You don’t need a seat at every table.

For a long time, I exhausted myself trying to fit into rooms where I never fully felt safe, seen, or understood. I kept thinking if I just worked harder, explained myself better, stayed quieter, achieved more, or made myself easier to accept…maybe I would finally feel like I belonged there.

And honestly? Sometimes the answer is not that something is wrong with you. Sometimes the table is wrong.

Neuroscience keeps showing us that rejection and exclusion are not small things to the brain or body. The nervous system processes social rejection through some of the SAME neuro pathways as physical pain.

Honestly, I think some of us have normalized living emotionally wounded because we’ve spent so much time trying to earn belonging.

For me, this manifests as:

• Overexplaining.

• Overperforming.

• Masking.

• Code-switching.

• Staying hyperaware of everyone else’s comfort.

• Shrinking myself to avoid being “too much.”

• Silencing parts of myself to stay accepted.

And the dangerous part is that, in the past, sometimes I confused proximity with belonging. Just because I am allowed in the room does not mean the room is healthy for me. Some tables only value what I produce. Some only tolerate edited versions of me. Some reward self-abandonment. Some have forced me to betray my convictions just to stay included.

I don’t want belonging that costs me my nervous system.

I want spaces where I can breathe.Where I don’t feel the need to perform. Where my body is not constantly bracing.

I’m learning that every opportunity is not alignment. Sometimes rejection is protection. Sometimes exclusion is redirection.

We were not designed to spend our whole lives begging for belonging.

We were designed for connection, yes, but healthy connection. Mutual connection. Honest connection. Spaces where we can be fully human and still fully loved.

My new goal is not to sit at every table. The goal is to find the ones where I do not have to abandon myself to stay seated.