Because community isn’t about being loud — it’s about being real.
TL;DR:
There have been moments recently where I felt invisible — not through neglect, but quiet exclusion.
The urge to disconnect was strong.
But when I reached out — quietly, imperfectly — the strength I found wasn’t in fixing anything. It was in being witnessed, without performance.
At first, I told myself it made sense.
My new boss was building her team her way.
People were being assigned key pieces of work. The change programme was underway.
But I wasn’t included.
And I didn’t want to admit how much that hurt.
What It Looked Like in Real Life
I’d been helping shape some of the new team structures.
Then slowly — bit by bit — the work was reassigned.
Someone else picked it up during a handover. I wasn’t part of the transition.
A colleague who had been off for weeks was suddenly reinserted into the centre of it.
Me? I was asked to feed into someone else’s plan.
And I felt it — not just the shift in responsibility, but in presence.
This wasn’t just about work. It was about worth.
What Helped Me Shift
I didn’t have the energy for confrontation.
But I had the capacity for something else: honest acknowledgement.
I checked in with my peers. Asked if they’d noticed the same dynamics.
They had.
It didn’t change the system.
But it changed me.
Because feeling unseen can lead you to isolate — or it can lead you to quietly reconnect.
And when a peer recently reflected on the community I’d helped build — the tone, the sense of ease, the unseen effort — I felt speechless.
The kind of speechless that comes from finally being felt.
And Today?
I still find connection hard when I’m feeling drained or excluded.
But I no longer wait for perfect moments or public validation.
I connect in the quiet ways:
- A message to check in
- Turning up for someone without asking for anything back
- Letting people see my full expression, not just the competent one
Because Regroup isn’t about being louder.
It’s about being real — even when you’re not sure how it will land.
Your Gentle Next Step
If you’ve been holding it all in — unsure whether connection is worth the cost — try starting small.
The Planning Pause Tracker is a gentle prompt tool to help you reflect on what support you need, when to ask, and where you might already be offering it quietly.
🫶 Download it here
What This Series Is For
This post is part of Here’s How I Do It — a personal blog series sharing the real-life rhythm behind the Beaming Bernie pillars.
Not just the structured ideas. The lived ones.
What’s Coming Next
In the final blog of this series, I’ll reflect on what this whole journey showed me — and why none of it is about being exceptional.
✨ I Am Not Special — And That’s the Point — a post about representation, relatability, and the quiet courage of starting anyway.