Bloom Your Mind

Ep 123: Belonging

• Marie McDonald

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We were camping in the mountains with a group of 20 kids and their parents, when the ground began to shake. The first things I noticed were quivering leaves on the trees around us, followed by a soft rumbling that can only mean one thing in SoCal….there’s an earthquake. The children had all kinds of reactions. Some were excited, some were curious. Some screamed and asked to be picked up. We soothed them, gathered them, and came together to find out what we could, to plan and to connect. 

I’ve been in my share of earthquakes, having always lived in California. This one in particular though, is one that I will never forget. I know that the children who were there won’t either, simply because we were together. They were surrounded by adults who cared for them, processed with friends who were standing beside them, and told the story again and again with the group. 

While the earthquake may have been the most dramatic moment of this camping trip, it was only a tiny example of many examples of belonging. From CEOs creating annual “Framily” traditions, to women’s groups that have lasted over a decade, I heard example after example of people creating belonging in the communities they’re a part of. This single effort, is at the heart of what drives us all. 

What you’ll learn in this episode: 

  • How every opportunity to increase belonging starts with a single idea 
  • Why unique opportunities for connection strengthen communities
  • Examples of long-term friendship formats 
  • The value of longevity in group connection 
  • Two questions that can increase belonging in your own life 

How to connect with Marie:

JOIN THE BLOOM ROOM!
We'll take all these ideas and apply them to our lives. Follow me on Instagram at @the.bloom.coach to learn more and snag a spot in my group coaching program!

Speaker 1:

Welcome to the Bloom your Mind Podcast, where we take all of your ideas for what you want and we turn them into real things. I'm your host, certified Coach Marie McDonald. Let's get into it. Hello everybody, welcome to episode 123 of the Bloom your Mind podcast, where we talk about being together, where we talk about belonging. I was putting together a camping trip lately and I'm going to tell you about this whole story as in a way of sort of illustrating through an anecdote this concept of belonging and being together. So it started with me putting an invitation out to a group of families about 30 families, 28 families maybe to go on a camping trip. I had based this idea in the fact that I've gone on camping trips with.

Speaker 1:

I'm not like a huge camper. I did grow up camping with my family when I was a kid and with my extended family, and I do love the mountains and I do love nature. Camping specifically, I don't know. It's cool, it's kind of takes a lot of work and there's a lot of setup. I guess if it were my preference, I'd stay in a cabin somewhere for sure, you know, and like take hikes and stuff, but I like running water, I like a bed, but I'm down for camping. I'm just saying it's not like my deep passion, right. I know some people are super passionate about camping. I'm like, all right, let's do it, especially if somebody else is excited about it. But there's a group of my daughter's friends that love to go camping and in our school community our children go through first to eighth grade in the same kid cohort and so it's really cool to go camping with these groups of parents that we've and kids that we've gone camping with since we were in first grade, because we build these relationships as adults with the other kids in the community. And then when they see us in the parking lot or at birthday party or whatever, they come and say, hey, can you help me undo my drink lid, can you help me find something to eat? And a parent is more likely to say, hey, can you pick up my child, can you give them a ride. It builds trust, it builds relationships and it builds a little village so that we can all lean into each other in the good times and the bad.

Speaker 1:

This camping experience has been pretty fundamental to building that connection, building that village, because we go somewhere, we set up little homes, we go to sleep together, we eat together, break bread together, right, multiple times a day. We wake up together. There are challenges that come up and then over the years, families separate, new people come in, people change. We've actually lost one of our number and have supported that family as they lost one of their family members. It's a community that gathers around and support like a little village. So my son is in second grade and because this has been so meaningful and wonderful for us, I reached out to that group and you know the other group is like five families, six families maybe. So I thought maybe five or six families would say yes and I reached out to the WhatsApp group that we have for that class. 18 families said yes.

Speaker 1:

I think I've told part of this story before in the podcast. So these 18 families are coming and I'm like this is Campapalooza Now. This is turning from just like getting a Friday afternoon getting all our camping stuff out of the garage to like spreadsheets with Venmo and camping pairs for different sites and meal plans. I mean so much right and meal plans. I mean so much right. And so we go on Sunday night, the night before our first day of spring break, and we go out to these campsites and we meet the families out there. I would say about 15 families ended up coming. And there we are for two days, camping two days and two nights with all of these people that we don't know that well, you know, to begin to forge this little village of connection. As we were out there, we had the experience building fires together, setting up these little homes together, breaking bread together, waking up together, brushing teeth together, making coffee together, being without makeup or without you know, a shower together with people you don't know that well, is wonderful.

Speaker 1:

And then, in the middle of Saturday morning, we're all standing around. There are kids in hammocks, some of us are, you know, cleaning up from breakfast. We're getting ready to go down to the river and all of the sudden the earth starts shaking. We see up in the trees, I look up in the trees and there are these small, tiny leaves and they start quivering in this queer way. They're all quivering next to each other in this like blanket of shimmery movement. And I look around and I see more in every tree. All the leaves are shimmering and quivering and I hear this telltale rumble in the earth right, I know this sound because I've lived in Southern California my entire life, except for eight years in the Bay Area, I've been in big earthquakes and little earthquakes. I know this sound, but there are 25 children here and they don't know this sound. So all the children have different reactions Some are excited, some are giggling, some shriek, some scream. All of the parents have different reactions. Some are excited, some are giggling, some shriek, some scream. All of the parents have different reactions. Some are curious, some are just alert, some are very afraid.

Speaker 1:

Right, we all gather around, we find our children and we sort of gather into a little bit of a circle or a couple of different places where we have a couple circles and we figure out what's happening. I noticed, as we did the research about you know what size earthquake was that, where was the epicenter? I call my parents to make sure that they're okay. I noticed that there's adrenaline. You know I felt very calm the whole time, which often happens to me in emergencies. I felt very calm, very logical, and then, about five minutes later, I notice I'm shaking a little bit, like there's adrenaline that went through my system.

Speaker 1:

All of these kids had this experience of this earthquake that ended up actually having an epicenter that was pretty close to exactly where we were, which is why it felt so strong. An epicenter that was pretty close to exactly where we were, which is why it felt so strong. We solved the problem together as an adult community, as all the parents. We were about to go down to the river, which is like little waterfalls and large boulders. We say, okay, let's give it a few hours and see if there are aftershocks, let's rearrange the plan for the day. The kids talk story. They tell each other. This is my experience with it. I felt it, this is what was happening. I thought it was a truck, you know, and the parents, all sort of like, release the stress and the tension of experiencing this earthquake together.

Speaker 1:

Later on, a few days afterwards, when we got home and we all had, you know, our cell service again we saw this video of the San Diego zoo and the elephants at the San Diego zoo and how all of them did what elephants do in the wild during this earthquake, where they all gathered around into a circle with their backs together and the small children in the middle of the circle so that they could scan for any threats and be ready for them. And it occurred to me that's kind of what we did. You know we all felt the quake and we gathered together. I saw my daughter, who is 12, go by with us. You know she was walking past me with an eight-year-old that had been scared. That said pick me up. And she picked up this little girl and carried her. Everybody just took care of each other as this earthquake happened. We will never forget that earthquake experience.

Speaker 1:

As I said, I've experienced many earthquakes now, having lived in Southern California, but this one will always stand out in my mind because we experienced it together. The kids will always remember their experience of this earthquake because we were together. You know, the earthquake was one element of so many amazing parts of being in this community. For these few days and after we got back from camping it was actually last night we got back and I got so many texts from so many families that said thank you so much. There were messages going back and forth on the WhatsApp last night and this morning saying, although I'm glad I'm in my bed, you know, and I'm glad I'm waking up in the comfort of my own home, I miss everyone. I miss the sounds of your voices, I miss the stories, I miss the sound of little giggling kids trying to go to sleep in their tent at night. That feeling of being together was so strong for everyone and they just said thank you, thank you for bringing us together, and it just made me think about this thing that happens so often in my life.

Speaker 1:

I noticed that I create these ways of people coming together really naturally, and the reason I wanted to talk about it on the podcast is because I see such a desire for this coming together from all the people around me. I do monarchy rituals for young women who are experiencing their first bleed. I do the bloom room, of course, for people to turn ideas into real things. I do host yoga classes and other events at my house that are just people coming together. I created a maker's market at our school, but all of these different experiences end up with people saying thank you for bringing us together. I'm just doing it because I see something, you know, a fun way for us all to hang out, but I get these deep thank yous and what strikes me about these is that they're very aligned with the ideas that I see people trying to make real in the bloom room and outside of the bloom room Ideas for bringing people together. There's someone in the bloom room that lives in Las Vegas and he's working on bringing adults together in a community there. There are people that are leading women's groups and sound healings in my community that I get invited to all the time. So there are many ideas around me that are becoming real for bringing people together.

Speaker 1:

But the other thing I experienced so much of is the expression of a desire that hasn't been answered yet by an idea coming into fruition, but just the desire for more belonging, for more being together. I see it in so many of the people around me and on this camping trip I saw many different levels of this idea being real. My husband and I went for a walk around the campground and as we walked by, you know, we walked by different camp spots, different little families, different groups camping, and all of a sudden we're walking by this copse of trees and we hear expecto patronum and we look at each other. We're like that's our son's voice and we look into the trees and he's running by with three other kids in this universe. That was so real for them. They were in this imaginary Harry Potter game and we were watching them and just cracking up at how real their game felt, and this was an experience we had throughout the two days and two nights where the kids were playing in this way. That just felt so real to them and they were running in this way. That was so wild and so free. I would be sitting with parents and they would just say to each other if I have this when I was a kid, I would be so happy to just be with these other kids in this way where no one's helicoptering around you, with these other kids in this way where no one's helicoptering around you, where you have two days of just being with one another. I sat down at the fire with one of the parents that was there.

Speaker 1:

He's a CEO, really interesting guy, and he was talking about a couple of things about how intentional he is about bringing his people in his life together, how every single Wednesday night, he and his girlfriend have the same couple that they want to make sure are lifelong friends and they never lose each other. He has them over for dinner every single Wednesday night and they've made a pact that it never gets canceled. He's doing an annual event with his framily, which is friends that feel like family, like 15 of them where he's really intentionally creating an annual experience that involves a card game and all kinds of different elements to bond them that he'll ask them to do without fail every year to bring this community together in the same way that I'm describing on the camping trip, where we wake up together, we go to sleep together, we break bread together, we go through earthquakes and losses and celebrations together. He's built companies with very intentional cultures and he's really trying to bring that into his own life and build the friendship cultures of the people that are dearest to him. There's a different woman that was on this camping trip. That's a dear friend of mine and she has a group of women that has met for happy hour every single Wednesday night for 12 years. She says they've gone through first marriages and second marriages and losses and divorces and celebrations and they just carry each other through it and it means everything to them.

Speaker 1:

I heard about example after example of these small communities that people have created so intentionally to increase their sense of belonging and togetherness, and at the end of this camping trip it was the last night we gathered around the fire and there were so many wonderful memories. There was this one time where we ended up after a few hours. We ended up going to the water and the kids. I mean it's kind of. You know, different parents have different levels of comfort with this area. There's lots of big boulders, there's lots of water. The kids can slide on the wet rocks. They have to be really careful. You have to watch. You know. I said every parent has your own kid when we go down there, because every kid has a different comfort level and every parent does too. Kids got scraped, you know, just a little bit. Kids jumped in freezing cold water and cheered each other on. Some, you know, took a really long time to get there and really depended on the support of the other kids to say you can do it, you can do it, and then they would jump into this freezing cold water.

Speaker 1:

We all ran back to camp and I made them all hot chocolate. So then on that last night we were all around the fire and we were going to take a group photo and I had a little like surprise in my pocket of these little packets that make the fire have blue flames. So I was going to do this little fun thing with the kids, because they were so into being wizards and Harry Potter through the whole experience together. As we were waiting for everybody to get there, I said okay, everybody, point your wands at the fire and close your eyes and say this magic spell. And while they all had their eyes closed, I put the blue packets in there and part of the spell had the word blue and they opened their eyes and there was blue fire there in front of them and we all giggled and laughed. And as we were waiting for a couple of the last people to get there for the group photo, I had them. You know all shout out if they had a good time. I had them howl like coyotes and then I said do you want to come back here next year? And they shouted yes. I said what was your favorite part? They said the water, going down to the water, and I knew hearing those cheers and hearing the yells and seeing their smiles.

Speaker 1:

This is like core memory stuff and it's not about anything except for being together, a sense of belonging for these little ones with little twigs from the bushes that have become wands, and the courage that it took to jump in cold water and experiencing an earthquake where a whole community of parents some that you know and some that you don't came around you, to protect you, waking up together, going to sleep together and feeling a sense of belonging. Again, I see this as a through line in every book that I read. In every idea that someone's making real, it's somewhere in there the desire for belonging or the desire to create belonging for others. Belonging or the desire to create belonging for others. And so today, as we talk about this on the podcast, I want to put the question out to you what is one way that you can increase belonging in your world, one way that you can put an idea out there that invites people in to be together? What's an idea that you have for one thing that can create belonging, can create an opportunity for people to be together, if belonging is too big of a word, just some idea for how to bring people together, how to invite them to join something.

Speaker 1:

That's my first question for you today, and my second question for you is what's one idea that someone else has had that you can say yes to, an invitation someone's put out there, an idea that someone said let's go to coffee, an invitation that you were like, ah, I don't know if I want to go to. What's one way that you can say yes to being together and to belonging that maybe you haven't said yes to yet. Those are my two offerings for you today. That's what I've got for you, and I will see you next week. If you like what you're hearing on the podcast, you got to come and join us in the Bloom Room. This is a year-round membership where we take all of these concepts and we apply them to real life in a community where we have each other's backs and we bring out the best in each other. We're all there to make our ideas real, one idea at a time. I'll see you in the Bloom Room. Bloom room.