Pathways to Belonging: To Be Seen & Feel Known Assessment

Knowing everyone at the post-office, waving to cars and people passing by, attending funerals en masse: familiarity is both a hallmark of belonging and an essential feature of feeling at home in a place. When asked to describe her small New York town, one resident put it like this: “My son said to me once they were out playing they were throwing softballs back and forth on the road. And of course they had to stop every time a car came by, but they had to wave. My son came up and says I can’t play softball because I have to wave too much.” (5-2-10)

This community resident’s story of the library director paying specific attention to a child, holding that child accountable through loving support, and that child’s sense of pride and confidence from his resulting success is moving. It is also emblematic of a defined feature of pathways: they need an entry point and navigational guidance. Familiarity is a key library entry-point for resident belonging through feeling seen and known.

“And there was one child who pretty much on his own ’cause Mom’s at work all day you know you know how that goes latchkey kid so forth and he was not a reader. But the other day I saw him and he said Mr. [Local Resident] would be so proud of me.” (1-3-01, 58:21)

So much of what we heard in Wisconsin was about feeling at home, no matter how short the resident’s tenure there was. In one exemplary quote a new resident described leaving their previous city behind after thirty years and realizing that he and his wife lost nothing. They didn’t miss their connections – after three decades there was little to hold them. But their new small town feels like a permanent and deep line tether holding them to home. (3-2-07)

“the dinner that happens here every week. It’s a guy [who] has been cooking for 20 years…it happens while the library is still open. So there’s this great element of… socialization and eating together that our community does, all types of people, all ages, all backgrounds, all belief systems. Everything is represented in that room. And then people filter in here, or there might be an evening program happening, our kids run out to the playground, and… It just feels like this place this is serving a lot of people in that one evening. Meeting a lot of needs for the community.” (Vermont resident, 4-2-3)

Our conception of “old-timey” service being a component of the nature of a resident feeling seen and known comes from a business owner in Idaho. She describes her experience best: ““Just because it is kind of a step back in time and that’s what we’d been used to doing and so we step back in the time we took that extra effort of someone came in and needed a bolt like this. Well of course it’s [a] general store but go out in the shop and dig through the bucket of bolts and find him something. And then next time they would come they’d bring us more bolts to put in our bucket in case someone else needed one. And so it was always. When we [were] in that cafe at the store also or somebody just wanted to buy horseradish. OK we don’t have any in the store. I got it in the kitchen. I’ll just give you a [to] go container of it. So this is I think it’s kind of. We enjoyed that kind of old timey ness of it and that’s kind of in essence even though we are getting modernized now, all the businesses. And the library and everywhere keep that old time. Tiny thing of you know helping people along taking the extra step.” (8_3_11, 449:12 )

Old-timey is the foundation that allows for the trust required for self-determination pathways to be built. It is also the core of mutualism – where service isn’t only for others, but because the one providing the service is the receiver of community benefit as well. It is both a sense of self-satisfaction but also authentic connection with community wellbeing. It is not martyrdom – the person providing the service does so because the investment of labor benefits them many-fold in their own personal lives. “the play group… My two and a half year old and I really love running [it]. She enjoys it, moves the furniture with me and brings down the toys, and tests the snack. That serves me in the way that I love to help moms and women in general, just kind of have a moment of presence. It’s like I was saying the New Moon table I put up once a month upstairs. I wake up early and I make a cake, brownies, a boiled tea from herbs in my garden and I just it’s really nice for me to care for adults who are gonna say thank you and really feel gratitude about it. So that also serves me even though I’m kind of servicing the people here it’s really lovely. I love doing that.” (4-2-8)