At 17 I was convinced that there was no place for me in this world. Growing up working poor, mentally ill, queer, gender nonconforming, and mixed race–I was told, implicitly and explicitly, that I did not belong.

This understanding remained central even once I got involved in social movement work. As I started to get activated by anti-imperialism organizations and labor solidarity groups, my actions, my drive, my attempts to be perfect were influenced by the fear that I would be cast out at any moment. My belonging was so fragile I felt like I had to perform in order to earn my spot to stay. 

My fear-based sense of accountability deeply impacted how I moved throughout the work. I avoided conflict, acted as a people-pleaser, swallowed my emotions and analysis, made excuses for others’ misaligned behavior, and minimized myself. 

When I joined Lavender Phoenix in 2013 to organize with other transgender and queer Asian and Pacific Islander people, I finally felt a sense of fullness and belonging. We came together as queerdos, gender outlaws, leftists amongst liberals, heart-forward softies, and introverted leaders. We formed relationships as the basis of our organizing, learned how to tell our stories, and emphasized the need to ask for help. The work was personal in the ways that second wave feminists taught us: the personal is political. 

And yet, even though I felt a great sense of belonging in our work, to the organization, and with a community that taught me how to trust, it all still felt fragile. Many of the people that came to LavNix questioned their ability to belong anywhere, holding the weight of painful exclusion from families or other political spaces. As staff and core leaders who knew this same pain, we focused our efforts on holding our base in a supportive community. We wanted people to belong so badly that we feared the impact of any discomfort or rupture. We feared that if we held people accountable, said “no” in favor of a stronger “yes,” or drew firm boundaries around our work, we would break the belonging that we worked so hard to build. This over-prioritization didn’t serve our work. It also didn’t serve our members, or the broader community of people that we fight for. Instead, we were left with the very fragility we tried to avoid.

By 2018, LavNix was near collapse. Our staff were burning out and our core leadership felt disempowered. Over the course of the following year, in partnership with the Wildfire Project, our staff and core reflected on our tendencies and addressed our fears head on. We needed to address how we balanced purpose, belonging, accountability, rigor, and care. We made hard asks of our volunteer leaders, gave up parts of our work to strengthen our core programs, and grew our ability to give critical feedback and take accountability. 

Through this process, our belonging expanded from being about comfort and identity to instead being about honesty, resilience, and dedication to seeing things through. This newly cultivated belonging was a grounding force to do the things we were most scared to do–interpersonally, in the organization, and in our broader world. Our belonging reminded us that even through mistakes and disagreements, we always had a purpose to return to, with people who care about us.