A Story About Connection
One afternoon, when I was a little girl, I was playing in my grandparent’s backyard by myself. I could hear laughter and friendly shouts coming from my best friend’s yard, below. Allison and her family were playing a lively game of baseball.
I began singing and dancing at the edge of the yard, hoping they would notice and invite me to join them. “La la la la la la!” I was not shy in those days. The more they ignored me, the more fun I pretended to have and the louder I got. I skipped around from tree to tree, singing my heart out..
I was too young to understand “personal time” or “family time.” And my mediterranean grandparents, who I lived with, were the type of people who welcomed everyone into their home. “Eat eat!” I can still hear my grandmother saying in her sing-song accent, as she dished out seconds and thirds to already stuffed guests. They always said yes to, even, my last minute requests to have Allison join us for dinner; my grandmother always had more than enough food. So, I thought, maybe if I just sang loudly enough they would finally acknowledge me.
Years later, Allison’s mother would tease me about this. And, even as I laughed with her at my child self’s antics, a part of me recognized that that small girl was simply looking for connection, and my heart broke a little for her.
The Root of it
I genuinely loved spending time with my grandparents, but I pined for my mother, who was already on her morning commute by the time I woke up each morning, and longed for companionship with people my age.
I would have spent every minute with my best friend, Allison, if I could, but she had an older brother and parents who spent time together – a more traditional family, you could say, than my own.
Her family lived in the house right below ours – my grandfather dug out a path in the woods that connected our two homes, so we would have a safe pathway to get to each other. Allison and I were always running up and down the trail or meeting halfway to pick leaves or acorns or hang out on our favorite log.
I wasn’t a kid who couldn’t spend time alone, though. I loved to climb and sit in my favorite maple tree in the front yard, waiting to greet the paper boy, who would tell me “to be careful up there!” And I would go on dancing sprees down our dead-end road and stop in to see a friendly neighbor and get homemade cookies.
But, even, at that early age my desire for connection was strong.
Psychologists Roy Baumeister and Mark Leary tell us that the need to belong is deeply rooted in who we are. They describe belonging as a “fundamental human motivation” and argue that satisfying this need requires more than simply being around other people; we need lasting, positive relationships in which there is a sense of mutual care and connection.
In other words, the little girl dancing and singing at the top of her lungs wasn’t simply looking for something to do; she wanted to be part of something – to be seen and included.
Early Relationships Set the Foundation
Attachment research, a line of research I became intrigued by in my young adulthood, particularly the work of John Bowlby, has long established that infants are biologically oriented toward forming relationships with caregivers.
They seek out faces, voices, touch, and presence.
When a baby looks toward a caregiver and receives a smile, a soothing voice, or a loving touch, something important is happening. The child is learning, in the most fundamental way, that they are seen, that their needs matter, and that they are safe with another person.
The nature of our early relationships lays the foundation for how we experience connection throughout our lives.
If we didn’t receive the care and attunement we needed as children, we tend to internalize that and draw in the same relationship patterns as we get older, in an attempt to “right a wrong.” But this only perpetuates the old feelings of rejection, disconnection, or fear.
The good news is that once we bring awareness to this pattern we can change it.
What Belonging Feels Like
Belonging isn’t just about being around other people. We can be surrounded by people and still feel profoundly alone.
This can happen when we spend time with people who don’t share our values or interests, or are, simply put, not on our “wave length.” And it can feel very isolating and even depleting: the opposite of connection.
The foundation of belonging is true connection. And the key to this, according to Brene Brown’s work, is vulnerability or openness.
As Brown informs, we can’t connect with another if we’re cut off from ourselves – that is, cut off from what we truly need, want, and feel.
Likewise, we can’t connect with someone who is closed down, in hiding, and unable to be authentic. It’s like the old saying that having a conversation with so-and-so is like “talking to a wall.” They aren’t really present.
However, when we spend time with people who are comfortable with themselves, who are open-minded and open-hearted, people who take the time to listen as well as share their own experiences or feelings, there is a sense of ease and reciprocity. We are able to “see” and “hear” each other.
When we feel we belong, we drop the need to prove our worth or perform a false version of ourselves we think others will accept.
Belonging feels like being valued, heard and accepted.
It comes from feeling safe enough to be seen as we are, and knowing that we have something meaningful to contribute. And this can usually only happen when we have our guard down, when we allow ourselves to be vulnerable.
For some of us, this takes work in the form of training our mind and body to feel safe.
It begins with learning to accept ourselves, not due to outside approval but, because we recognize our own essence and value beneath all the “stuff,” and no matter what our outside world looks like or has looked like.
The truth is: we are whole. Yes, even with our hangups and flaws. We don’t need to be perfect or reach some goal in order to belong. We only need to remember that we are, and always have been, worthy of belonging.
As adults, we may find connection in friendships and groups and communities that share a common purpose, but ultimately it comes from within first.
If, deep down, we don’t believe we belong or deserve to belong, we will never find a place where we truly feel at ease.
At some point we must realize we don’t have to earn our right to be here. We already belong.
We Belong
A big life lesson for me has been learning to just be myself – that well-known saying whose code I could never quite crack when I was younger.
Friends or colleagues, sensing my anxiety over, say, a job interview or meeting with someone new, would say “Just be yourself!” Those people knew the “real me” and they could also see my tendency to hold back and withdraw when my fear of rejection got the best of me.
I had to relearn how to trust life, and to release the fear, over and over, of being rejected.
Easier said than done, right? I didn’t know how to just be myself.
For much of my life, I was concerned with fitting in. I adapted, edited, questioned, and second-guessed myself in the hope that I would feel more accepted. The paradox in this is: the more we abandon ourselves in an effort to belong, the more we feel like an outsider.
Learning to accept ourselves fully is both simple and a big leap.
We may spend decades fighting and rejecting ourselves, which often comes in the form of self-criticism and negative self-talk, and then wonder why we feel disconnected.
We abandon ourselves in all sorts of ways. We might say something we don’t actually mean or think in order to go along with the crowd. We might say “yes” to something we know we don’t have the bandwidth for. We might agree to spend time with people who deplete us just to keep the peace. We might become consumed by our thoughts around others’ opinions, and focus on that rather than on what we have to offer in the moment (we will never please everyone, right?). We might overeat or treat our bodies poorly.
But once we decide to stop abandoning ourselves and, instead, embrace ourselves with all our imperfections (in the way we would accept a child), a shift happens quickly.
We start to catch ourselves in the moment we are about to disregard our own feelings, needs and desires. For example, before the “go to” phrase comes out, we shift it to something more true.
We learn to say “no” respectfully (not easy but possible) – we can start by saying “let me think about that” to give ourselves time to pause before delivering an answer.
We make the decision to care for our bodies one step at a time by, for example, choosing a healthy snack or drinking more water.
Ultimately, we learn to stop bending to other people’s wills or changing our values and beliefs to fit in.
We practice day by day, moment by moment, until it starts to feel natural. And we don’t beat ourselves up for falling back into old patterns; we simply take it as a reminder to stay on the path and keep moving forward with our new awareness.
This, of course, doesn’t mean we will always be understood or accepted by everyone. We won’t.
And this is part of the lesson of learning to belong to ourselves. We become strong enough in who we are to no longer rely on outside approval.
When something doesn’t click we are okay with that because we click with ourselves. We realize not every person or situation is meant to be a part of our path.
What Keeps Us Well
Connection makes us feel good, yes, and it is also a vital part of our overall health (which makes sense since feeling good is synonymous with well-being).
In our culture, health care usually has more to do with illness than wellness, but our well-being is not defined by the absence of illness. Our relationships, our communities, and our sense of connection to ourselves and others are a part of what keeps us well.
The U.S. Surgeon General describes social connection as a critical component of individual and community health. Research cited in the Surgeon General’s advisory found that people with stronger social connections have a 50 percent greater likelihood of outliving those with weaker social ties.
Social disconnection has been associated with greater risk of heart disease, stroke, anxiety, depression, and dementia.
This is undoubtedly why loneliness can feel so uncomfortable.
Harvard public health physician, Jeremy Nobel, describes loneliness as a biological signal that we need human connection, much like thirst signals that we need water.
Loneliness isn’t a personal failure; it’s important information. It is the mind and body telling us that something essential is missing.
Connection, then, isn’t a luxury or an extra we can add to our lives when everything else is taken care of. It’s one of the key ingredients in a healthy life.
Small Gestures, Big Connection
If connection is a fundamental human need, how do we create more of it in our lives?
We may wait for an invitation, a friendship, the right community, or the feeling that we have finally found “our people.” And sometimes those things do arrive, but connection can also begin with small acts of reaching out.
We can invite someone for a walk or a cup of tea. We can join a group centered around something we care about, volunteer for a cause, begin or return to a spiritual or creative practice, or simply become a familiar face somewhere in our community. We can also allow ourselves to be known by sharing a little more of who we are with someone or a group we trust.
And connection isn’t only something we seek for ourselves; we can help create it for others, too.
We can notice the person standing at the edge of the room. We can learn someone’s name. We can invite someone into the conversation. We can listen without rushing to fix or judge. We can make room at the table.
A small gesture can convey to another person something profound: I see you. You are welcome here. There is room for you.
When I think back to that little girl version of me, in my grandparents’ yard, I realize she was not just being goofy or annoying; she sang in effort to make herself visible. She was reaching toward people she wanted to connect with.
I can’t go back and change what happened that afternoon, or other ones like it, but I can give her the acceptance she needed then right now. It is never too late to offer that to ourselves and others.
We can remember what it feels like to be the person standing at the edge and to make sure we notice when someone else is there.
Works Cited
Baumeister, Roy F., and Mark R. Leary. “The Need to Belong: Desire for Interpersonal Attachments as a Fundamental Human Motivation.” Psychological Bulletin, vol. 117, no. 3, 1995, pp. 497–529. https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-2909.117.3.497.
Bowlby, John. Attachment and Loss. Volume 1: Attachment. Basic Books, 1969.
Brown, Brené. Braving the Wilderness: The Quest for True Belonging and the Courage to Stand Alone. Random House, 2017.
Feldscher, Karen. “The Importance of Connections: Ways to Live a Longer, Healthier Life.” Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, 8 Dec. 2024, https://hsph.harvard.edu/news/the-importance-of-connections-ways-to-live-a-longer-healthier-life/.
Nobel, Jeremy. “Interview with Dr. Jeremy Nobel.” Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, Lee Kum Sheung Center for Health and Happiness, https://hsph.harvard.edu/research/health-happiness/transcript-interview-with-dr-jeremy-nobel/. Accessed 10 Sept. 2026.
Office of the Surgeon General. Our Epidemic of Loneliness and Isolation: The U.S. Surgeon General’s Advisory on the Healing Effects of Social Connection and Community. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, 2023, https://www.hhs.gov/sites/default/files/surgeon-general-social-connection-advisory.pdf.
