Building belonging with your brand
Have you ever felt like you don't belong? Maybe in your family, or community, maybe even the world?
I know I have. From being the kid with divorced parents (in Kansas, in the 90s), to family dysfunction, to my gifts and talents, sexuality, and spiritual beliefs, I have spent much of my life feeling like I didn't belong and couldn't fit in - and consequently, like something was wrong with me.
(Isn't that the message we're so often taught in our culture?! Ugh.)
When my 93yo grandmother passed away recently, these wounds arose again, front and center. We weren't very close due to complex family dynamics, but she was a dear and loving woman, and the grief that rolled through me was surprising. When I had the opportunity to really sit and move with the grief, I was shown the message: belonging.
She was my link of belonging in that part of my family, and with her passing I felt a severing of a thread I didn't know was holding me fast.
As I danced with it all, I saw her own struggles with belonging and visioned her spirit soaring to the life she always wished she could have - one of pursuing her own passions and honoring her own needs, surrounded by those who saw, understood, and celebrated her. And I came to understand more fully that that's the gift I now have:
To build a life in which I belong, first and foremost, to myself.
That's the gift we all hold when we decide to be brave enough to step into our truth, embrace our passions, and share our gifts with the world: the opportunity to create new worlds for ourselves and those we love where we belong, unabashedly, to ourselves.
As artists and business owners, we have the added opportunity to extend this sense of belonging to others as well, through our brand.
Put broadly, your brand is the world into which you invite your people. (Thanks to Amy Walsh for that beautiful concept!)
Which is why it's so important to craft it before diving into building out your website, and why I include it in all my packages. It is not just the visuals, the fonts, the colors, the logo - it is also the values, the voice, the message, the offers, the impact, and the factors that make you and your business unique.
When aligned and authentic, your brand evokes what it feels like to engage with you and your work. It gives your people a sense of homecoming amid their problems, their longings, and the utter heaviness of the world, and inspires in them emotions like joy, hope, relief, and excitement as they realize that perhaps they aren't really alone and nothing is, in fact, wrong with them.
