E96: Belonging & Healing – Resiliently You Series: Why is it important to feel like you belong somewhere?

Dr. Dave:

What is the importance of belonging and why do we all need to belong somewhere? It is built into our human nature. Learn how the powerful philosophy of Ubuntu helps to deliver a simple roadmap to building positive teams and relationships, improving engagement and performance.

Get your copy of Belonging and Healing, creating awesomeness for yourself and others by Dr. Dave Cornelius on amazon.com.

Dr. Dave:

Well, hello and welcome to the Knolshare with Dr. Dave podcast. This is Dr. Dave Cornelius, your host.

You know what? My guest today is my sister, Dr. Lateefah Collingwood. Look, this is a historic moment because this is the first time ever, first time, that I'm officially interviewing my sister on the Knolshare with Dr. Dave podcast.

 

Hello, Sister. How are you?

Dr. Collingwood:

Hello, brother. I am well.

Dr. Dave:

So good to have you here. Hey, why don't you just-

Dr. Collingwood:

Thank you for having me.

Dr. Dave:

Yeah. Why don't you just give our audience a simple elevator pitch about who you are? You could go up to a minute, you could go longer, but nice and sweet so everyone could know who Dr. Lateefah Collingwood really is.

Dr. Collingwood:

Nice and short and sweet.

Dr. Dave:

Something like that.

Dr. Collingwood:

Well, hello, Knolshare audience. I am Dr. Lateefah Collingwood and I am currently an assistant clinical professor at a university of nursing. I'm also a neonatal nurse practitioner maintaining my hands-on practice.

I'm here to just have this conversation with my big brother, Dave, about belonging and so I'm really excited to be here with you guys and we're just going to have some fun today.

 

Dr. Dave:

Yes, we are. Yes, we are. So tell me, why is it important to feel like you belong somewhere? What's up with that? Why do we always have that desire?

Dr. Collingwood:

I believe that we are created to be a part of something. We are all born into families. We're all born into people groups and so, by nature, we are created to be a part of something. So we, as people, or as living beings born into groups have this longing and this desire to really be a part of, to really feel like we belong somewhere, or to someone, or to something.

So I think it's important because of that innate mechanism that we have inside, that thing that drives us to want to be a part of, to want to be accepted, to want to feel like we are a part of something. So the importance comes from the internal drive, in my opinion.

Dr. Dave:

Well, it's a wonderful opinion and a wonderful perspective.

I know you've played sports and what was that like to belong as an individual, or part of a sports team?

Dr. Collingwood:

I see a sports team as I see any other team. It's a group of people coming together to pursue a common goal. In teams it's to win the game, to strategize, to practice and so I think it's just really important. Just being a part of a team helps with a lot of things. It helps with a lot of development. It helps us to learn to collaborate with people so it helps us to learn to deal with different personalities. Because whenever you have a group of people, we come from different backgrounds, different likes, different dislike and so it just prepares us to work together with different people. It challenges us as well to learn to overcome some potential personality obstacles that may present challenges for us as we try to achieve our goal.

But being a part of a sports team, it really helped me to look at what is the mission that you guys are after, what do you need to do to achieve that mission and how do you go about it? So it kind of provided a framework.

And on those teams, we are all moving towards the same mission. We all learn the same techniques. I ran track and so we learned how to run. I remember I had a coach actually, when I was in the eighth grade, I had a track coach and I'll never forget him because I use his principles even today. I ran the 4 x 100 relay and then I was a sprinter. But for the 4 x 100 relay, we had to line up, all four of us, and we went around the track in slow motion. What we did was practice how to pass the baton so that we don't have a drop, how to receive the baton so you don't have a drop. Then how to take off from behind that line and move really fast and not bump into anyone and fall, and we did that for hours. You could imagine eighth grader as a kid, it was the most boring thing in the world.

But as an adult in my profession, I had an a-ha moment that doing something like that was really critical. It was really important for getting everyone on the same page, getting everyone to understand the same rules and to get everyone to move in the same direction. So we have to really lean into those teaching so that we could lean into the group so that we could achieve the mission, or at least the temporally hard to achieve the mission.

Dr. Dave:

It's fun, it's fun, handing the baton, reaching back, catching it.

Dr. Collingwood:

Not fun when you have a drop. When you have a drop, it's a nightmare-

Dr. Dave:

Yes, yes.

Dr. Collingwood:

... and you pay the price.

Dr. Dave:

Well, that's why you practice, right, so you could get better at that stuff?

Dr. Collingwood:

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah.

Dr. Dave:

Yeah. So let's talk about your professional business journey. What was your belonging experience like?

Dr. Collingwood:

My belonging experience, I'm in the industry of caring for people and most of my career, I cared for children. So you could imagine you don't only have one patient, like when you're caring for an elderly person. You have the mother and the father, the siblings, the aunts, the uncles so you have multiples. So that, in itself, was just really a challenge to come into this group, be accepted into this group as someone who has the patient's best interests at heart and someone who can accept this family, where they are and help them to move to spaces that you need them to move to.

Simultaneously, you're working in a group of nurses, physicians, healthcare providers and so we also had to learn how to move together as a team. We had to make sure that we weren't giving mixed messages to families. We had to make sure that we understood what the plan was, the game plan was. So in that sense, it was just really sometimes challenging, but most times just very rewarding. We really have to keep a keen sense of who we were, how we fit in and how being a part of this group could be a good thing or could have a not-so-good outcome. So that's in a nutshell, being a part of that team in the workspace was just critical, intense and we had to lean in.

Now on the other side of that, just being with the work group because the nature of the work can be so intense and we always used to say, "Man, we just want to come to work and not have something that we do cause such a dire outcome." Because you're dealing life and death, health, wellness issues and so what we did, we were very cognizant about making sure that we celebrated. We had a lot of fun. We laughed a lot. We got to know each other. We got to know each other's families. We knew the kids, the birthing of the babies, the grandkids, the kids graduating high school.

So we really worked hard to come together and understand each other, not only as professionals, but also we worked hard to make sure that we had just a community where we could support each other because sometimes it's really challenging. It's really, really hard and so belonging, it's an important subject. It's an important concept. It's a very important concept. And it doesn't just apply in the professional world. It also applies just in our individual lives as well. Like I said, we are all born with that desire to belong, that desire to be a part of, and that desire to be accepted into something.

Dr. Dave:

Yes, you are, and I could just imagine how much delight you have when you don't drop the baton when you're working with little babies and their families, right? Yes?

Dr. Collingwood:

Yes. Oh, yes. Yes, yes. In that case we had a thing we would say failure is not an option.

Dr. Dave:

I could understand that. [inaudible 00:10:00]

Dr. Collingwood:

The costs are too great.

Dr. Dave:

Yes.

Dr. Collingwood:

Errors cannot happen. Yeah, yeah.

Dr. Dave:

Yes. That's for sure.

Dr. Collingwood:

So we have these mantras.

Dr. Dave:

Well, those mantras are important and it helps to guide you, it helps to build camaraderie and it helps the build belonging. [inaudible 00:10:16] each other.

Dr. Collingwood:

It really does. It really does. Yeah.

Dr. Dave:

Now, I'm going to talk about faith and spiritual journey in terms of how did you or how do you sense belonging as you're in a faith and spiritual journey?

Dr. Collingwood:

Sometimes that can be a challenge, but I want to start by saying when we sense belonging in a spiritual realm or when we're in a spiritual pathway, first and foremost, the understanding is we belong to the almighty so there's a higher

 

 

Dr. Collingwood:

... higher power there. We are in relationship with the Almighty, and we are accepted by the Almighty. So just right there in that little small square, we feel that sense of belonging to our Father, God. Right? And then we expound that out a little bit, talking about now, how do we experience belonging in the body, the body of believers? And this is not only Christianity, this is faith walkers, whatever your faith may be. In the Muslim faith, in the Hindu faith, in all the different faith practices, we go through the same thing, the same sense of belonging to the most high, and then the same sense of belonging to our fellow faith walkers.

Belonging is an interesting concept because it's so driven by feelings and emotions and desires of the individuals. And so, feelings can be your friend and feelings can be your worst enemies, right? Because feelings cause us to lose sense of rational thought sometimes. And so when we talk about belonging, I think it's really important that we pause and really think about when we talk about belonging, it's really also coupled with feelings of the belonging. Because we can belong to things but not feel like we belong to things. We're born into families, but you have so many estranged families, right, and people who don't feel like they belong in that family for one reason or another. We work on teams. Again, we're all there, we come together, we're a member of the team, but we don't feel like we belong to the team and we're a part of the team.

And so I think it's really important to understand that being a part of something doesn't mean that we're going to have a feeling of belonging to that team. And I think that is the critical piece. Because we can all enter and exit groups and teams at any given time by choice, as long as we meet the established criteria, but what becomes the bigger challenge is, do we feel like we are truly a part of? Do we feel like we are accepted? Do we feel like we are supported? And in my faith group, I feel the most accepted when I'm active in my faith group. And that's, of course, because we belong to a big faith group, a very large faith group. And so it's difficult when you're sitting in those large groups to feel that sense of belonging outside of we are all here and of one accord in our belief and in our faith. But when it comes down more to the individual feelings of belonging, we have to be active, we have to seek out.

And so I think it's important. It was important for me to make sure that I participated, that I showed up, and I showed up in a way that was not negative. I showed up in a way that showed that I'm here to help, to join, to participate. Now, that doesn't mean that I'm here to just swallow everything that's being put out there. What it means is I show up objectively and I show up with a passion for, and we understand that we're all moving towards the same goal in life. So in my faith journey most recently, these last three years, I have felt that I am a part of because I joined and I have been in this group for a long time, but I had never felt more separated from because of all of the craziness that was going on in the world, all of the light that had been shed on the thinking and the beliefs of some of your fellow faith walkers. And-

Dr. Dave:

Oh, yeah.

Dr. Collingwood:

Huh?

Dr. Dave:

No. I'm going, "Yeah!"

 

Dr. Collingwood:

Yeah. And being a person of color in a faith group that's predominantly white became a much bigger challenge than it had ever been before because of all of the noise, all of the things that were happening, all of the things that were being exposed. And so at that point, I belonged to that group, I never exited, but I did not feel a sense of belonging. And a part of that was a part of me probably because of just trying to work through and understand how people who believe in a higher being, people who believe in faith and spirituality and believe in God could have these negative behaviors, thoughts, feelings. Just trying to wrap my brain around that and really wrestling with, "So how do they see me? How am I seen in this place where I've been for so long and been so active and felt a part of for so long?"

And another thing with belonging is we really have to be transparent about how we feel and be okay with asking the hard questions, which is something I didn't do. And I think I didn't because I was still wrestling with the fact that I was even having these feelings and that these things were even happening all over this country, not just to me. And so it was just a huge challenge. But I had some redemption a couple of weeks ago that led me back on a different path, where you don't forget that these things are happening in the world, but I kind of got a sense of, "Yeah, yeah. I feel this sense of belonging."

My car stopped one night after rehearsal, and I knew that I just left all those people back there in the sanctuary, and I needed to call really quick before they disappeared. And so I called our leader, and I'm sitting there waiting for them to get there. And probably within five minutes, I look up at my rear view mirror and there are all these lights coming, all these cars. And let me tell you, I was expecting one or two people to show up. Man, so many people showed up. He just mobilized that team of men, and the women came as well, and they just gathered around me. It was overwhelming. And they were like, "Okay, what's going on?" They took charge of it. They took care of it, made sure I got safe, stayed with me until my husband showed up. Well, not all of them, just a couple stayed with me until my husband showed up just to make sure I stayed safe.

And it was like no big deal. And that thing just had a profound impact on me for the rest of the week. I was just thinking, "Wow, this is what belonging really feels like in some instances where people show up." And they were like, "Don't worry, we got you." Despite all of the noise and all of the stuff that's happening around us, which is real and true, we can't ignore it, "We got you." And so that was my most current experience with belonging in my faith arena. And it was necessary because, like I said, I had some doubts because of the world today.

Dr. Dave:

That is a beautiful story. It's a beautiful story to show how sense in belonging manifested itself in the physical world where you actually had people came and come around you and supported you in the journey. So, no, that's great. I'm so glad to hear that story. I needed to hear that story.

Dr. Collingwood:

Yeah. That story, I knew. I knew. I came home and I was like, "I know that I got people."

Dr. Dave:

Yeah. I got peeps.

 

Dr. Collingwood:

I got people who care about my wellbeing, who care about me. And they may have a different belief from me politically, socially, but we share that spiritual thing that we belong to this faith family, this family of faith. And when one falls, we put all that stuff aside and we jump in to make sure that our one is okay. And so that, to me, was just a profound lesson that I learned that night. It was just like, "Wow, I'm in the right place here. Yeah. This is what it means to be a part of community. This is what it really feels like to belong. They got you."

Dr. Dave:

Yeah. They got you.

Dr. Collingwood:

Yeah.

Dr. Dave:

I want to talk about generative leadership. And just, I'm going to give a definition so that people who have never heard of generative leaders or leadership, that generative leaders, they create an environment for people to thrive. And when I'm talking about people, in a business sense or even in a community sense, there's your direct reports, you have your peers, you have leaders that you report to or you're accountable to, and you also have partners, right, and even people that you're serving as customers as well. I want to get an example of where you enable belonging as a generative leader in your organization. It doesn't have to be just work. It could be outside of work as well.

Dr. Collingwood:

Yeah. When I am leading in a group setting... I think I'm going to back up for a second to say by nature, my personality is one of inclusiveness and making sure that people feel okay. You know our mom. It's like, "You come around here. I'm going to feed you. I'm going to make sure you're okay, make sure you're well. I'm going to do all that stuff." Right? So we grew up in that sense where, "You come around us, you get hugged by me, you get taken care of. We do things for you that kind of way. We see you." And so I carry that with me. And just my natural instinct is to take care of, to make sure that you feel okay in this setting. And so I bring that naturally into my leadership practice. Whether I'm leading at work or I'm leading in a social group, I really try to bring that in to make sure that people feel a part of, that they feel accepted. And with my last team, I had a small team this last time.

Dr. Collingwood:

My last work team was seven of us, or eight of us. So it's a small enough group where you can really create just a sense of community really easily, and so in that group I would always say, "Okay, hey, yes, I have the title of the leader of this group, but we are all leaders in this group. We are all responsible for the outputs, we're all responsible for making sure that we deliver high quality in a timely manner, we're all responsible for making sure that we respond and that people feel that they are heard," and I said, "I don't want to hear from people that we said no, we can't. What I want people to feel is even though we know we can't, I want people to be able to say, 'You know what? They told me that they're going to get to me, that they weren't able to meet my need right now, but they gave me some options.'"

And so what we did was we huddled every Monday, we had a Monday huddle, and anyone could call a huddle at any time outside of that Monday huddle. The huddle table is where we came together, and I wanted them to know I am not the one who calls a huddle all the time. If you want to huddle, if something's happening or you're feeling unsupported, or you're needing something, just come and say, "Hey, can we huddle today?" And we're going to find out what everyone's calendars look like, we're going to get a huddle in, maybe a 10, 15 minute huddle, we're going to get some clarity around what we need to get some clarity around, but you get to lead that.

So that just gave them the autonomy to call those huddles and to come in. Now when we call these huddles we're not calling these huddles just for you to complain to me for 15 minutes about what's not working, it's also about what's not working, what can we do to support you right now, and what's the outcome we're after, how are we going to get there? So as the leader I put it within a framework for them, but I allowed them to call it, I allowed them to lead it, and then we did the guiding questions. And it wasn't just me asking the questions, it was all the other team members could also ask the guiding questions as well. So that's one thing about them feeling belonging, and just giving them the opportunity to know that we can call this team together when we need to call this team together, we don't have to wait for our leader to do it, we have the autonomy, they respect me enough to do this.

And then the other thing I did in belonging is we celebrated a lot, man. I'm like, our work is hard, and so we celebrated a lot. We can't have, and I don't drink, but everyone on my team did, and so we always had bubbles. We called it, we're going to have a bubble day, a bubble moment, bubble morning, and so I'd bring in sparkling cider, different flavor of sparkling cider, like, "Hey, we had a rough time yesterday, we got beat down yesterday, it's bubble time, let's go to the table, we're huddling with bubbles this morning," and people could bring in different things, and a lot of times they didn't even know, it was unscheduled most times, I'll just stop by, grab some bubbles, bring some plastic champagne glasses, get some fruit, bring a candle, put it under my little stoneware pot and melt some chocolate and we have some fruit we would dip, so that we created a sense of community so it wasn't always so hard, this hardness of work wasn't all we did.

And so just to try to create some type of an outline, it's like being inclusive, and being intentional about including people, giving people the right to lead, within some framework, some guidelines, and just creating celebrations to help them feel a part of something, and to just take the pressure off a little bit, celebrating for no reason. And then I celebrated their birthdays like crazy. On everybody's birthday they got their unique thing, if they like cheesecake, we were having cheesecake, if they like chocolate, we were having chocolate, and I would spend for those and bring those in, and decorate the room, said that we can do that, so that they felt like they were more than a worker.

And it's also how people want to feel, like they're people, not just a number, not just a worker. So it's like, "Hey, how's your weekend? What do you have planned for the weekend?" And then on Monday, it's like, "So how did the weekend go? What'd you do?" We talk about the kids, and again, that comes back from being in the clinical setting where you're locked in, "How are the kids, how's the family, how's the husband, how's the mom?" So we talk about ourselves as people, and we know about each other, we share about each other, within reason, and I think that really helps to create that sense of community, that sense of belonging. So when you need to get the beat down, and you need to get talked to about the things that you need to pull your socks up on, you have already experienced the goodness and the support, so you take it.

Dr. Dave:

No, no, I could see that, I could see how being supported, and then when they're tough times, you're able to deal with the tough times because you have been supported.

 

Dr. Collingwood:

Yes, yes.

Dr. Dave:

Yeah. But when you look at the flip side, sometimes we do great things, and then there are just those time you go, oh my God, I wish I could have done better with creating belonging as a generative leader. What about some of those?

Dr. Collingwood:

Some of those. When I think about, my most important leadership role ever was that of a parent, and that is the arena that I am the most critical of myself in. That is the area that I could see a lot of opportunities for improvement if I had the opportunity to do it over. In my professional life, I have moved through so many different seasons, learned so much about leading over time, that I feel like I've had time to smooth things out, make things better, become better, grow into being a better leader, a leader that's more supportive. The areas that I didn't have the opportunity to go back to and to grow into was that of a parent.

So when you asked me about where could I have done better, the area, the biggest area, and I think the most important area that I felt I could have done better as a leader, was as a parent. We come from the islands and so parenting was hardcore. You don't have a thought, I have a thought. Don't tell me what you think, listen to what I think. And so I think if I had an opportunity to do it over, it would be a little bit different, a little more collaborative, especially when they became in the teenage years. So that would be an area that I feel like I could.

Now my daughter, Talitha, she told me that when she went to the military, and I didn't think she would make it through bootcamp, because the child was afraid of her own shadow, so I was just saying, oh Lord Jesus, they're going to send this kid back to me in a day or two because she won't be able to take it. But she said to me, she says, when she got through it, through boot camp, she was like, "I watched all those people, and they were falling out, and faking illnesses to try to get out, they were crying and they were sobbing, and I was like, man, I grew up with the world's toughest drill sergeant, bring it, I'm ready." So that's a double edged sword, on one hand she felt very prepared for the beat down that world would give her, because she didn't feel coddled. On other hand I can see a hardness that I think that had I been just a little bit softer in some instances there would've been more of a balanced person. So yeah, so that would be the... Yeah, you know, you know.

Dr. Dave:

I know, I'm laughing because I'm thinking about those three wonderful ladies in our lives who are the world toughest drill sergeants. They were Ruby.

Dr. Collingwood:

They were tough, yeah.

Dr. Dave:

Yeah, my Vernie, and our mother mom, right?

Dr. Collingwood:

Yes.

Dr. Dave:

Yeah.

Dr. Collingwood:

That's what we grew up under, we grew up under that toughness. Feelings, you don't have feelings, man?

Dr. Dave:

I'll give you something to feel, you want to feel?

Dr. Collingwood:

Yeah, I'll give you something to feel. Yeah, so that is, that is the area. In my workspace, I think my very first leadership role, I was young, I was probably in my late twenties, and I still had a lot of that hardness that I grew up under in me, and it was like, "Look, you're getting a paycheck, okay, so here's what needs to happen, stop lying and let's go." And so, again, I guess there is a space where I could soften things a little bit, just to understand where people are coming from better. I have mastered that now, I can see that, because I've been intentional about it, but in the early days there were some rough spots that I definitely could go back and smooth out, for sure.

Dr. Dave:

Yes, time has been a great teacher, especially coming from the environment that we grew up in.

Dr. Collingwood:

Yeah.

Dr. Dave:

And I thought some of those things were necessary to help shape us to deal with the world.

Dr. Collingwood:

Yes.

Dr. Dave:

Because I think there was a vision that we would go from this small little island into this bigger world and we had to be prepared to deal with it, because there was no one else to hold our hands and pamper us through the journey.

Dr. Collingwood:

Exactly. Remember mom used to say, "You're going to go out there, no one cares about you," she didn't say it that nicely, but I can't say this on your recording, she would say, "No one cares about you, no one cares how you feel. Suck it up, no one's going to care, you need to do it, you need to get tough because nobody's going to care." And I found myself telling my children that, you're going to go out into the workforce, they're not going to care about your whining, they're not going to care about your heart and what you think and your feelings, they just want to know that you're exchanging time for dollars, come up here and fulfill your contractual obligation.

Dr. Dave:

Yeah.

Dr. Collingwood:

But the world isn't so anymore, and it doesn't have to be so.

Dr. Dave:

That's right, yes. We have grown.

Dr. Collingwood:

We have grown as a society. We have grown as people. And we do need to create workspaces that are healthy. We need to create workspaces where people feel a sense of belonging, where people just really feel that yeah, it gets tough. And sometimes, they're going to talk to me about things. "Maybe if I don't perform the way I should, I'm going to have a hard talking to us, some constructive criticism, constructive feedback, but that doesn't mean that I don't belong." So it's up to us as leaders to find that balance. And if we, in the day to day when things are working pretty well, create that space of harmony, unity, family, community for our teens, when we get to the space where we have to drop the hammer and come down hard on them, I think it's better received because their cups' been filled and refilled over time. And so in this space, they have the bandwidth to really handle that pressure better.

Dr. Dave:

I completely agree. Let's talk about your final thoughts and inspiration about belonging.

Dr. Collingwood:

My final thoughts and inspiration about belonging.

Dr. Dave:

Yeah. As we're bringing this podcast to a close, we're wrapping things up. But what's that's like?

Dr. Collingwood:

I think as we walk through this short conversation, we talked about a lot of things that I think are key. And I think the most important thing, the takeaway points from conversations about belonging has to do it. We have to understand that belonging and feelings of belonging are two parallel but separate entities. We all belong somewhere. We all belong to someone. We all belong to some group. Every single human being on this earth or living thing belong somewhere in some community. I think what we're really talking about here is do we feel like we belong and what needs to happen to help people to feel that sense of belonging? And so when we think about belonging, I think we need to think about it through those two popsicle sticks and understand those two things.

The other thing I think it's important is we need to really understand that feelings of belonging or sense of belonging is innate. We have that desire naturally. It's not something we can control and we want to feel like we are a part of. And so it's important for us to understand that is an innate thing, and a person isn't just being soft or whiny because they're saying, "I don't feel like I belong. I don't feel accepted." We have to do the work to create spaces where people do feel a level of acceptance and a level of, "You belong in this group."

The other thing I really want to point out here too as we wrap up is we really have to talk about, it's not up to someone else to make us feel like we belong. We have to be cognizant of the way that we show up. Because sometimes the way that we show up, the way that we present, the things that we bring and the manner in which we bring things to the table can really cause people to back up from us. And so in that, then you start to feel like you don't belong anymore. And so I think we have to be cognizant of that as well. As leaders, we have to be able to point that out and say, "You know what? This behavior is a barrier. People don't want to feel this way, so they're going to back up."

And so it's just understanding those things, that it's not always up to someone else to make you feel warm and fuzzy. We've got to look at ourselves, take a long, hard look at ourselves in the mirror and say, "What am I bringing to the table that may be contributing to this stepping back and this backing up?" So I think it's just important.

Dr. Dave:

Yeah. There's a sense of accountability in belonging and being able to be a part of that. I'm going to ask you these. To whom you belong, why you belong, and where you belong?

Dr. Collingwood:

To whom I belong?

Dr. Dave:

Yes.

Dr. Collingwood:

Well, first and foremost, I belong to the creator of this universe because he formed me, shaped me, and placed me in my mother's womb. I belong to the family that I was born into. I am a member of that family because that's the family I was placed in. I belong to the African American community because I was born into that community, and it wasn't by accident that I was born there so I feel like I belong there. I belong in a number of work groups by choice and community groups, but those are by choice. To whom do I belong? I said to my Almighty. I belong to my husband when I said, "I do." I am a wife and so I belong to my husband. And I belong to my children and my grandchildren as their mother and grandmother. I feel that those are the important jobs, the most important jobs on this earth that we have, parenting and grandparenting and spousing. And what was the other part of it? Where do I belong? To whom do I belong?

Dr. Dave:

And why you belong.

Dr. Collingwood:

And why I belong? Well, some of the places and spaces that I belong to were by, like I said, selection, natural selection. It's an exchange. I bring certain things, I get certain things, so I belong. I join this work group, this people group, this professional group because we're exchanging things. And so I belong there because it's a transaction. There are some groups I belong to like some of my professional nursing groups. I belong to that group because I feel, or those groups, because I feel a strong sense of wanting to give back to my professional community, wanting to be a part of the solution.

Now that I've gotten to this stage, I feel better equipped and better positioned to join and help those groups. We were traveling a couple weeks ago and we were always talking about we really want to do something with Doctors Without Borders. I want to travel but I really want to do something. And it's just something we've talked about for years, one of our charity groups or one of our social groups that we wanted to join. We just thought they were doing good work and we wanted to be a part of. And so we're walking down DC and this girl from Nigeria stopped me and started talking to me. And I'm rolling my eyes without her seeing because I'm saying, "Okay, what you want? I know a donation for something." And she's like, "Have you ever heard of Doctors Without Borders?"

And so I perked up and I'm like, "Yes." And she's like, "Well, what do you know about it?" So I just told her a little that I did know about it. And she was like, "Okay. Well, we're here representing Doctors Without Borders, and we're looking for strategic partners. The work we do..." And she just gave her spiel about what they were doing, why they were doing it. And I was like, "Sign me up," because this is one of those charities that I have wanted to be a part of or wanted to contribute to in some meaningful way. And there it is, it presented itself to me.

So I belong to certain groups by choice. I belong to some groups by transaction or by necessity. And some groups I belong to because I was placed there and that's just where we are.

Dr. Dave:

Well, my sister, I would like to say thank you. Thank you for gracing me with your presence. I'm pouring it on.

Dr. Collingwood:

Yeah, you are.

Dr. Dave:

Hey, you belong to me. I belong to you. We're part of that.

Dr. Collingwood:

We're a family.

Dr. Dave:

We are a family. And I wanted to just say thank you for the pepper pot and dumplings the other day. I have to let people know that's one of my favorite foods. It's a soup. So feel free to-

Dr. Collingwood:

I still feed you sometimes.

 

Dr. Dave:

Yes. Thank you for feeding me sometimes. That's what's great. I want to close and just say thank you for listening to Knolshare with Dr. Dave Podcast. I invite you to come back for more insights and perspectives that may help you discover being resiliently you.

 

Knolshare with Dr. Dave Podcast is streamed on Spotify, Apple, Audible, and Google.

 

I'm going to say thank you to our niece, Kayanna Brow-Hendricksen, for doing a music for this podcast. Very talented. We have a bunch of talented people in our family.

 

This podcast is copywritten 2022 by Dr. Dave Cornelius and knolshare.org.

 

Thank you for listening and stay tuned for the next episode of Resiliently You as we continue to share our stories and experiences. And sister, I hope this isn't the last time and you'll come back and share some more of your experiences with us.

Dr. Collingwood:

All right. Well, all right.

Dr. Dave:

Great.

Dr. Collingwood:

That's always a possibility, for sure.

Dr. Dave:

Well, I hope it's not after 10 years of me doing a podcast that you finally decide to come.

Dr. Collingwood:

No, just ask me. We'll fit you in.

Dr. Dave:

All right. I'll get fit in.

Dr. Collingwood:

Yes. We'll support you.

Dr. Dave:

I love that.

 

Dr. Collingwood:

We'll support each other.

Dr. Dave:

Yes. I love that. Love that.

Kayanna:

(singing)

Dr. Dave:

What is the importance of belonging and why do we all need to belong somewhere? It is built into our human nature. Learn how the powerful philosophy of Ubuntu helps to deliver a simple roadmap to building positive teams and relationships, improving engagement and performance.

Get your copy of Belonging and Healing, Creating Awesomeness for Yourself and Others by Dr. Dave Cornelius on amazon.com.