This blog was written by LFC Team Members, Julia Connolly and Jonathan Fribley

Inviting Presence Through Context

Do you recognize the phrase, “Leave your troubles at the door”? It’s a well-meaning suggestion, but is it even possible? Mmm…not really.

At LFC, we like to do the very opposite. We begin conversations by slowing down and noticing the context we’re carrying into the room. Then, instead of setting it aside, we lend it the space to breathe, move us, and invite connection. Our context is part of what makes us human.

The conversation we’re about to have on belonging will only be enhanced if we invite our context, our full selves and an openness to embrace what we’re carrying, into the space. It will allow for deeper, more authentic reflections and wiser, more grounded insights. So let’s begin there.

As you read this blog post, what is your mind, body, and heart carrying from your personal life?

What about from work?

And from society?

The ideas we’ll explore don’t exist in a vacuum. They’re intertwined with the beauty and challenges of being human and living in community. Our experiences shape how we think, feel, and respond.

So as you continue reading, we invite you to activate curiosity and wonder how your life’s context, from today and from your whole history, might guide your thinking.

Do I Belong?

Our lived experiences and science affirm that belonging is an essential human need. It creates the foundation of safety and connection that allows us to find our voices, take risks, and show up more fully as ourselves.

And yet, the way belonging is often understood can add pressure rather than relief.

In recent years, words like tolerance and acceptance became popular as communities worked toward inclusion. But many began to notice the messages these words can carry. To tolerate someone can sound reluctant, or perhaps even dismissive. Acceptance is an improvement, but it can still feel passive.

Belonging that is reluctant, dismissive, or passive isn’t true belonging. And belonging that requires conditions—conforming, sharing commonalities, or suppressing parts of ourselves—undermines its very purpose.

Let’s call this version fitting in, and explore how it shapes our experiences.

Consciously or not, we spend much of our lives searching for signals that tell us whether we fit in, and how we might fit in better.

These signals appear in small, routine moments, and we accommodate them with subtle choices to make things easier for everyone else by smoothing over our real experience.

Perhaps you’ve been having a hard morning, feeling overwhelmed, tired, or discouraged, and someone asks, “How are you?” We might not trust that the honest answer will be embraced, so we decide to say, “I’m fine,” instead.

Over time, these moments can train us to believe that our true selves—our real feelings, needs, and perspectives—don’t matter as much as keeping things comfortable or predictable.

In trying fit in, we may unintentionally distance ourselves from the very heart and energy that make us human. We close off opportunities for real support, and sometimes even lose touch with our own truth—all for a superficial, temporary sense of connection.

Rest assured, we aren’t doing anything wrong. These patterns develop within families, workplaces, communities, and cultures that often reward smooth interactions over honest ones. Over time, we learn how to move through the world in ways that we believe will keep us safe and accepted.

But it’s worth pausing to reflect:

• When have you felt the need to adjust or hide parts of yourself to fit in?
• What signals, spoken or unspoken, have shaped your sense of whether you belong?
• In what spaces have you felt most able to show up as your full self?
• And how might those experiences have shaped the way you move through relationships today?

Our sense of belonging tends to grow out of the environments we move through and the messages we receive from others about what is welcomed and what is not. And yet, in its truest sense, belonging is a warm, powerful, unconditional embrace of someone’s full humanity.

At LFC, we practice creating spaces of true belonging by expressing an openness and willingness to approach one another with curiosity, respect, and care, whether or not we share the same background, perspective, or experience.

This isn’t always an easy task, and many obstacles can get in the way. That’s part of being human, too. But you know who we have an easier time doing this with? Children…let’s talk about that next.

All Children Belong

Young children show up much more unfiltered than we do. They aren’t skilled at creating a public face that is different from how they feel, what they think, or who they are. Think about a child who is important in your life – isn’t this one of the delights of being with them? They are so fully who they are.

And then there are moments when a child shows us everything, and it is not delightful. A child carrying pain or fear from other times in their life experiences something that sets them off. The hurt and anger can come pouring out in tears, or shouts, or kicking and hitting, or what feels to us like a rampage.

We know both professionally and as compassionate people that at these moments, children need us as co-regulators. We model and offer calm. We give warmth and acceptance. We tell and show them that we can hold everything, all of the fear and confusion, and all of them. It is from this stance of welcoming their whole self that the child can gain not only calm but also the safety and clarity of self-understanding and the turn towards repair.

When a child shows us the parts of who they are that even they fear, and we respond with open-hearted acceptance, then they snuggle into the safety, warmth, and calm of belonging.
How do you find the capacity to welcome and hold all of a child? How do you send children the message that we welcome their whole selves? Especially when the aspects they show us are difficult?

What might it look like for us to welcome adults with that same embrace of their full self?

Can We Welcome Others Fully?

Sometimes, welcoming another can feel like a stretch. That’s part of being human, too. Before we can activate curiosity for someone else, we often need to activate it for ourselves first. We have to slow down when we feel tension or a block arising, and create space to honor and explore it.

In these moments, we can pause, breathe, and ask: “Where might this resistance be coming from?” It could be about our capacity, or our sense of safety. When we offer ourselves this care and respect, we give ourselves the internal support needed to show up more fully and with greater openness toward others.

We would like to invite us to consider creating spaces of belonging that “welcome someone’s entire humanity.” We might think of creating belonging as “hospitality to the stranger.” We are welcoming not just what we know and affirm or accept of a person, but also the unfamiliar, what we don’t know, what we haven’t been shown, what may have been kept behind the mask.

Take a moment to imagine this.

• How might it make a difference to another person to receive this hospitality?
• What might the experience of offering it be like for us?
• What might it require of us?
• How might it change us? Our communities?

We treasure the safety and warmth that come from truly belonging with a person or group. We need it! Let’s commit to seeking out these connections for our own support—and offering them to others. How might you do that today?