We talk about belonging all the time.
We put it on posters, build it into organizational mission statements, and tell people, You belong here.
“Belonging is not a message, and it’s not a slogan,” Diamond says. “Belonging is a brain state.”
It's the experience of feeling safe and connected to a group of people—to know that you are included, surrounded and, most importantly, protected.
That distinction matters enormously for LGBTQ+ folks, particularly young people who may be navigating the complicated question of whether they can be fully themselves without putting their relationships at risk.
For them, a welcoming space like Encircle can offer something that is far more powerful than a statement of acceptance. It can offer an experience of connection.
Diamond sees acceptance as fundamentally tied to belonging.
“Acceptance is basically a proxy for... ‘There's nothing that you can say or do that would disconnect you from me,’” she says.
That doesn't mean agreement.
“Does accepting someone mean I have to agree with everything they say and everything they believe? No. Acceptance and agreement are not the same thing.”
Instead, acceptance communicates something more fundamental, I'm always with you.
“All of you is okay,” Diamond says. “The good parts, the bad parts, the annoying parts, the fun parts, every single part. All of you is connected to me.”
For Diamond, what makes acceptance so powerful is that it transcends disagreement, and gets to the foundation of connection.
“I'm with you. You are a part of me. I am a part of you.”
That kind of connection matters because humans aren't designed to live entirely on our own.
“We have to live in groups,” Diamond explains. “So, for you to be pushed away from your group because of something about you, that's like death. It feels like death.”
She's describing something deeper than ordinary disappointment or loneliness. The need to remain connected to other people is fundamental to being human.
“Because we cannot survive without being enfolded and connected and protected,” she says.
Rejection can hurt in any relationship. But Diamond believes rejection around gender and sexuality can carry a particular kind of weight because these aspects of identity can feel so deeply connected to the self.
“I think rejection around gender and sexuality, in many ways, is sort of the deepest cut,” she says.
“Those are aspects of ourselves that are so deeply inside us. They're not ideas. They're not issues. They're not beliefs. They're not something you learn. They're in your body. They're in you.”
That makes rejection feel fundamentally different.
“Rejection for something that is literally in your skin, is a rejection that is total because it’s the most hidden, the most private, the most ‘you’ part of you.”
And unlike an opinion or a belief that someone might change, this isn't something a person can simply set aside.
“It's literally your blood and your cells and your bones,” Diamond says. “So, rejection on the basis of everything that makes you you, there's nothing more existentially terrifying.”
That is why creating spaces where LGBTQ+ people don't have to anticipate that kind of rejection can be so important.
Diamond also makes an important distinction between choosing what to share and having to hide who you are.
“All of us keep some things to ourselves,” she says. “There's a difference between managing what you tell other folks and being inauthentic.”
We don't show every part of ourselves to every person. That's normal.
“We all manage how much we share with somebody else.”
The problem comes when managing what we share becomes feeling that we have to construct an entirely different version of ourselves in order to maintain our relationships.
“Inauthenticity comes in when it goes beyond just managing what you share,” Diamond says. “But it goes to this essence of, ‘I am actually pretending to be a being that I am not.’”
For someone who feels that being their authentic self could jeopardize their connections with other people, this creates a profound conflict.
Diamond describes attachment as “the deepest need that we have.”
She points to the very beginning of life to explain why.
“What do infants do? They cry, and when do they stop crying? When someone picks them up.”
That need doesn't disappear as we grow older.
“We need to be picked up. We need to be helped. That never stops. That's a need throughout our entire life course.”
So when someone believes that being themselves could mean losing their connections with the people they depend on, Diamond says the brain is faced with an impossible choice.
“Our brains evolved to choose connection first every time.”
The result can be devastating to a person's sense of self.
“If you are choosing attachment over authenticity,” she says, “the message that it actually sends to you is... to be yourself, is to be eternally disconnected, is to be disconnected forever.”
In that situation, belonging seems conditional.
“The only version of you that can survive is not actually you.”
What makes the existence of accepting, LGBTQ+-affirming spaces so meaningful is that a place like Encircle doesn't require someone to first prove that they deserve to belong. The space itself communicates belonging.
Diamond points to two particularly important predictors of suicidality: feeling that you don't belong and feeling like you're a burden to others.
She sees Encircle as uniquely positioned to address both.
“The belongingness is, that’s the most obvious thing,” she says. “Like, the door’s open, come on in! We’ve been waiting for you!”
For some young people, that invitation can be profoundly new.
“For some kids that’s the first time they’ve ever actually felt that, was a place like this.”
But Diamond believes the power of Encircle goes beyond simply providing a place to gather.
The fact that Encircle exists specifically for LGBTQ+ young people and families sends another message: You're wanted here. Your presence is the reason this place exists.
“The other thing is because the whole purpose of Encircle is to provide that space,” Diamond says, “it also attacks that feeling of perceived burdensomeness.”
The message is almost impossible to misunderstand:
“Why do you think we’re here? How could you be a burden on us? We literally exist for this, for you.”
That's the power of a space designed around belonging.
“We are here for you,” Diamond says.
Ultimately, Diamond asks us to move beyond talking about belonging and toward creating the conditions in which people can actually experience it.
Because belonging isn't a slogan. It isn't simply telling someone that they are accepted. It's the feeling that comes from being surrounded by people who include you, protect you and remain connected to you.
Acceptance doesn't require agreement. It doesn't require everyone to think alike. It means that disagreement doesn't erase connection.
Authenticity doesn't mean sharing everything with everyone. It means having somewhere, and having people with whom you don't have to pretend to be someone you're not.
For LGBTQ+ people, that can be life-changing.
Sometimes the most powerful thing a community can say isn't complicated.
It's simply:
Come in.
We've been waiting for you.
You're not a burden.
You don't have to pretend.
We're here for you.
Diamond calls what Encircle provides “medicine for the soul.”
“That is magic,” she says. “I mean, that is, that’s medicine. That is medicine for the soul.”
And perhaps that's what belonging looks like when it moves beyond a slogan: a real place, real people and a real experience of knowing that you are connected—and that you don't have to give up who you are in order to stay that way.