I’ve had this story following me around my whole life, and I’ve just realized that it’s just a story I’ve made up and it’s not necessarily true, but I believe it none the less.  Even though it feels very very true, as I look back in retrospect it has affected my relationships my entire life.

Growing up it always felt like my family was on the outside, my mom’s family always hung out without us, my dad’s family hung out without us and when we moved from Hawaii to Oregon I was an outcast at school.  No one believed I was from Hawaii and I was bullied in a way only young girls can achieve. (I am very thankful and grateful I grew up without social media)

It’s proven that one of our basic needs is the need to belong. According to Wikipedia, “Belongingness is the human emotional need to be an accepted member of a group. Whether it is family, friends, co-workers, a religion, or something else, people tend to have an ‘inherent’ desire to belong and be an important part of something greater than themselves.”

I only recently realized my obsessive need to organize fun events for my friends to enjoy with me, is my attempt to feel like I belong in my friend group. I’ve organized local day trips (ice skating on Evergreen Lake, farm dinners, hikes, red rocks concerts, etc.) and many weekend trips (Aspen Jazz Festival, Leaf-peeping camping trips, long weekends in fun cities, run-cations with girlfriends and more).

It helps that I am really good at planning events, it comes easily to me and I take pride in the events I organize. Unfortunately, my belief that I don’t belong and my need to so badly feel like I belong, has led me to loose a few friends along the way.

On one of my recent girl-trips that I organized, I realized that my need to belong makes me act in ways that aren’t becoming of the person I want to be in this life. I’ve tried to repair the friendships and haven’t figured out the right words to say to apologize for my unkind behavior.

On this particular trip, there were six of us — equally paired up in three groups of two. My first mistake was asking my friend if a few of us running in the half marathon could stay at her house, then the full group would go to Vancouver Island where we rented a beautiful VRBO on the water.

I stressed for weeks on how to assign the bedrooms at the rental house — there were three bedrooms in the main house and a studio apartment above the garage. I felt like whoever stayed above the garage might feel left out and not part of the group. I should have just let it be a free for all and let everyone figure it out on their own. However, I decided to assign the rooms in a way I thought was fair.

I put myself in the garage apartment, so that no one else felt left out and knowing that I would have to make a conscious effort to make sure I didn’t feel left out. Unfortunately, I did feel left out and hoped that my friends would go out of their way to make me feel included — all of course without telling them how I was feeling, what I needed and expecting them to read my mind.

When they didn’t meet my expectations, I was hurt and acted like I didn’t need them, or want to hang out with them and was a bit snotty on a few occasions. Ending with me wanting to cut and run and be rid of my friends as fast as possible — and they felt the same.

I’m still very close with three of the five friends on that trip, we talk about the fun memories, what happened with the other two and talk about ways I could have done things differently to keep all of my friendships. I miss those two friends and know that I won’t ever see them again, but do hope our paths cross again one day.

The word that I’m hanging on to for 2021 is Graceful. I want to move through life as graceful as possible. In every interaction, I want to look back and even if things went all kinds of wrong, know that in the moment I acted with grace and understanding of the other person.