When a young immigrant moves to a new city, she must learn how to blend in and code-switch to survive. But no matter where she goes, she remembers one thing: she has chosen to believe that she lives in a friendly universe and she uses this knowledge to build brave spaces for others and to find her own sense of belonging. In this conversation, my guest, Sacred Walker, and I share our thoughts on being driven women in a world that projects assumptions onto us, and the courage it took to carve out our own unique paths of being and belonging.

Sacred's journey began in Kingston, Jamaica, and her experiences have taken her across the globe, including India and the United States. Using her expertise in creating intentional community spaces, Sacred has become a beacon of hope and inspiration for those seeking to foster genuine relationships while maintaining their own unique identities. Her ability to blend, code-switch, and adapt to various environments has made her an invaluable resource for leaders from all walks of life.

In this episode, you will learn how to:

• Embrace authenticity and vulnerability for deeper connections and a sense of belonging.
• Overcome the impact of childhood experiences on adult relationships and self-acceptance.
• Cultivate self-care, reflection, and grounding techniques for assured leadership.
• Encourage unique self-expression to overcome rejection and take risks.
• Support empathic visionary leaders by building intentional community spaces.

Now, you know how much I love storytelling, right?  Well, Sacred surprised me with some of the favorites that she uses to help women in her community develop their capacity for authenticity, courage, and belonging.  You are going to want to listen for her “pepperoni” analogy and her “frying fish” metaphor.  When you hear them and resonate with them,  tag both Sacred and me on social media to let us know! 

Mentioned in this episode:

• Brene Brown's quote on belonging vs fitting in:  https://youtu.be/CkC6PeseGds
• Sacred Walker’s Mastermind: https://bit.ly/3LuNaI0
• Sacred’s podcast: Self Love For Everyday Superheroes: https://bit.ly/3Lfvwa6

The key moments in this episode are:

00:00:00 - Introduction - Belonging and Connection,

00:01:07 - Fitting In vs. Belonging,

00:03:26 - Making Friends as an Adult,

00:09:18 - Healing and Peeling off the Pepperoni,

00:13:13 - Belonging as a Dance,

00:15:20 - Grounding Yourself Before Entering a Room,

00:19:28 - The Importance of Mission in Leadership,

00:22:47 - Taking Off the Brakes and Being Yourself,

00:26:03 - The Power of Belonging in Leadership,

The only way you can work with me right now is through my 1:1 coaching program., and the first step is to schedule a free 30-minute consultation right here:  https://bit.ly/3qrJ9YQ

If you love this podcast, did you know that I just launched a PRIVATE PODCAST and you can listen to it from the same podcast player where you enjoy this one?  It’s called “Show Up Like a Boss” and you can grab it right here:  https://bit.ly/3ZOD3CK

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H: So I am joined today by my friend and colleague, Sacred Walker, and we are here to have a conversation about some of the most important things that I talk about on a regular basis and that are probably on your mind as well. We are here to talk about belonging, connection, and understanding the balance as an adult, connecting with other adults between being our authentic, genuine, vulnerable selves and appreciating that we might not be in a place where we can do that and truly belong. So welcome, Sacred, I cannot wait for this conversation to begin.

G: Oh my gosh, I'm so glad to be here today and I'm so glad for us to be diving in. You're someone that I really care for and respect, and so even as we build our sense of belonging, you all get to join in and thank you all for tuning in. I'm so glad to be here.

H: One of the things that I wanna start with as a reference point is a few years ago when I started following the work of Brene Brown, when she made the distinction between fitting in and belonging. And I don't think it was until I started really contemplating that difference that I realized I had spent far too much of my life shaving off parts of me stuffing other parts of me into some pre-ordained box in order to fit in and yet no true, genuine belonging or connection ever came as a result.

G: Absolutely, well said and you know, really leaning into how she spoke into creating brave spaces is so important and foundational to the conversation we're gonna have today. And so, you know, that for me is so important like what does it look like when we are struggling with some of those triggers that make it hard for us to feel like we can be brave and find those spaces where we may be the one of something at the table sometimes in our workplaces, in our fields, in our expertise. And how do we feel like not only we belong on the outside, but how do we feel like we belong on the inside? How do we know that we can trust ourselves after we've had either heartbreak or we have gone through something that has been challenging and so I'm really excited to deep, you know, dive into the conversation today. I have a little chunky monkey fur mama who is seven months old, a little kitty cat who you might see some feet on by who wants to belong into this conversation too. So if you hear or see anything, just know all is well, we have a little fur baby in the midst.

H: That's the best. Well, I wanna ask you a specific question about this because I often hear people say that it's really hard to make new friends as an adult and I have mixed feelings about that. You know, that my husband and I have done two long distance relocations in the last three years and moved in both cases to places where we didn't know a soul and literally had to make entirely new networks from scratch. So probably I lean towards the, well, I think it can be hard or it can be not so hard, it all depends. I'd love to hear your thoughts on whether, it seems actually harder to make new, not just friendships, new connections of all kinds as an adult and if not, why not?

G: So I wanna start with maybe two points right around, I wanna dive right into thinking of it as sometimes we have to remind ourselves in our mind, one, that I live in a friendly universe, right? That I live in a friendly universe, which is, you know, sometimes challenging based on our circumstances, our histories and two, honestly, that if you are feeling like you don't belong, that you're not alone and so how do we create actions that promote loneliness or promote connection, right? So like I live in a friendly universe and it's safe to connect so I wanted to start with that. So I know for me, as someone who's relocated to India, who's relocated to Oakland, who's relocated back to Brooklyn, as I enter into my forties, I look back on my childhood. I know when I was young and I first immigrated here from Kingston, Jamaica to Brooklyn, New York, I knew no one.

It was my mom and I in a one bedroom apartment, and we had to keep everything nice and clammed and safe. And we couldn't talk about what was happening at home like that was not okay right, what happened in the home stayed in the home. And so when I would go to school, I learned to blend, I learned to code switch, which today comes in handy, right? It comes in handy where I can show up and be bold and be powerful and put on a smile and make it work and move forward. But the catch 22 is I didn't know how to be vulnerable in friendships because if you can't talk about what's happening at home, you certainly are not gonna be able to talk about things like, well, how come you have to rush home? Or how come you look a little skittish today? Or why is it that you feel so chattery is, you know, kids don't know about anxiety or things like that. And so I was constantly getting in trouble, I was constantly being put in the corner for talking too much and that outward expression of just wanting to connect.

I felt like I was closer to the teachers than I was my classmates, so fast forward as an adult, as I've come to accept myself, I find that one of my missions in life is to create spaces where people can feel like they belong because it's a real thing. If you grew up in any kind of household where you felt like, Ooh, what's happening here, we can't really talk about cause people don't get it. I never thought as a kid that there would be other quirky, brilliant, bright, bright fairy like little beings who also had hard lives. I just, I swore to it that I must be the only one going through so much challenges and so for me today, I feel like if I'm in spaces where I feel genuinely, like, oh my gosh, I'm the only one who gets it. It can be hard because you're not in a classroom. It's not like you're on the basketball court or in the school yard, so you kind of have to find intentional spaces to feel like you belong and so that's why that's so important to me, is to create them.

But I have to remember, I'm in a friendly universe, right, people actually want to get to know me. If in my minds tell myself otherwise, then my inner child is like, oh, no one's gonna get me, right? And two, I wanna lean into how do I connect versus remind myself, you know what it's better, no one talked to me. It's fine to remind myself to connect and lean in because I'm likable and I'm in a friendly universe. So sometimes those inner child stuff kicks up, and I don't know if anyone tuning in can relate to this, but I know for me, knowing that I'm not alone in being my unique, quirky, brilliant self can be really relieving.

H: I love this so much Sacred, and you know, you're reminding me, you know, going back in, in my own childhood and I was flat out told that nobody was gonna be able to come to our house like that. My parents actually acknowledged that what was going on in our house was not normal. They didn't say it in so many words, but I was not allowed to bring friends over. Nobody ever came to our house, so I didn't know why that was the case, but I knew that I was desperate to make friends like you. I was desperate to connect with the teachers that's very bright, very curious, very eager to learn little kid, and there wasn't any sense of nurturing going on at home so I really depended on my relationship, especially with the teachers as alternative healthy adult attachment figures. But, you go to school, you make friends, they can't come to your house. So are you ever really going to be their friend?

I mean, you can only go to another kid's house so many times, and then they wanna come to your house, or their mother insists on it because they've had enough of you being at their house too often and then you just had to drop the friend and you could never express or explain why. So I think, you know, you're reminding me that taking back the power of accepting ourselves and approving of ourselves, and believing for ourselves that the universe is a friendly place. Even if you have considerable evidence to the contrary it can help you sort of be open to the possibilities of what's available to you as an adult. I see far too many people, and I know you do as well, who are still living in their life as though they were in an unsafe, unpredictable, unwelcoming, unfriendly, potentially traumatizing environment when none of that is in their current reality, but they are holding on to that in their mind. I guess a way to maintain safety when it no longer serves them to do so.

G: Well, here's thing catch22, because I both agree with that and I wanna build on that because I think that there's some power in being able to say, and one of the things that we do in our mastermind our Limitless Mastermind is we talk about how on the wellbeing pathway to carve out space in our home to create sacred space, right so we have to first feel like there's, even if it's a desk, a room, a corner. Even Maya Angelou, who was a writer, as I say in, in the wellbeing pathway, created sacred space in our home. Even Oprah recently did something where she and Gail went off and they were able to go off together and create sacred space in belonging, in their connection. So, you know, we wanna look at that, right, that we can move in the world as if I'm likable, right? Researchers, friend, researchers say if I feel like I'm likable and I approach you as if I'm likable then when you reject me, it has nothing to do with me. It's about your ability to take vulnerable people or not.

Nothing to do with my, like should I be vulnerable, well, are you able to handle vulnerability? But that has nothing to do with my willingness to be brave enough to be vulnerable. Now, the catch 22 is, and I think you will be on the same page with this with me, is that when we put in culture into it, and we speak about this in our centering practices and our meditations that look at inclusion and culture. That's the catch 22, because we live in a world if you're historically excluded as an executive where you might feel unsafe. That's a real thing, that you might wanna approach someone with that bubbly, vibrant, inner child energy. And I know for me, I've had to protect that over time. because I might show up and someone might say, you fit a description, or someone might say, were you a diversity hire? Or someone might say to you like, oh, wait a minute, how did you get this job right?

How did you work your way up the ladder and so I think that that's the dance, right? Is that yes, I live in a friendly universe up here in my mind, I'm pointing to my temples for those who can't see me. But at the same time, we also live in a world that views us in our bodies, and this is why in the mastermind we talk about healing what's projected onto our bodies so we can feel centered, clear, and confident. Because if I don't acknowledge that stuff is thrown at my body, it's kind of like, I'm not a pork eater usually. But let's say like pepperoni, think of it as like if you threw pepperoni at someone, it's warm pepperoni, it's stuck right? And it's stuck onto their body and it really stands out and that person is walking around not conscious of the fact that they have pepperoni all over them. But they feel so heavy they're like, what is this? I smell salty because I'm actually like pepperoni. I smell salty. I smell something's chewy on me, and everyone around them is telling them, what are you talking about?

I don't see pepperoni but they can feel the stuck pepperoni and one day as they become confident and clear, they start peeling off the pepperoni and they're like, oh, look at my beautiful skin. I can be friends with my beautiful skin, now when I interact with you, I'm not saying I'm weighed down by the pepperoni put on me for years. I'm seeing my skin, but when you throw pepperoni at me, I can go, excuse me you're gonna take back this pepperoni cuz that's not mine. So I think part of belonging is remembering I've gotta see the pepperoni from my skin. I'm not know that I'm walking around with this weight, that makes it hard to feel like I belong in my own skin, right and that's the power of connecting. I gotta peel the pepperoni off before I can hug you, you see what I'm saying? And then you've gotta see pepperoni on you, that's the dance. And I think we talk about that a lot in our mastermind like what does it look like to feel safe even in your own skin so you can reach out to love someone else.

H: I think that has to be, and that that's probably the most creative, whimsical and amusing, cuz you know me, I love me some analogies and metaphors. That one is like top drawer, what I'm thinking is it, it really, and I like that you're calling it a dance Sacred because it truly is a dance between, you know, not violating your belonging to and with yourself. in service of belonging with others and it's an organic dynamic thing. It's not a one and done. It's constantly being experimented with and tested. I'm just thinking of all of the women in the workplace, whether it's the color of their skin, maybe they wear a hijab, maybe they just, their differentness and all the projections and beliefs and biases that other people have about them that come to them automatically because of those differences. And even if it's nothing to do with appearance or race or culture, it could be because you're in a wheelchair or you are younger than everyone else at the table or older than everyone else at the table.

Some of the most fascinating conversations I'm currently having with people about connection and belonging have to do with being in a different generation than the person I'm talking to. I just had a conversation with a young gentleman in Australia last night, so we had different gender, different country, different accents, you know, different age group, and we had a really interesting conversation about how do we really both connect and have a sense of belonging in the workplace with the fact that we've got five different generations now working together and at least trying to have some semblance of functional normalcy. I would love to hear your approach when you walk into a room, whether it's a physical conference room or a boardroom or a zoom room with multiple participants, and you immediately recognize I'm one of, for whatever the reason. How do you center and ground yourself because I know you've gotta practice, I know you do. I'd love to hear it.

G: I do, I do and I have to admit that I incorporate this into our mastermind when we talk about like Sacred walking. So every day I do a what I call my three Ms, if you will right. So I do my meditation for maybe about 15 minutes or so, take time to center myself. I take some time to do some mindful walking. So I'm taking some time to do walking and I kind of teach more about intentional walking there and then I take some time to do a moment of reflection. So whether it's a moment of reflection over my vision board, or I do some journal writing, so I take some time to do my three Ms. And so I find that if I do not do that, the anxious, ambitious woman in me, the driven and woman in me, will write a checklist that goes from A to Z of all the million things that would make me successful, that I need to do before I can actually achieve my goals. Like if I don't get clear on boom, and then out of those three I come to one.

One, what will make two days successful whether I'm speaking to one person in my coaching, or I'm speaking to a team of 200 in the, you know, governor's office of New York State, wherever that is, how am I going to make one thing successful, even if it's that I'm going to, at the end of the day, this day is successful because I feel clear and confident on the inside. Or this day is successful because I gave myself a hug at the end of the day, or I reached out and I put that submission in for the first chapter of my book on the other side of the training, right? Whatever it is, I choose one thing after my three Ms so to answer your question, walking into a room, right? This is about what I call a centering practice like how am I feeling centered on the inside when I begin? And for me, even though I am in my mid forties, and I am moving in that interesting chapter of crossroads, I will say that my inner child, even though I'm very outgoing, my inner child is introverted.

And so I've had to learn an introverted approach and because my inner child feels most comfortable connecting with one at a time because that was what was safe. I had to kind of know, filtering in my adult self, the tool that I use, and for anyone who can relate to this overwhelming, like all eyes on me am I gonna get it wrong or right? But on the other side, because I have a commitment, I said, okay, no matter what, I wanna make sure that everyone, one person or many who touches base feels like they're connected to themselves again. They're feeling their authentic self, they're able to transform barriers for their wellbeing, and they're leading their lives, feeling alive with their potential. Like I'm clear about that so no matter what my fear comes up, I have to be brave. I move forward and I choose one person and I go around the room if it's a small, intimate space, zoom or otherwise and I welcome every single person at a time. And I find that if I do that and focus on one person, one person the entire time, team of one or team of many, one person, and then I focus on the next person and the next person. I don't get caught up in the fact that I'm speaking to a room of a thousand.

I don't get caught up in that because when we have our masterminds and we meet in person or we meet in groups, it's so essential for me to feel like I belong in that space. And so I would highly recommend that taking time for your 3 Ms, your mindful moment, your meditation and your mindful walk, right? If you will, or your moment of reflection if you will, for your writing or et cetera. Taking time to land into one person, if it helps you to say, okay, I'm gonna focus on one person, that no matter what, I can connect soul to soul to that person, and I can feel grounded on the other side. Hey, how did you feel about this talk today? How did it resonate for you and number three, making sure that no matter what, I'm clear about my mission, right? Because that, for me is key.

The L in love for the way that we lead our love medicine method is living our principle so I can launch my vision. So if I'm not clear about my mission, why am I showing up today? I'm not doing it because I'm billable hours. I'm not, I'm doing it because I have a mission of how I wanna touch people's lives and so when I get clear on my mission, I immediately am like, yeah, I belong here. I'm fulfilling my mission. I'm fulfilling my mission, I take the pepperonis off, right and I'm fulfilling my mission. And I think it changes the way that I show up even when it's scary and so that's something that is super important. This is one of the things that I love about you, is because you defy boundaries, right? You can say, I'm as a driven woman, people can project things onto you as someone who has blonde hair or me who has locks and at the end of the day, it's like, yeah, we're driven, say something about it, that part.

H: Have you been, I'm curious about this Sacred, did people tell you you were intimidating starting in your teens?

G: You know what, to be honest, my first year of high school I blended in like a fly on spiral of fly paper with other flies. I dunno, obviously I grew up very poor, that was my reference point. But I really blended in and I didn't think that anyone liked me truthfully. I truthfully had people telling me, what are you thought talking about, I thought you were amazing. I had pimples all on my forehead, I would always wear my bangs to cover them, and I just wanted to merge. And then one day I literally drank too much. I was drinking when I was in high school, completely breaking the rules, snuck a drink in of my mom's alcohol, completely had the worst experience. I felt so alone and I said to myself, literally, oh my gosh, if this is rock bottom for me as a kid, I literally thought this way and no one is here for me. I might as well be myself anyway. Like I thought to myself, literally, I could have not been here tomorrow. I got so sick that I literally said, I'm spending so much time trying to blend in and no one knows who I truly am. And literally God spoken to my spirit and was like, what a loss that would've been that you would've not been here and no one would've gotten to know the real you.

And so I said to myself, if nothing else, at least I belong to me and the next day, I kid you not, I went to the neighborhood thrift store, I bought a ruffled shirt, these funky stitch pants, my bellbottoms and my platform shoes. And I went into school with my fake fur and I said, you know what, and literally overnight I became popular and I never understood it. And to this day, as an adult, now I get it, what I got was, I finally showed up as me and in me being afraid of showing me, it actually was, that was a thing that was gonna draw me to my people, right? And so I'm not saying you have to grab a fur coat, or I'm saying it's not even about the clothes. It was about what I changed on the inside that showed up on the outside, right? And then from there on, I started hearing I'm intimidating, but not intimidating because I was out shining. I was still taking time to try to understand how you feel like you don't belong, because that part of me that was wounded never left me. So I think it's the balance of showing up in confidence, but never losing touch with that sensitive little girl who knew what it felt like to feel like no one got her but now bringing that into the platform, rocking young lady.

H: This is such an exquisite story, and I hope that people listening can really, really, really take it to heart, because I know that wherever you are, wherever you're listening, wherever you live, whatever your background, whatever your circumstances, whatever color shade your skin is, you have been taught if you are a female identifying person, you have been taught that you're not enough. And for those of us, like Sacred Walker and I, who are outspoken, can be noisy and quirky and eccentric and silly and goofy, and talk about pepperoni when we're making really important points. We also get told that we're too much and it is the too muchness that causes us to dim and shrink and fade, and you will blend when you do that. You will be as bland and boring and unnoticeable as you could possibly be, but you will never, ever, ever really feel that you are connected and that you have a sense of belonging and that you're being accepted not only with others, but not with yourself.

So you're so right, it's such a good example of, well, nobody likes me anyway and I'm miserable trying to blend in, so what if I just take off the breaks and allow myself to be who I actually am. At least I'll be enjoying myself even if everyone else rejects me and that was the turning point. And I love the sticker on your wall because this is as audio and video podcast, “She remembered who she was and the game changed.” And how wonderful that this happened when you were still in your early developmental years cuz so many people we meet, they do this very hard work of excavating their authentic self from under the rubble of judgment and fear and rejection many years down the line. It's probably one of the reasons why you shine so brightly and are such a leader now and to that point, you've mentioned several times about the mastermind, so I wanna give you a couple minutes to share for all the people listening who are like, I gotta have some more Sacred Walker in my life, tell me how.

G: Absolutely. So, you know, I appreciate the invitation and you know, there is more that's gonna be dived into when we have our upcoming event. So definitely reach out, you know, you can reach out in the show notes of the link or you can reach out and Ask Sacred on Facebook and Instagram and Sacred Walker on LinkedIn. But you know, something that I really loved that you just spoke into was belonging and so that's the focus of our mastermind. You know, in short, you know, when we fried fish, if we go into the kitchen, I know I grew up with fried fish. Whoever…

H: You must be hungry right now, girl. You're talking about pepperoni and fish, bring it.

G: You're going in you fry fish, you might fry fish in your own unique way and sometimes in frying fish, the oil jumps out on you if you're not careful. Unless you have an air fryer that we have now or something with a lid but it might jump on you and it burns you, right? And so now all of a sudden you connect fried fish with the burn and sometimes triggers can be like that. And so it's one of the things that we're gonna be doing in our mastermind is looking at how do we celebrate your unique way that you cook and fry that fish and love on that, and the unique sauces and scents that you put on it, whether you're putting on it, things connected to your Middle Eastern background, your Italian background or mine, your Caribbean background, but also how do we center ourselves so that when we can bring some anointments to one another so that we can feel like we can continue to shine in the world and not blame ourself for the oil that jumped on us.

Cause life happens, and whether you are 20, 40, 60, or 80, you might be reinventing yourself and so in this mastermind experience, you'll be getting support around how to feel like you belong in a clear and confident way. And we're gonna have a big retreat together, which is gonna be really delicious and beautiful and so we're really supporting empathic visionary leaders to come together and to shine. And so do reach out, do connect, we'll have some opportunities to learn more over time, but I'm super excited to make sure, to remind you to never blame yourself for the burn impact of you reinventing yourself and cooking something new in a different way. We just wanna help and then on the other side of that, we have the meal of the vision that is your unique calling, that you become the answer to your ancestors' prayers and so I'm so glad to be a guest on your show today, and please do reach out so that we can be in the Belonging Mastermind together.

H: I am so glad that you woke yourself up to the truth, that you are here to lead and shine and help others grow at an early age and I'm just so here for it. Thank you my friend.

G: Thank you so much and thank you everyone for tuning in, it's been an honor.

H: That's a wrap, folks.