Some days, you just don’t have it. Y’know?

Where’s my head today? To remix some Smash Mouth lyrics (RIP):
Welp, the words stop comin’ and they won’t start comin’ 🥵

No matter how much I preach that a solid core brand story makes the daily work of marketing easier… The Block will still rear its ugly head from time to time.

Usually when you need all the creative horsepower you can scrape together.
Like right now.
I am the little yellow dog in the chair with the cup of coffee, this-is-fining as the room burns around her.

So, if it’s okay with you, I want to offer you a single word to meditate on: belonging.

The concept came up in therapy today (yes, I’m in therapy, and you should be too), and it’s been on my mind ever since.

I looked it up, obviously, and — like so many high-school valedictorians fumbling for a hook as they address their fellow graduates — will share the Webster’s definition with you now:

I don’t know about you, but that doesn’t really scratch the surface for me.
Nobody’s commencement speech is going anywhere with that.

A deeper scroll through page one of Google:
Belonging is a felt sense in our bodies of safety, power, wholeness, and welcome.

Belonging comes from being yourself and begin seen …Belonging isn’t about the people or the place, it’s about how we show up and whether we see each other.

Now we’re getting somewhere. A big part of my business’s ethos is using marketing to make people feel seen, not just sold to — so these resonate.

Everyone deserves to have places where they belong. (And too many people don’t, thanks to stacks on stacks on stacks of layered -isms.)

One place I’ve been surprised to discover belonging? The StoryBrand Certified Guide community. A slice of it, anyway: mostly women and nonbinary folks, mostly copywriters, and more than a few fellow Enneagram 4s.

Any day ending in Y, I can haul my heavy Paige-shaped bundle of kooky, nerdy, righteous, frazzled, fierce, kind, thoughtful (sometimes to a fault), occasionally rage-y, bleeding-heartness into a room and be invited to stay without having to ask if I can sit 🪑

Feeling seen is a hell of a drug.

I renewed my certification last week to begin my fifth year in the community. Maybe that “man, it feels like it’s been way longer than this” thing stems from that sense of belonging.

And I’m wondering what it means to you.

Are there ways you intentionally invite belonging in how you communicate what you do, how you help?
Is it too soft-seeming a concept to bring into your business?

Would your customers say, “Man, just sees me“?
(In my case, I’d say, “woof, just sunk my battleship.”)

Listen. These days happen. They happen to me, and I’m willing to bet they happen to you.
Do what you can, then treat yourself to takeout and some ice cream.