I was out on a morning cycle with a group of people I didn’t know.
Over coffee afterwards, we discovered that several of us live on the same street, and yet we had never crossed paths before. Neighbours for years, living just metres apart, but without any real connection.
It struck me how easy it is to assume that proximity creates belonging. That if we share a street, an organisation, a team, or even a profession, connection will somehow take care of itself.
But belonging doesn’t arise automatically.
Structure may place us within the same system – the same neighbourhood, team or community – yet belonging grows through participation: the moments where we choose to engage, speak, listen and remain open rather than retreat behind assumptions.
Structure gives us the place to stand, but belonging comes alive through how we move within it – through the exchange, the participation, and the quiet “yes” to being part of something together.
Later that day, another conversation about a more strained dynamic in the neighbourhood offered a different perspective.
“You meet the person you deserve,” someone said.
The comment stayed with me – not because I believe people “deserve” difficult behaviour, but because it highlighted something important: relationships are co-created.
Different people meet different expressions of us, not because we are inconsistent or inauthentic, but because behaviour emerges in context. What others experience is shaped partly by the awareness we bring to the interaction – our tone, our boundaries, our steadiness, and our willingness to stay present.
We may not control how others behave, but we can influence what they encounter in us. We can choose whether to respond from defensiveness or steadiness, withdrawal or engagement, habit or awareness, and in those choices, we contribute – consciously or unconsciously – to the sense of belonging within any system we are part of.
This reflection later unfolded into a deeper conversation within our FFI Core Team about belonging within our own system.
Working across countries and time zones brings both richness and challenge. In our discussion we recognised the quiet tension between autonomy and cohesion, between moving quickly and moving together.
There was appreciation for our diversity and strengths, alongside a shared recognition that belonging also requires attention: clear communication when assumptions arise, pausing for reality checks rather than rushing ahead, and making space for emotional expression as well as task progress.
It reminded us that belonging is not guaranteed by shared purpose or history. Structure may bring us together, but belonging grows through how intentionally we communicate, reflect and recalibrate when something feels slightly out of alignment.
Across our wider FFI community, belonging continues to be something we create together, across countries, cultures, professions and experiences - each time we participate in dialogue, supervision, learning and shared reflection.
Belonging is not something we wait to receive, it is something we practise.
As we begin this quarter, I find myself wondering:
Where am I actively contributing to the kind of community I wish to be part of?
Where might I still be expecting belonging to happen without my participation?
Perhaps that is the invitation for all of us.
Not simply to belong, but to behave in ways that make belonging possible.
by Sally Redshaw