Belonging. You need to feel it in all aspects of your life, including the workplace. Many business leaders recognize this truth and embrace the significant benefits that result from workplace belonging. These benefits include increased psychological safety, trust, and innovation. Yet, most of these leaders struggle with how to build belonging at work. Some even believe the idea of belonging at work - let alone feeling it - is too elusive to achieve. In Imagine Belonging, Rhodes Perry equips inclusive leaders with a powerful framework to overcome these challenges. The book invites you to participate in this critical conversation, and motivates you to eradicate the pain of exclusion that far too many of us experience on the job. Perry draws upon his distinguished career as a nationally recognized DEI thought leader to help you understand complex issues like power, privilege, targeted universalism, and belonging at a deeper level. He offers practical cases studies, proven strategies, and rich stories empowering you to overcome the common barriers that often stymie your organization's DEI goals. His writing encourages you to positively influence your workplace culture by embracing inclusive leadership practices, cooperative team building methods, and fresh approaches on how to equitably structure your organization. Imagine Belonging helps you recognize the relative power and privilege you hold to transform yourself, your team, and your workplace. Whether your organization is just beginning its diversity, equity and inclusion journey, or is further along in the process, Imagine Belonging will inspire you to transform your vision of belonging at work into a reality....and reap the rewards that result from establishing an equitable organization.

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • REESE’S BOOK CLUB PICK • A timely and important book that challenges everything we think we know about cultivating true belonging in our communities, organizations, and culture, from the #1 bestselling author of Rising Strong, Daring Greatly, and The Gifts of Imperfection Don’t miss the five-part Max docuseries Brené Brown: Atlas of the Heart! “True belonging doesn’t require us to change who we are. It requires us to be who we are.” Social scientist Brené Brown, PhD, MSW, has sparked a global conversation about the experiences that bring meaning to our lives—experiences of courage, vulnerability, love, belonging, shame, and empathy. In Braving the Wilderness, Brown redefines what it means to truly belong in an age of increased polarization. With her trademark mix of research, storytelling, and honesty, Brown will again change the cultural conversation while mapping a clear path to true belonging. Brown argues that we’re experiencing a spiritual crisis of disconnection, and introduces four practices of true belonging that challenge everything we believe about ourselves and each other. She writes, “True belonging requires us to believe in and belong to ourselves so fully that we can find sacredness both in being a part of something and in standing alone when necessary. But in a culture that’s rife with perfectionism and pleasing, and with the erosion of civility, it’s easy to stay quiet, hide in our ideological bunkers, or fit in rather than show up as our true selves and brave the wilderness of uncertainty and criticism. But true belonging is not something we negotiate or accomplish with others; it’s a daily practice that demands integrity and authenticity. It’s a personal commitment that we carry in our hearts.” Brown offers us the clarity and courage we need to find our way back to ourselves and to each other. And that path cuts right through the wilderness. Brown writes, “The wilderness is an untamed, unpredictable place of solitude and searching. It is a place as dangerous as it is breathtaking, a place as sought after as it is feared. But it turns out to be the place of true belonging, and it’s the bravest and most sacred place you will ever stand.”

Belonging offers a fresh perspective on common grace, leading us out of self-destructive narcissism and into whole and healthy relationships with God and others. The reality is, God created us with an innate desire to belong to something more than us. When we integrate our story within God’s first story about us, we can bravely face ourselves and discover the truth of belonging and worthiness that God has written. And we start to imagine how to invite others into a greater sense of belonging. The journey to finding ourselves and one another is not for the faint of heart. It’s messy. It’s hard work. It’s worth it. We can have a front-row seat to a tectonic shift, not just on the surface of our lives, but in places deep down inside as we recognize common grace in the beautiful and terrible parts of our lives. In other words, every chapter in our stories, every conversation, and every character is part of the way back to belonging. You are invited to the very edge of your seat to anticipate what could happen in you and others if you engage with the unexpected grace that passionately declares life is not all about our pain, our accomplishments, our rights, our abuse, our power, or our beliefs. It is about us finding our way. Together. It is about a supernatural interconnectedness to a deeper story that invades every nook and cranny of our lives with light and love—because we belong to one another.

An inspirational guide to the 6 core qualities of healthy communities, for anyone looking to build community as a source of connection and a vehicle for social change After two years meeting with different communities in the US, psychologist Lisa Kentgen identified 6 key traits of vibrant, healthy communities that we can all apply to our own lives and networks: Commitment to care Acceptance Diversity Skillful conflict resolution Bonding rituals Hospitality Each chapter focuses on one of these traits, highlighting a particular community as a case study of how it can be put into practice. You’ll learn about a wide range of successful community models, including a tiny-home village for people who had been chronically houseless in Austin, Texas; a study circle to build connection between Native and non-Native people in a small town in South Dakota; a 500-member community choir in Columbus, Ohio; and a Buddhist center in Barre, Massachusetts committed to bringing greater diversity to the Dharma. Throughout the book, you’ll reflect: How can we cultivate these traits of vibrant community in our own lives? What would it look like to prioritize caring and acceptance in our interactions with others? How can we create a climate of true inclusivity, one where our differences both challenge and strengthen us? How can we learn to feel more comfortable with tension and acquire the skills to move through conflict toward creative solutions? What would happen if we incorporated meaningful rituals into our communities and made a point of celebrating each other? With intention and practice, we can transform our social relationships and build communities that appreciate difference, encourage authentic expression, and foster an environment of belonging and mutual care. This book will inspire you to make the transformative leap from “me” to “we,” creating communal, loving spaces in which to connect--and thrive--together.

What happens to a sense of belonging when national and regional governments, religious organizations, community groups, political parties, and corporations become unstable and incoherent, as they have in these nationalist and postnationalist times? From a richly interdisciplinary perspective, the authors examine notions of citizenship and cultural hybridization, migration and other forms of mobility, displacements and ethnic cleansing, and the nature of national belonging in a world turning ever more fluid, aided by transnational flows of capital, information, people, and ideas.

On forming people who form communion Theological education has always been about formation: first of people, then of communities, then of the world. If we continue to promote whiteness and its related ideas of masculinity and individualism in our educational work, it will remain diseased and thwart our efforts to heal the church and the world. But if theological education aims to form people who can gather others together through border-crossing pluralism and God-drenched communion, we can begin to cultivate the radical belonging that is at the heart of God’s transformative work. In this inaugural volume of the Theological Education between the Times series, Willie James Jennings shares the insights gained from his extensive experience in theological education, most notably as the dean of a major university’s divinity school—where he remains one of the only African Americans to have ever served in that role. He reflects on the distortions hidden in plain sight within the world of education but holds onto abundant hope for what theological education can be and how it can position itself at the front of a massive cultural shift away from white, Western cultural hegemony. This must happen through the formation of what Jennings calls erotic souls within ourselves—erotic in the sense that denotes the power and energy of authentic connection with God and our fellow human beings. After Whiteness is for anyone who has ever questioned why theological education still matters. It is a call for Christian intellectuals to exchange isolation for intimacy and embrace their place in the crowd—just like the crowd that followed Jesus and experienced his miracles. It is part memoir, part decolonial analysis, and part poetry—a multimodal discourse that deliberately transgresses boundaries, as Jennings hopes theological education will do, too.

2018 Readers' Favorite Gold Winner 2019 IAN Book of the Year Award 2017 Nautilus Award Gold Winner Feel like you don’t belong? You’re not alone.The world has never been more connected, yet people are lonelier than ever. Whether we feel unworthy, alienated, or anxious about our place in the world — the absence of belonging is the great silent wound of our times. Most people think of belonging as a mythical place, and they spend a lifetime searching for it in vain. But what if belonging isn’t a place at all? What if it’s a skill that has been lost or forgotten? With her signature depth and eloquence, Toko-pa maps a path to Belonging from the inside out. Drawing on myth, stories and dreams, she takes us into the origins of our estrangement, reframing exile as a necessary initiation into authenticity. Then she shares the competencies of belonging: a set of ancestral practices to heal our wounds and restore true belonging to our lives and to the world.

Winner of the 2021 Books Are My Bag Readers Award for Non-fiction Shortlisted for the 2021 Wainwright Prize "I knew in every bone of my body, in every fibre of my being, that I had to report what had happened, not only for myself but to help stop anyone else having to go through what I did. I knew I could not remain silent, or still, I could not stop walking through the world." A journey of reclamation through the natural landscapes of the North, brilliantly exploring identity, nature, place and belonging. Beautifully written and truly inspiring, I Belong Here heralds a powerful and refreshing new voice in nature writing. Anita Sethi was on a journey through Northern England when she became the victim of a race-hate crime. The crime was a vicious attack on her right to exist in a place on account of her race. After the event Anita experienced panic attacks and anxiety. A crushing sense of claustrophobia made her long for wide open spaces, to breathe deeply in the great outdoors. She was intent on not letting her experience stop her travelling freely and without fear. The Pennines - known as 'the backbone of Britain' runs through the north and also strongly connects north with south, east with west - it's a place of borderlands and limestone, of rivers and 'scars', of fells and forces. The Pennines called to Anita with a magnetic force; although a racist had told her to leave, she felt drawn to further explore the area she regards as her home, to immerse herself deeply in place. Anita's journey through the natural landscapes of the North is one of reclamation, a way of saying that this is her land too and she belongs in the UK as a brown woman, as much as a white man does. Her journey transforms what began as an ugly experience of hate into one offering hope and finding beauty after brutality. Anita transforms her personal experience into one of universal resonance, offering a call to action, to keep walking onwards. Every footstep taken is an act of persistence. Every word written against the rising tide of hate speech, such as this book, is an act of resistance.

For women and girls who have been misunderstood, miss-diagnosed and quite frankly missed altogether in getting an autism diagnosis – THIS BOOK IS FOR YOU. For decades females on the spectrum went undetected causing a lifetime of struggles, anxiety, depression, missed opportunities and incorrect diagnoses. Women and girls tended to fly under the radar due to the fact that they learned from an early age how to mask, mimic and role-play in order to fit in with societal norms and expectations. Due to a lot of research in this field, there are now a lot more evidence-based theories to support the view that autism is just as prevalent in females as it is in males, but it just wasn’t picked up due to the gender difference in presentation. There still needs to be a lot more awareness and information available for women and girls who may feel different but don’t know why. Maybe they have been searching for answers in the wrong places. My mission is to help raise awareness of this condition. And who can do this better than a female on the spectrum that walks, talks and lives each day in those shoes?