Other kids gave examples: “My parents were really athletic and popular. They just rattled one off after the other, and I was so taken aback, and then a young girl raised her hand and said, “You know, miss, it’s really hard not to fit in or belong at school, but not belonging at home is the worst.” And when she said that, probably half the kids either burst into tears or just put their heads down, unable to speak. And they just had these incredibly simple and profound answers: “Fitting in is when you want to be a part of something. And I was asking these middle schoolers what the difference was - what they thought the difference was between fitting in and belonging. I never thought about the concept of not belonging at home as being such a universal experience of pain until - I don’t know how long ago, it may have been eight or nine years ago - I was doing some research, and I was in a middle school, and I was doing focus groups with middle schoolers. Brown: Yeah, I’d never thought about it, really I had never thought about the concept of not belonging, even though I lived it. And you said, “Not belonging in our families” - and of course, so many of us have just so many different permutations on this - you say, “is one of the most dangerous hurts.” And also, your parents’ divorce and the not belonging in your family, and how that - one thing you say is that - you do, you name that as a spiritual crisis. Plus, you had moved to New Orleans, which, in 1969, the whole notion of racial belonging was, yet again, at a new, tumultuous stage.
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And the dynamics were so completely different in the 1960s, even though it isn’t that long ago. In your more recent writing, in Braving the Wilderness, you talk about your childhood. Tippett: Turns out to be good for the rest of us. And I think that, often, your research is a way for you to - is a very special way you have to delve into the things that you’re navigating, and that, in fact, we are all navigating. Tippett: One of the many reasons that your work reaches people is that you - the things you write about and do your research on, you’re also completely open about how they are things you struggle with. We spoke in 2018, when she’d just published Braving the Wilderness. And her TED talks have come into millions of homes, as have her books - most recently, Dare to Lead.
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She consults widely with corporate, military, and athletic leaders. Tippett: Brené Brown is a research professor at the University of Houston. Tippett: I’m Krista Tippett, and this is On Being. I think we just have to get the stuff out of the way that’s stopping it from happening. And I don’t think we have to work to make it true between people.
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I believe that’s what’s true between people. Now she’s turning her attention to how we walked into the crisis of our life together and how we can move beyond it: with strong backs, soft fronts, and wild hearts.īrené Brown: I don’t think - when we’re our best selves with each other, I don’t think that’s what’s possible between people. Her research has reminded the world in recent years of the uncomfortable, life-giving link between vulnerability and courage. Krista Tippett, host: Brené Brown says that our belonging to each other can’t be lost, but it can be forgotten.