Be Well Presents: A Coping Conversation - "Belonging"

Are you in need of belonging? Listen in to our Coping Conversation with Summer, who shares her moving story of finding her people and understanding belonging.

Kevin:  Welcome. I'm Chaplain Kevin, and today I'm talking with Summer, who grew up as the only child of a single mom. On her journey to live her authentic self, she set out to find her people and discovered the true meaning of belonging. This is “Coping”. 

Well. Summer, thank you so much for being here with me today. I'm just really excited to sit down with you and hear more of your story.

Summer: Thank you for having me. I'm really happy to be joining you and being able to share my story. I have a full house. I have five boys, ages 18 to eight, and a dog, a very sweet baby girl dog. And my husband is home, so we have a full house here and I'm happy to have this opportunity to join you. 

Kevin: Well, it's always nice to have a full house, isn't it? 

Summer: Yes, and you may hear some of them in the background.

Kevin: No worries. It's certainly part of your story, I imagine. Well, as I read some of your story, one of the main themes that came up for me was this idea of belonging. How do you define belonging? What does that word mean to you?

Summer: When I hear the word belonging, I think of being able to be accepted because we're able to be our authentic selves, not having to conform to any other persons or society's expectations for who we are, being worthy and knowing that we're worthy of being loved and accepted and cared for just by being who we are. It's that freedom to be authentic.

Kevin: Right. So where in your life have you sought that freedom to be your authentic self?

Summer: I grew up in a large family. Even though I am, I grew up as an only child. I do have a sister. I don't like the term half sister. We share the same father, but we have different mothers. But I didn't grow up with her. I've gotten closer to her as I've gotten older. But growing up, I was surrounded by cousins and aunts and uncles. And my mother was a single mother. She had me at 19. My father spent a lot of time in and out of jail, so he wasn't an active part of my life. But I always had people around me. 

I was always surrounded by love and support. And when I would go to school, I did find where I belonged. In elementary school, I immediately found some of my best friends who I still keep in contact with today. So I had a village. My grandmother, my aunts and uncles and cousins were that village for me.

Kevin: In such a busy house, how did you know that you belonged? How was it that you didn't just get lost in the mix of all the different people? 

Summer: That's a good question, because it was busy. Looking back, I think one of the key elements that made me feel like I belonged was this feeling of safety. No matter who was there, no matter who was visiting, no matter who lived there, I was always cared for more than just having hot meals and a safe place to sleep at night. 

We had freedom. We could ride our bikes up and down the block. And this was in Watts in the 80s. I felt safe because my family was always looking out for me. I never felt like I was being left behind or forgotten because of all of the kids. 

My grandmother and aunts and uncles and grandfather played a big part in making sure that all of us kids were cared for. And I don't know how they did it, but I always felt safe. And I think that's a big part of knowing that I belonged. 

Kevin: Yeah. Back to your definition of finding that balance between giving you the freedom to be your authentic self, but also including you in the life of the house, the life of the family. 

Summer: Absolutely. Yeah. 

Kevin: At school, how did you find that belonging there? What was it about school that you knew you belong there too?

Summer: My friends and I, we would spend a lot of time at school, but we would also invite each other to have sleepovers, typical for elementary school preteen girls. And whenever they would come to my house, my mother would make sure that we had all the snacks and all of the games, and it was so much fun. And when I would go to their house, it was the same. Their families would care for me and make me feel welcome. 

One of the things that stood out, though, that was, I think, the point where I started to notice what it looked like to have a two parent household with a mother and a father who were present. And although my friends' families always welcomed me, they never made me feel any different because of my home environment being different from theirs. I noticed it. And I think that's the first time in my life when I really started to become more and more aware of my father's absence. And in a lot of ways, I don't think I spent too much time thinking about it, though. I noticed it, but I would move on. 

Kevin: Yeah. It sounds like you didn't feel you were lacking, but it was the first time that you began to wonder.

Summer: Yes. I didn't have any contact with my dad. The only thing I had was I had seen a picture that I took with my dad when I was about two years old, and it was around the time that he was in jail. My mother shared that picture with me because she did want me to know what he looked like and. She never spoke badly about him. She just didn't have a lot of information to give me. The only connection I really had was it was just that photograph. 

So it was around the beginning of entering middle school that I was learning about myself and looking forward to this next adventure in my life. And because we would all my family would always gather at my grandmother's house on Sundays. Like I said, it was the hub. We were there one Sunday afternoon after church, and there was a knock on the door, and it was my father. And it's the first memory I have of meeting him and talking to him. 

My mother wasn't expecting him either. And when he arrived, I remember I can see it in my head, sitting on my grandmother's porch with my mother, listening to him tell us about how much he wanted to develop a relationship and change his life and be better and do better and be active in my life. 

Kevin: How was that for you?

Summer: It was bittersweet. I had mixed feelings about it, and my mother made sure to keep my focus on what I had and not what I didn't have. What I had was a family that cared for me and friends who loved me, and I was where I belonged. And so when he appeared out of nowhere, it seems, I wanted to believe that he was going to stay around. And I think at that stage of my life, I was hoping that this would be an opportunity for us to build a relationship. 

But because of what my mother had taught me and because of how she had allowed me to just focus on. The support and love that I was surrounded by. I didn't get too excited about it. Gosh, as a child, to learn how to have realistic expectations of a parent. 

Kevin: How did your mom teach you that? How did you learn that at such a young age?

Summer: One thing I can always hear my mother saying, and she says it even now, is to remember who people are when they show you who they are. And she would always say, whether it was my friends that I was having a disagreement with or family members or with my father, she would just remind me, we can't pretend to be surprised when people show us who they are. 

And so, because my father was consistently away and not making a consistent effort to be a part of my life, I applied what she had been teaching me, and so I was going to respond to his promises with that understanding. 

Kevin: Right? Yeah. That's really good advice from your mom to remember who people are. In what way is that advice connected to your understanding of belonging?

Summer: It taught me that if I wanted to be my authentic self and be able to belong, and by having the freedom to just be me, I had to extend that to other people, including my father. I couldn't change him. That's one thing that I knew, no matter how many times he showed up and made promises and went away, I couldn't change my father. He was who he was. And so, in allowing people the freedom to be their authentic selves, you are also giving yourself permission to decide if you want to accept that, right? 

Kevin: Yeah. So it sounds like belonging works both ways, right? You give the freedom to the other person to be who they are, and sometimes that leads to them belonging elsewhere. Right? And because of that, it allows you to have some level of peace, to know that I have no control over what you choose to do. 

Summer: And so whatever is your decision, I have to accept that and then accept that I'm not fighting this battle of trying to force something to happen. When he ended up going away and not calling anymore, during that time, my life just sort of continued to move on. 

Kevin: We'll be right back.

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Kevin: Welcome back. So you're learning these lessons about belonging at such a young age. Where did your journey take you next? 

Summer: If it was Sunday morning or Wednesday night for choir rehearsal, we were always in church and my mother, I both sang in the choirs. We helped with Sunday school. And it was always a part of my life. I cannot think of my life without my church family. It was another safe space. It. We were allowed to be ourselves. We had fun. And all of my church family really knew that my mother was a single mother. I know it now, but I don't think I knew it then. 

They stepped up to help however they could. They showed up for us.

Kevin: You brought with you this strong sense of belonging.

Summer: Yeah. Yeah, I had this power behind me from all of the these people who had made me feel like I belonged, who had loved me and cared for me in spite of my faults, my shortcomings, my downfalls. And within the first week of school, really on the first day, I found two of my best friends who I still talk to. I am still close to those two best friends and several others that I met within that first semester of school. 

I am still close to those people. Those became my people, and they are still my people. And again, that common thread of just being able to be myself, I was actively involved at Beverly. I started the Black Students Union. I was in student government. I was in an organization called the Wish Project. It stands for World in Search of Harmony. It was coordinated by our school psychologist who saw the need for there to be an understanding of diversity, equity, and inclusion. Before those became the buzzwords of today, all of us converged in the Wish Project, teaching students about acceptance and belonging, allowing people to be themselves and feel safe enough to be themselves because they're going to be loved and cared for with a sense of humanity. And that was where I learned a lot about the importance of not just knowing this for myself, but extending it to other people. So I enjoyed Beverly for three years in my senior year. I was excited about the next phase of my life. 

Summer: Around that same time, we got a phone call from my grandmother, my paternal grandmother, that my grandfather was not doing well. We knew that he had had emphysema and lung cancer. Both of my grandparents were smokers, and they had stopped. But the effects of the the years of smoking had made my grandfather really, really sick. And when we got to my grandmother's house, that's when we found out my father was there. And the last time I had seen my father was on the porch. 

And the promises that were made then and the things that he said he wanted to do to commit to being a better father. So when we got to my grandmother's house and I realized he was there, he asked if we could take a walk. And I'm 16 and a half now at this point, and so my mother trusted how she raised me. She asked me if I was okay with taking a walk with him. I said, yeah, I was fine. And so we went outside and took a short walk. 

And during that walk, my father asked me if I was disappointed in him. And I let him know that I wasn't disappointed because I just never had any expectations. I hadn't built up this false image of him in my head. And I think, in all fairness, that's what he deserved as well. I think it would have been much harder if I had built up these images of him doing more and being consistent and coming to my middle school performances or being there for me when I was applying for college to help me help walk me through the process. 

If I had spent all those years hoping and wishing and being mad that he wasn't there when he asked me that question, I think the answer might have been. Much harder for him to receive if I would have said, yes, I'm disappointed in you because you let me down. 

I knew that who he was, he was not capable of giving me more than he did. So I didn't put that burden on him. It doesn't mean that it's okay. It doesn't mean that I was happy about that. It was just the reality of you can't expect from people more than they're capable of giving. And because of that, I wasn't disappointed.

Kevin: So how did you conclude that conversation with him? How did you leave it with him?

Summer: He asked if he could attend my graduation, and I told him I'd be happy if he was there. I knew my grandmother was planning to come. I knew my grandfather probably would not make it just to the graduation, but he may not survive to that point. And my mother and other family members who have always been there for me were going to be at the graduation. 

So it would not have been a disruption if my father had been there or if he had not. So I left it up to him. I told him I would be more than happy to have you there. You're welcome. It's on the lawn of the school, so almost anyone can come. You don't really need a special invitation. And he did not show up. So I was not really surprised, but I was a little bit sad for that one event. I think there was a slight expectation that since he had asked and I said yes, and it was not too far in the future that he might have been there, but this focus on what I had versus what I didn't have, it really outweighed the disappointment. 

My father's mother was there. My mother was there. Aunts were there, friends were there. It was a great day. Those were my people. It would have been a little sweeter if he had been there, but it was still a great day because my people were there and we celebrated. 

Kevin: So you graduate high school, and you are now even more free than you've been before. Free to now live your your life as an emerging adult. Where did your journey take you next? 

Summer: After high school, I enrolled in Loyola Marymount University. So to save money, I stayed home with my mother. We shared a car. I would drop her off at work and I would go to class. But we knew right away, within the first month of school, that we would need to have another income because it was incredibly expensive.  Not just the tuition, but the books and the commute and all of that. And so I got a job working at UCLA. That's where my mother had been. She was a financial counselor, and I really enjoyed working at UCLA, and I ended up staying there for about ten years. And in 2000, I met my now husband. We were introduced by his parents. My mother and I had joined a new church, and his parents were singing in the choir. His dad is a deacon there. And they came to a mutual friend and said, we want our son to meet Summer. 

London came to meet me, and three months later, he proposed. It happened really quickly, but when you know, you know, talking about belonging and being your authentic self and finding your person, I found all of that in my now husband. 

You have a good sense of self already. You know when you know.. And that is key to finding a partner and being able to feel like you belong. You have to know yourself. And the latter part of the year 2000, I was at work one evening at UCLA. 

I worked at the front desk in the main hospital. And this gentleman walks up to the front desk and says hello to me. And I said hi back. And he said, you don't know who I am? And I said, no, I don't. He said, I'm Tony. I'm your father. Wow. And so the last conversation I had had with him was in 1995, right before I graduated high school and I was a teenager, and I was about to enter the real world and start college. And now fast forward to five years later, to the year 2000. I'm a young woman working a job and about to get married, and here my father is again, unannounced, unexpected, and he introduced himself as Tony and that he was your dad. 

Kevin: What happened next?

Summer: We started talking. It was awkward because I was at work, and I worked at the main desk of the hospital of UCLA Medical Center. So there was always traffic, always people stopping and phones ringing. But in that short amount of time that we spoke that first time, because unlike the other times, he actually did come back, a few times we had more than one conversation. He shared with me that he had and had come back and he had a girlfriend and he was planning to get married and build a family, and he was working and trying to get himself together, trying to get clean and stay clean. 

And he found me by reaching out to my sister because she knew where I worked. And he said he missed me and he wanted to see me and see what was going on in my life. And he apologized for the times that he wasn't there. And I had no negative feelings about it. I was genuinely happy to see him. I was happy to see that he was healthy. He looked good. He looked like he had been working and taking care of himself. And I told him that I was engaged, and he said he would come back the next night so he could meet my husband. 

So I told my husband to come visit me at work. Well, my fiancee at the time, but I told him to come visit me at work. Yeah, so he could meet my father. And so the next night, he came back, and my fiance, London was there, and he and my father hit it off. They started talking right away. And my husband is he's just a genuinely good guy, and he's always looking for the good in people. And he knew what I had experienced growing up without a father. 

He's heard all of the things that I'm sharing with you today. And so there was no reason for him to have animosity towards my father, because he knew that I had made peace with my father not consistently being there.  And so we just would have great conversations. I think there were maybe two or three more times that he showed up and right before my husband picked me up from work. And we talked about a lot of different things and and just like the other times, though, it sort of just came to an end. 

Summer: I can't remember the last phone call or the last conversation. It just stopped again. Wow. And. I had experienced that so many times that I think I knew what to do. I just got back to living life, and that's what I did. 

Right before the wedding, my grandmother reached out to me, my father's mother, and asked if he was going to be invited to the wedding, because she really thought that he should be invited. And I did feel bad telling her no, that I was not going to invite him to the wedding and I had prayed that she would understand my reason. So this was not about excluding family from this event that I was so excited for. It was more about the people who I genuinely knew had been there for me, had been there for my husband, were able to be there and celebrate with us. 

And every person in that room knew that they were there because they had been invited to share this really special moment with us. And I also needed my grandmother to understand that I love my father. There is no love lost on my father. But on that day, I needed to honor all of the hard work that my mother had done to get me to this point. That's what that day was meant to be about, celebrating these genuine, real relationships that had always been there for us. 

Kevin: Yeah. And I hear how your decision to not invite your dad was not about exclusion, but it was about having those that belonged present. Absolutely. So where did your journey take you next?

Summer: Shortly after our young this was born, we were getting ready to go out for the day, and I got a phone call from my sister. She called me out of the blue and said our father died. Oh, my gosh. And this was around 2015. There are those moments that I can picture in my head, like, sitting on the porch talking to him. I can feel the sun on my face when I was that first time that first conversation I had with him. 

And I can remember today, I was sitting on the ottoman, tying my tennis shoes when I got the phone call. And I sat up and said, oh, how are you feeling? Because that was really my only concern. I knew she was closer to him, and I wanted to know how she was feeling. 

And she was sad and in shock and processing her feelings. And she asked me how I was doing, and I said, I'm okay. Thank you for letting me know. I didn't know what else to say. And I told her to call me if she needed anything, any help with the arrangements or she just needed to talk, but I said, okay, but thank you for letting me know and we hung up. And then I walked back to my room where my husband was. And I said, my father just died. And he said, oh, my gosh, I'm so sorry. Are you okay? How do you feel? And I said, I don't really feel anything. I don't know how to feel. I don't really know him. I've only met him a few times, and right now, I don't know if it's a bad thing, but I just don't feel anything. And he said, well, it's okay. You just feel what you feel. 

So we actually went about our day. About a week later, I remember sitting on the edge of the sofa, just watching television or on my phone or something, and out of the blue, I just broke down and bald my eyes out and think it was because all of these feelings that I didn't know I had suddenly came to the surface. And they caught me off guard, because up to that point, I had almost prided myself on not really being. Overly emotional or concerned about whether or not my father was going to be around. Right. And it really wasn't actually the sadness from what he had or had not done in his life. 

The sadness came from the fact that this was so final. Because I had always left that part of my heart open for him to be able to have a relationship with me. The fact that he had passed way made that impossible. There was a finality to his passing. Exactly. And after that day, I know I went through the range of emotions. I went through all of the phases of grieving, including the anger, going through those range of emotions. 

I had to start really being honest with myself about why I was feeling these feelings that I didn't know existed or that I didn't know I had the ability to feel, because that very first day I was just numb, and I had to come to terms with that. 

Kevin: Right. So, Summer, as you think about your life and your definition of belonging, what advice do you have? Others who are struggling with belonging, who desire to belong, what advice do you have for them? 

Summer: One of the first things I had to learn to do and the passing of my father actually helped with this. I knew I had to figure out who I was and not necessarily even the lofty understanding of who I am as a person forevermore, but just who I am today. 

What am I feeling today? Why do I feel these feelings today? What experiences yesterday and in days past have led up to this point where I feel these things? And another thing that I would say is share your needs with others. 

It's important to be your own advocate, to teach people how to care for you, to teach people how to show up for you. And it's not through a step by step list of instructions that you give to your friends and family. It's in how you show up for them. Model for your family members, for your friends, for the people around you. Model for them how you want them to show up for you. And my third piece of advice would be to find your people. 

It's important to find your people, to find the people who will love you and care for you and show up for you the way you need and for whom you can show up and care for and love as their authentic selves without wanting to change each other. And I think the best people, when you find your people, the best people really do bring out the best in you. When you find where you belong, I do believe when you find where you belong, you will start to grow. 

Kevin: Yeah. Well, Summer, thank you so much for sharing your story with me today. I so appreciate your vulnerability, your honesty. Thank you. Thank you for sharing your story with me today.

Summer: Thank you for allowing me to share my story with you.