Hey there, it's Susan Peirce Thompson, and welcome to the Weekly Vlog. So I just flew home from San Francisco, California, where I was born and raised. I just landed yesterday home on a red-eye, and I was only there for two and a half days. Super whirlwind, in and out trip, and it was super powerful. It was epic. It was amazing. I went out for a class reunion. It was my 35th class reunion, 35-year class reunion. And it wasn't my high school reunion. It wasn't my college reunion. It was the 35th reunion of my graduation from eighth grade.
And I know that sounds silly, but stay with me here. I don't have a high school reunion to go to. I went to three different high schools, bounced around, bounced around, and then dropped out. I never graduated anywhere. And then I went to community college, and then I went to UC Berkeley for two years. That's where I graduated from college. Well, UC Berkeley's 36,000 students. There's no college reunions happening there. And so this is all I got.
And I have to say it's actually really important to me and hugely significant, and I feel like it carries all of the weight and gravitas and import of a class reunion. So the thing is though, I was not close with these people when I was a kid. I didn't belong and I wasn't popular and I didn't fit in and it was very painful, and that makes it all the more significant now.
So this isn't the first reunion I've been to. I went five years ago, and I went five years before that. So 10 years ago, for the first one I went to, the 25th class reunion. Some kids in our class were coordinating and they sent out these invitations, and I really hesitated about whether to go. I hadn't been in touch with any of these people. Again, I hadn't been friends with them in grade school, and it had been a very painful chapter of my life in a lot of ways.
Now, academically, I did really well. I loved the academics at this school. But I had never fit in, and that was predictable perhaps. As a matter of fact, when I applied to the school in fifth grade, this is Miss Katherine Delmar Burke School, an all girls, uniform, exclusive school that I was on, I think, a full scholarship to. I mean, we were living at the poverty line then. We had no money to send me to a place like that, but my test scores were good. They admitted me.
And at the fateful interview thingamabob, where they admitted me, they pulled my mom aside and they said, "Look, this kid is obviously bright. She tests well. We've consulted and hemmed and hawed, we're going to admit her. But before you accept our offer of admission, we want you to know that we're concerned about her prospects here socially. She's very different than the girls who go to the school, and we feel like she's going to probably struggle socially and she probably won't fit in. And so we're accepting her with reservations and we want to convey to you that you should have a talk with her and really prepare her and ask her whether she wants to really go to an environment like this where the girls are being, the girls are just very different than she is."
And I wasn't in that conversation. I was nine or 10 years old at the time. My mom talked about it with me and I didn't care. I mean, I didn't care about anything back then. I just knew what I wanted and I liked the school. It was very pretty, it was very sort of manicured, and there were a lot of resources and science labs and just things that excited me, and I wanted to go to the school.
So my mom warned me. "Basically, they said you won't have any friends." And sure enough, I went, and by and large, I didn't have any friends. Now, I think memory is a funny thing, right? Emotional memory is very powerful. And looking back, I think it's absolutely true that I was not popular. It's also true that I didn't have any solid sustained friendships with kids that I hung out with during those years, fifth through eighth grade.
I ate lunch alone almost every day. I played basketball in the gym, listening to Prince music really loud, wearing my Nike Air Jordans when all the other girls were wearing these cute little Keds or whatever they were wearing. The girls were wealthy. They mostly had intact families with a mom and a dad. They were being raised in a way that was a lot more sheltered than how I was being raised. And I just didn't fit in.
Anyway, so I hemmed and hawed about whether I should go to this reunion 10 years ago, and I could feel my recovery voice deep inside, my adult self saying, "Go, go to this. Go and show up and just be you. Be kind and curious and open and learn about them and hold your own and just go."
So I went, I was very, very nervous. 10 years ago. Tons of people showed up, and I had a blast. I mean, I just really had a ball. All of these girls had grown up into gracious, kind, lovely women, and I felt like I belonged at that 10-year reunion. I just had a great time, and I had several conversations with women that helped me rethink my memory of my childhood.
We talked about how I felt as a kid, how they felt as a kid, and I confessed how sort of rejected and how much of a loner and an outsider I had felt like. And while nobody stepped in and said, "Oh, come on, you were so popular." Nobody said that because I wasn't. They did say things that offered a different perspective. One girl said, "Well, I think those years were hard for all of us. I think we all felt like we didn't belong in our own way." She said, "I was so painfully insecure about my physicality. I wasn't coordinated. I couldn't catch a ball or throw a ball, and I looked at you and you were so coordinated you could catch and throw, and there you were playing basketball." And she said, "I just envied how you could perform physically." And other kids remembered me being as really smart in the classroom. And I guess they just assumed maybe that I just had myself together, that I didn't need friends or something.
There were two groups back then. There was a popular clique that was a bunch of kind of mean girls and then there was a popular clique of really nice girls. And I remember trying to hang out with the nice girls sometimes. And again, I think just the lack of similarity of our lives, I just didn't feel like I fit in. So I mostly just hung out alone.
Anyway, this reunion came and way fewer people showed up. I don't know if it's that 35 is a less sexy year than 25 or whatever. I went five years ago too. And this year I went to the luncheon. There was sort of this luncheon at this golf club, and I went to that. And then four of us went out to dinner afterwards, and there were people, we have a Messenger thread. And there were people messaging, "Oh, I can't make it because of this, or, oh I'll be there in spirit, or whatever." Four of us showed up when all was said and done, four out of 44. And we went to dinner and we stayed and talked for nearly five hours.
And again, these were not people I was friends with particularly back then, but we had so much to talk about and we were all in different places in our lives, hardships and triumphs and struggles and lots of different things going on in our lives. And there were plenty of things that either of any of us could have thought would've opted us out for belonging. But we all belonged because we showed up.
And I was thinking as I was driving back to my Airbnb: For that night, we were the in crowd. We were the clique. We were the inner group because we showed up, because we showed up and participated. And I was thinking how there are some spaces as adults where it's contentious and people oust each other. I don't know, in social media, in the wide world of open social media, I think there's a lot of meanness that happens. But I was thinking about how most adult spaces now, especially the Bright Line Eating community, are really places where anyone who chooses to belong can absolutely and will absolutely belong.
It's really a factor of choosing to be there and showing up and participating. The people who show up and participate become the in crowd. And it's really that simple. And people are kind and welcoming and curious and make space for whoever chooses a seat at the table. The table's as big as whoever's going to show up and sit at it. It just keeps expanding. There's room for anyone who wants a spot. That's absolutely how it is in the Bright Line Eating community. And I was thinking about how as a kid, I felt so unpopular and rejected and isolated, and I was absolutely making the cardinal mistake of comparing my insides to their outsides. And I felt insecure and I felt like I was different. And I looked at their outsides and it confirmed my suspicions, it confirmed my feelings. They were different on the outside. I never factored in that they might be feeling insecure or they might feel like they had their own reasons for not belonging.
And now that I've grown up, I do remember that phrase a lot. Don't compare your insides to their outsides. And if I'm feeling insecure or I feel like I don't belong, I have an adult part of me who can take a deep breath and nurture myself and reassure myself and say, "You're probably coming across fine, better than you think you are. Just remember to be kind. Just remember to ask them questions and be curious." But you know what I never did until I started going to these reunions, I never rewrote my history of the way I thought about my childhood. From the lens of "Susan, you've got to remember that you were falling prey to all kinds of social biases back then where you were comparing your insides to their outsides and deciding you didn't measure up and deciding you were on the outside and that you didn't belong, but maybe you didn't not belong as much as you think you didn't belong, right?"
And I never rewrote the story until I started going to these reunions. But in Bright Line Eating, this notion of belonging is so critical. As a human being, belonging is so critical. We thrive when we belong. We need to belong. Social connectedness matters so much that researchers are now thinking that it's the number one factor for health and longevity--ahead of nutrition, ahead of exercise, ahead of not smoking. Feeling that you're loved and supported and that you belong. That you're not lonely, that you're connected is the number one factor for health and wellbeing.
And so I've been thinking about belonging in the Bright Line Eating community and how it's people who belong who do better. It's people who belong who have more resilience in their Bright Line Eating program, who are able to rezoom when they fall off track. It's people who belong who are going to stick and stay and thrive. Belonging matters, and it's a matter of choice.
In sixth and seventh and eighth grade, belonging isn't fully a matter of choice. There are Lord of the Flies factors in play where kids kick each other out of groups, and that's not happening in the Bright Line Eating community. You choose to belong and you belong.
So I'm so proud of myself for choosing to belong to this group. And I will say that there is an undercurrent of static of insecurity in me as I interact with these women, and I go to these reunions, I absolutely have an undercurrent of insecurity. I still see myself a bit through their eyes, through the lens of the social roles that we had when we were kids. And it's painful, and I feel insecure, but that's a small part of me that's feeling that. It's a small thing that's in play. Mostly I'm enjoying myself, I'm enjoying the conversation. I'm fascinated by who these women have become. It's a really interesting group.
And mostly I'm feeling the pride and the gratitude. Pride. Not bad pride, good pride. Pride of a personal victory, something I'm glad that I did. I'm glad when I show up. I'm glad when I show up in this situation. I really am proud of myself. It's a big deal for me. It's a really big deal for me. I mean, if you know my story, which you might, listening to this vlog, if you do. It was right after I graduated from the school in eighth grade that I went on to a public high school. And it's right at the end of eighth grade that I started doing drugs. And a lot of that was because I was suddenly in co-ed situations. I mean, this was a girls school, so no boys there. And suddenly there were boys around. And I was welcomed because I'd turned into a cute 14-year-old girl. And the social scene that I fell in with was a lot of people... Now, don't get me wrong, I did not fall in with the wrong crowd and start doing drugs. I became the wrong crowd. I was the one actively pushing everyone else to do drugs.
But a lot of that drug-taking activity was for the bonding that happened and the belonging that I felt when I was with a group of people dropping acid or doing mushrooms or drinking. I felt that belonging and it was so powerful and intoxicant, not the drugs and alcohol--the belonging. The belonging was so powerful for me because I had been starved of it. I had felt parched from the need to belong for so long. That when I found a group of people who would let me belong, and we were all doing these substances together, it's a big part of how my addiction took over. So anyway, past all that.
Now in recovery, I'm just aware of the importance of belonging and how as an adult, through effort and conscious choice and proactive action, I can choose to belong. And I can thereby change my fortunes. I can thereby change my brain. I can thereby change my odds of success and all kinds of endeavors, and I can rewrite my story of who I am in this world as a social creature. I do not need to let who I was as a kid define who I am as an adult, socially. As an adult, we get to choose to belong.
And that's the Weekly Vlog. I'll see you next week.
