Brené Brown Struggling to Belong

Belonging can be such a fickle and painful process in life. As the popular researcher and writer Brené Brown describes in her book, Braving the Wilderness, she struggled to fit in after moving to New Orleans in the late 60s. In Brown’s case, her name created quite a bit of controversy itself, as she tried to understand the largely segregated world of the south that she found herself in as a young child:

Experiences of not belonging are the time markers of my life, and they started early. I attended pre-K and kindergarten at Paul Habans Elementary on the west bank of New Orleans. It was 1969, and as wonderful as the city was and still is, it was a place suffocated by racism. Schools had only become officially desegregated the year I started. I didn’t know or understand much about what was happening, I was too young; but I knew that my mom was outspoken and tenacious…

We had moved there from Texas, and that had been hard for me…Homeroom lists were used to determine everything—from attendance records to birthday party invitations. One day my mom’s room-mother partner waved the list in front of my mom’s face and said, “Look at all of the black kids on here! Look at these names! They’re all named Casandra!” Huh, my mom thought. Maybe this explained why I was being left out of so many of my white friends’ parties.

My mom goes by her middle name, but her first name is Casandra. My full name on that homeroom list? Casandra Brené Brown. If you’re African American and reading this, you know exactly why white families weren’t inviting me over. It’s the same reason a group of African American graduate students gave me a card at the end of the semester that said, “OK.

You really are Brené Brown.” They had signed up for my course on women’s issues and almost fell out of their chairs when I walked to my desk at the front of the classroom on the first day of class. One student said, “You are not Casandra Brené Brown?” Yes, ma’am…The black families were welcoming to me—but their shock was noticeable when I walked through the door. One of my friends told me I was the first white person who had ever been inside their house.

Brené Brown, Braving the Wilderness: The Quest for True Belonging and the Courage to Stand Alone, Random House Publishing Group.