The need to belong starts early.
For many of us, it shows up in elementary school. Wanting to feel accepted. Hoping to belong. We felt it in gym class, silently praying not to be picked last for the team.
Later, it became the desire to belong to a special someone. Being the third wheel on a date was never a great feeling.
As we age, that need doesn’t disappear. We still long to belong. To a partner, a family, a community.
Sometimes belonging looks like a close-knit group of friends.
Other times, it’s finding like-minded peers who truly get you.
If you’re reading this blog, belonging might mean something very specific. A community of women who share your love of sport.
Brené Brown writes about the difference between fitting in and belonging in her book Braving the Wilderness. She says:
“Fitting in is about assessing a situation and becoming who you need to be in order to be accepted. Belonging is being accepted for who you are.”
That distinction has followed me for most of my life.
For years, I’ve lived on both sides of that line. Belonging among strong, badass endurance athletes. Feeling like a complete outsider.
I spent my adult life in a small, remote mining town in Northwestern Ontario. It wasn’t exactly a mecca for sport or health. People would stare at me like I had a third eye when I walked into the coffee shop in cycling gear. Truck drivers literally tried to run me off the road while I rode solo laps for long Ironman training days.
I didn’t feel like I fit in with the other dance moms.
But I knew I belonged as an athlete every time I stepped onto a start line.
Race day was magic. I was surrounded by my people. Swimmers, runners, cyclists, triathletes. Clubs and communities that welcomed me easily.
And yet, I still held onto the habit of training alone.
One thing never changed. My belief that I was an athlete.
Until I felt like I wasn’t.
The biggest thing cancer took from me, other than estrogen, was my identity as an athlete.
Two months before my diagnosis, I ran 55 km.
The day before I found my lump, I climbed the rope at CrossFit.
I was strong. I was capable. I was a badass female athlete.
Until I wasn’t.
Surgery. Loss of mobility. Chemotherapy. Fatigue. Anemia. Brain fog. Radiation.
They changed me.
And suddenly, I didn’t feel like I belonged anywhere.
Until I found Element Sports Coaching.
Most people know me as Coach Jenn, but what they don’t know is that I first found Tenille while searching for someone to help guide me back to myself. Coaches need coaches and anyone who knows Tenille knows she is truly exceptional.
What I’ve learned since is this.
We don’t need to be in peak shape.
We don’t need personal bests or podiums.
We don’t even need to stand on a start line to belong.
I was supposed to race a 70.3 in Oregon this summer. With the loss of my dad, I simply don’t have the energy to commit to the training that distance requires. Instead, I’m choosing to train for my health. For my sanity. Because I want to.
That doesn’t make me less of an athlete.
It doesn’t mean I no longer belong.
And it doesn’t make me less of a coach.
It means I understand, deeply, what it feels like to be both strong and vulnerable. Badass and human.
As long as I keep showing up for myself and for my team, I have a place in this sport and a place at Element Sports Coaching.
Life keeps throwing me curveballs.
Yet I know, more than ever, that this is where I want to be.
I have finally found a place where I belong.
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