything that was like group think. They used the word group think. And the another person, the the friend actually who had, you know, attacked their ex-partner and Metamore that summer prior had glibly said to me something like, you know, I'm happy for us to be friends, but like, I don't wanna be group married to all of you.
And it's so funny cuz when they said that, I remember going, oh yeah, that you're right. Like, it's so ridiculous that we'd wanna have agreements with each other. Like, that's such a level of commitment that, feels really foolish. Of course, we're just friends, but now Jesus, fuck y'all. I gotta tell you, our friendship, my friendship with that person, and also with the group itself was extremely, extremely intimate. We shared so much with each other and everyone had said to me at one point or another how invested they felt in the group and how it had been a lifeline to them as it had been to me, and how they really, really cared about it. And you know, again, people were using these words like chosen family to describe each other, but then when a conflict would crop up or some other difficulty, there was generally like just a real resistance to any kind of accountability or coordinated support or, you know, any kind of expectations set or anything. So it's like we were all really invested when it was all really good, but then if there was something difficult that needed to be worked out, well we're just friends. That's a lot of work. We don't wanna do that work.
So it was like, okay to do whatever with just without communicating about it. And honestly, you know, when I reflect on my friend saying to me, I don't wanna get group married, that was, that was honestly, I mean, I don't know if this person meant it this way, but it really, now that I think about it, it was gaslighting me because like, you know, that's a false binary. Either you, you don't have any accountability with each other, or you're group married, like that's ridiculous, but what a perfect way to shoot down having to actually commit to some kind of expectation or norm or, agreement or accountability. But what I was discovering, even though I couldn't put words to it at the time, was that without accountability, there really can't be trust. And yet I was trusting these people with so much of my life and my heart and spending time with their kids and my kids.
We were creating so many like really formative, important experiences together. And, and maybe that was ultimately just really stupid, but I wasn't the only one. Seriously, I wasn't the only one valuing our group that way. We were all creating this together, but then we just wouldn't freaking name it together. And that's what I wanted. So I told Seth that, and that I really wanted was for us to come together and be more intentional about how we were relating to each other. And, I remember Seth just going, no, I don't really wanna do that. I don't think that's gonna work, and I don't really wanna even try. And you know, what I'm making up about him, and this may or may not be true, is that that was just way too confrontational. And again, maybe he just knew it wouldn't work, but he had a counter suggestion, which was that maybe I should start hosting discussion groups about some of the things that I was thinking about, some of my values, some of my concerns, some of my practices, things I was learning.
And I could invite the wider local Polyam community and maybe some folks from our group would show up too. And we could start building that way. Now, I wonder if maybe he realized that I would actually do that or if he was just suggesting that as a way to, you know, get me to back off. I don't know. But, you know, I sure did do that. I sure did that. I started posting discussion groups very shortly after he had that idea. And I believe the first one was on breakups, and then I did another one on boundaries, and then I did another one on group sex etiquette. And then I did another one on messing up and how to be accountable for that. We had a Facebook group for the part of the DC Polyam community that I was a part of where events got shared.
And so I posted them there and people showed up and I held them in my living room. And, you know, it was free. We just hung out. Everybody was encouraged to bring a snack. And it was great. It was amazing. Now, I mean, I didn't totally know what I was doing. I was definitely just beginning to find my way as a facilitator. But, but those first discussion groups were, I just, they were so generative. We had really rich and beautiful conversations. And I think everyone who showed up came away having learned something valuable and felt maybe more connected to the community. I felt challenged and pushed sometimes. And I also felt like I brought a lot of value, both in terms of my experiences and ideas. We built what I would call now a brave space, space where we could learn and try things and be supported and held without judgment.
You know, Brene Brown uses this descriptor, awkward, brave and kind, and I think that's what I was going for without knowing that that was what I was going for. And we had that. And I remember how awesome it was to just like, be in this room in my house, just nerding out on how to be better people, and how to take better care of ourselves and our community, and how to be more brave and kind in our relationships. And I mean, I did these, did these discussion groups for years and years, and do you know what, I'm sure you can guess not one member of my friend group showed up to any of these discussions. Well, except I think some of them showed up for the group sex one. But, boundaries, breakups up, fucking up. That was the name of the one I did on Messing Up. I called it fucking up, nope.
But that didn't stop me. That didn't even take any wind out of my sails because it turned out I had found something that I really loved, and I just got real into it. I started grabbing all kinds of resources, anything I could get my hands on or get into my ears. And at that time, there were just so many good things. You know, I read Byron Katie and Brene Brown and Bell Hooks, and Emily Nagoski and Gottman's, and Terry Real, and Esther Perel and Sue Johnson and Clarissa Pinkola Estes and adrienne maree brown. And I mean, the list could go on.I was just, I was voracious. I mean, I was sad that my friends weren't coming along with me for the journey, but, you know, I was also actually feeling really empowered by the folks who were showing up. You know, we really talked about real stuff.
You know, people brought their real difficult situations, whether it was about conflict or consent or intentional community, or couple privilege or marriage or parenting. Like, people were really showing up and digging deep together. And it was just amazing. And it really had a profound effect on me. I started changing in response to some of the things that I was learning and uncovering. And I would say the most significant thing was that I got more boundaries both in what I would say and what I was willing to do. You know, I stopped oversharing, in fact, I really limited what I shared with people, especially if I knew that they were gonna share it, if I shared it with them. Like, if I knew that it was gonna, that it was, that I couldn't trust them to hold it. I didn't share as much anymore.
I stopped sharing as much on social media too, and I stopped gossiping. I completely stopped. And I also just felt a whole lot more validated and clear on my values. You know, the values that I had felt shaky on just a year prior. You know, I had really struggled to articulate or stick up for my values. I knew certain things didn't feel right, but I wasn't able to say why. But now things were really coming into a clear focus for me. And, you know, the result of all of that may surprise you. But what happened was that I think I actually got kinder, kinder to others and kinder to myself. And I think I also started to develop a reputation for being a really good space holder and supporter and advice giver and listener. And during that time also, I started pulling away and really questioning my relationships with that friend group.
It took me about a year from the time I started hosting these discussion groups, and also a lot more shitty conflicts that I'm not gonna go into right now on this show, within my friend group. Before I finally started to feel and then get clear that I needed to walk away from my friend group. And really it took me reading Brene Brown's book, braving the Wilderness. I mean, had I changed? Yes. And no, it wasn't that my values changed, it was actually just that my values became really clear and I learned how to actually like, operationalize them. I also felt more confident in what it meant to me to be an integrity and what kinds of boundaries I needed to set and be okay with setting with people. And I realized that I also wasn't experiencing belonging anymore in my friend group if I ever had, and this is where I go to Brene Brown, because she describes true belonging as being able to be fully yourself with others. And I realized the more myself I was with my friends, the less accepted and cared for I was by them.
And it was really hard to see that y'all, what I thought we had was this beautiful dream. But I had to accept that I was never going to really fit into the dream that they were building and that with them, I was never gonna get the community, the village that I had been hoping for and for me to remain a part of it would be a form of self betrayal and self-harm. And I mean, everyone was already pretty annoyed with me at this point. I think one of my friends actually told me after I left the group, and after he essentially ghosted me, that me leaving the group was a relief to him. It gave him permission to just not stay in touch with me. And I don't think he could've hurt me more if he'd punched me in the stomach as breakups go, as heartbreak goes. This group was probably one of the biggest of my life, if not the biggest. I no longer belonged in the group. I lost it. And they all kept being friends with each other and hosting parties that I was no longer invited to. And it wasn't like I had some nice place to go, that I had something that would fill this now hole in my life.
There were parts of my life that had been really full that were now just not there anymore.
But I did get something. I finally belonged to myself in braving the wilderness. Brene Brown says, belonging so fully to yourself that you're willing to stand alone is a wilderness, an untamed, unpredictable place of solitude. And searching is a place as dangerous as it is breathtaking. A place as sought after as it is feared. The wilderness can often feel unholy because we can't control it or what people think about our choice of whether to venture into that vastness or not. But it turns out to be the place of true belonging. And it's the bravest and most sacred place you will ever stand. I'm gonna pause there. It was both unholy and sacred. Leaving that group, even though I was heartbroken, when I finally made the decision to walk away, I also felt strong and brave. I had decided to take care of myself and prioritize who I was and who I wanted to become, and the values that had shaped me.
I chose those things over fitting in and being accepted. I wanted to share this story with you for a lot of reasons. One reason is that I wanted you to know where I came from because, in case you haven't figured it out, hosting those discussion groups was not only something that helped me get free from what were ultimately a set of really harmful to me relationships, but it's also what led me to become a coach, Led me to become a professional educator, led me to be talking to you right now here on this show. Cause I don't think I'd have very much that would be worth sharing with you if I hadn't done all that work and continue to do all that work. And you know, I just, I don't think it would be very interesting or valuable if I hadn't figured out all the things that I had to figure out on that journey.
I'm also sharing this with you because I wanna be a human to you and show you a piece of my humanity. I'm also sharing this story because I want you to know that I know firsthand how hard it is sometimes to stick up for your needs, to honor your values. And from there to set appropriate boundaries, the forces of wanting to fit in are powerful, and they can coerce and even shame us into shrinking from what we believe is right for us. I stayed with that friend group too long because I didn't trust myself to stand alone. It took me really rumbling with myself and seeking out resources and support, and also finally connecting with other people where I saw my values reflected and even celebrated that enabled me to walk into that wilderness.
I think some version of my story happens a lot, whether it's a friend group or whether it's your family or whether it's a partner, or whether it's an institution or a workplace. I think it's actually really easy to live outside of your integrity and not feel empowered to do what's right or to be fully yourself. It feels like shit, but it can be really hard to figure out what else might be possible for you if you don't see anything else around you to prove that you could have a different experience. I also wanna say that when you do that deep work of figuring out how to belong to yourself, which I highly recommend, even if you are doing that work and you're not, let's say you're not actually looking for any kind of major change, you just wanna understand yourself better. A thing that can happen is that you might end up realizing that you can't be close to people in the ways that you once were, because you have become allergic to some of the behaviors that you might have around you that are going against the values that you have now worked so hard to get clear on.
I think that's one thing that's happened for me multiple times, actually. It's like I changed my operating system, but the people around me are still operating on a different operating system and our systems just can't work together anymore. And, you know, if you're not looking for that, and to be clear, I wasn't, I want to be clear, I remember I was trying to stay with my friend group and I was trying to figure out how to make things better. So when you find that instead what happens is that you can't be with those people anymore, that loss can be really unexpected and really difficult. And that being said, separating from people the way that I did doesn't necessarily have to be the outcome of learning how to belong to yourself. And I guess I wanna make sure that I say that one thing that Brene Brown encourages us to do in her book, braving the Wilderness, is to not harden yourself against others, even as you are working to belong to yourself.
Like, it's really, really important to stay soft and vulnerable, to remain compassionate and empathetic, to hold onto the belief that everybody's doing the best they can. And one of the ways that really supports our ability to do that is through setting boundaries. And so I think setting boundaries, if I was gonna say like, what, what can you do if you are in a situation where you might be fitting in rather than experiencing true belonging? What can you do if you're finding yourself not honoring your own values and living within your own integrity? The first thing that I would look at is boundaries. And really, that's not, that's not the first thing I would look at. I take that back, the first thing that I would look at is I would tune into your body and begin watching your own mind. Because in order to find where your boundaries might need to be, you need to tune into where they don't feel like they're being honored.
And, and I just wanna say that that can be such a felt sense rather than something that like you can measure with a stick or say with a script. Boundaries really are something that you find within your own body and mind. And the two big key things that I find are big, bright shining beacons that tell me that I'm not honoring my boundaries are either that I feel really angry or I feel really resentful, or I feel stretched thin. And so, and those are, again, those are feelings and I suppose angry and resentful. They're kind of cousins, but like, whenever I'm feeling those things, I'm always, the first thing I do is I check, am I operating within my capacity? Am I honoring my true yes and my true no? Am I letting too much in, or am I putting too much out into the world and expecting a certain thing from people, you know, rather than being what Brene Brown would describe as truly vulnerable, which is you let things out of you without any attachment to what comes back.
And, you know, Brene Brown says this beautiful thing about vulnerability, which is, a real lesson to me when I was, back in those days, which is that you're not vulnerable. You are not being vulnerable if you are not also boundaried about what you're letting out. If you are just letting it all hang out, that's not vulnerability, that's just unbridled self-expression. And it can be quite reckless with yourself and with others. So I would start tuning in and maybe even developing a daily practice of just sitting with yourself, sitting with your body, watching your own mind, watching the thoughts that go by, and try to notice if there's any of those things that are giving you a signal that you're not honoring your boundaries. The next thing I would do is I would honestly go into some kind of values like clarification work.
A thing that I do in the relational non-monogamy circle and with clients is I actually have a values worksheet that I actually got from another one of Brene Brown's books called, dare to Lead. And it's just a list of, of different values. And I invite people to really sit with the values that on that sheet and think about which ones really resonate with them. And then the instructions that Brene Brown has is to narrow it down to just two. If you have to pick just two values that are gonna be your compass, your guiding star around how you make decisions, how you take a stand, and where you won't back down which two which you pick. And that can be really hard, but it can also, again, just be really clarifying. And I actually have my couples, when I work with couples, do a relational version of this where they work together to create a shared value system for their relationship. Because I truly think that relationships, whether they're friendships, whether they're work relationships, whether they're partnerships, whether they're family that are rooted in shared values, have such tremendous power to stand the test of time and to also be healing and transformative. I think that values are so important because as my partner Kyrr says, they're the backbone. They're the thing that give you that strong back to hold you up and to help you when you're just not sure.
And in that vein, if you don't have people in your life who are, you're not seeing your values reflected back at you, I think it's so important to find some people who share your values. And I'm not gonna say that's easy, but I'm gonna say that a thing you can start, a place where you can start is to just try to find where those people might be gathering, who might share your values. Or you might have to do what I did and just start creating the space where people can gather who share your values. I'm still doing that to this day, by the way. And that's something I wanna share with you now to close out this episode. I think it's so important to belong to yourself, and I feel so grateful for the spaces that I get to exist in where I experience true belonging, that I'm committed to creating nothing less in the work that I do.
The spaces that I create are spaces where I hope and endeavor to make sure that everyone feels like they belong. I create these spaces. I want them to be awkward, brave, and kind with our strong backs and our soft fronts and our wild hearts together. I'm only interested in relationships in communities where we are accountable to each other, where we acknowledge harm, if there is any, where we do the hard rumbling to understand it and make it better together. And I'm only interested in spaces that leave room for people to be fully who they are. If you're one of my clients or one of my students, you already know this is true. I don't just allow, I demand that you show up as you and I ask that you push back if something doesn't sit right with you. And I will sit next to you, even if we're in deep disagreement.
It is my belief that it is our willingness to disagree without withdrawing from one another. Our willingness to be accountable to ourselves and others, our willingness to honor each other's needs and boundaries, that we build safety and care together. And that is absolutely how my spaces are, all of them. The relational non-monogamy circle is a place where we talk about values and where we hold each other in just a beautiful and loving way. And, you know, many of the participants have, become friends with each other, have stayed in touch. Some of them still are meeting regularly. And I'm only working on how to make that stronger and better. This episode isn't like a plug for the relational non-monogamy circle. I still haven't figured out exactly when I'm launching the next cohort. I am working like a busy bee trying to get there on that one.
But I want you to know that like my, one of my values is to make it possible for anybody who is in my presence or in my space or in my house belong. And I want you to know that you belong. If you're listening to this show, you're, you belong here. You're part of my community. And I will never ask you to fit in. I will never ask you to be like me or think like me or show up as anyone other than yourself. And, if you need to hear this today, right now, I want you to know that you, as you are, are enough. You matter, your needs matter, your boundaries matter, your values matter. And if you don't belong anywhere else, you belong right here. And I really wanna thank you for being here with me. And, as Fred Rogers puts it, I am so happy that you are here just being you.
