on belonging.

In October 2023, I signed up for a ten-month, multi-modality somatic certification program called Rooted.

I was excited to learn more about the world of somatics, including Somatic Experiencing®, Internal Family Systems, Polyvagal Theory, and other BodyBased™ techniques.

By January 2024, I had dropped out of Cohort One.

I knew going into it that the program was mostly for coaches, mentors, healers, therapists, and entrepreneurial folks. While I wasn’t any of those things, I still thought it held something for me.

I wanted to learn about my nervous system. I wanted to better understand my internal environment and how it reacts to my external world. I wanted to learn how to use somatics and body-based practices to connect back with myself. To develop an intimate understanding of myself in ways that I’ve never had before.

I wanted to come home to myself and to learn how to help others do that, too.

only, I didn’t really believe I was capable of helping myself, let alone helping others.

When I sat on the first introductory call, I looked at the square images of fifteen other women, listening as they each told a small snippet of their unique stories and identities.

Life coaches, breathwork facilitators, yoga teachers, therapists, retreat hosts, six-figure entrepreneurs, embodiment facilitators.

As each person spoke, I noticed myself feeling smaller and smaller. I wasn’t any of those things. I wasn’t as successful or motivated or smart or badass as any of these women. These women were actually helping people. I was barely holding on by a thread—forget being able to help others.

What the hell am I doing here?

I felt like an outsider. I felt unworthy. I felt like I didn’t belong.

When I decided I couldn’t continue in the program, I hid in my parked car—always my safe place—as I sent a voice note explaining why I didn’t think the program was a good fit for me to the woman running it.

And honestly, it wasn’t a good fit for me at that exact time moment in time, looking back.

But at the end of the day, the root of my dropping out was fear. It was feelings of inadequacy. It wasn’t whatever justification I came up with in my mind.

It was because I was peers among women whom I didn’t think I belonged with.

Whew.

That was a tough realization for me.

Imposter syndrome and feeling like I’m not “enough” runs deep. I have this voice inside that’s always saying, “Who are YOU to do [insert whatever thing I want to do, achieve, or accomplish]?”

I always feel like I don’t have enough knowledge, skills, experience, wisdom, or power.

That I’m somehow “less than” the other women on my Zoom screen.

This has been a huge block for me that I’ve started chipping away at over the last few years, months, weeks.

because logically, I know it’s not true. but I’ve got to make my body believe it.

Which is exactly where the work of somatics, embodiment, and “parts work” comes in.

So fast forward from dropping out in January 2024 to January 2025.

I re-enrolled in the program.

Instead of viewing it as a “failure,” I decided to view it as a beautiful opportunity.

I have the opportunity now to enter this space fully believing that I am worthy of being there.

I can re-write, in real time, the experience of feeling like an imposter.

When we had our first Cohort Five introductory call at the beginning of February, the facilitator asked us to tune in with our intention—our reason for being there, in that certification.

I was flooded with an overwhelming sense of knowing. I belong is what I heard.

So when I was asked to introduce myself, I told my story of “failure” and how I want to rewrite this feeling of inadequacy. How this time, I want to intentionally ground in the feeling of belonging.

How I want to interact with the other women and engage with the material in the way that someone who believed they were fully worthy would.

my intention is to ground into the knowing that I belong.

I belong in this program, in my body, in this world, in this exact moment in time. I am worthy of taking up space. Of asking questions. Of offering reflections. Of listening and teaching. Of growing with other badass women.

My throat got tight and the pressure behind my eyes started to build as I tried to stop myself from crying.

I looked at the faces of the women before me, each in their own individual Zoom squares, their own individual lives, their own individual bodies.

Equally important. Equally worthy. Equally enough.

I belong. You belong. We belong.

xx

Courtney