The Chris Voss Show Podcast – Radical Belonging: How to Survive and Thrive in an Unjust World (While Transforming it for the Better) by Lindo Bacon

Radical Belonging: How to Survive and Thrive in an Unjust World (While Transforming it for the Better) by Lindo Bacon

Too many of us feel alienated from our bodies. This isn’t your personal failing; it means that our culture is failing you.

We are in the midst of a cultural moment. #MeToo. #BlackLivesMatter. #TransIsBeautiful. #AbleismExists. #EffYourBeautyStandards. Those of us who don’t fit into the “mythical norm” (white, male, cisgender, able-bodied, slender, Christian, etc.)—which is to say, most of us—are demanding our basic right: To know that who we are matters. To belong.

Being “othered” and the body shame it spurs is not “just” a feeling. Being erased and devalued impacts our ability to regulate our emotions, our relationships with others, our health and longevity, our finances, our ability to realize dreams, and whether we will be accepted, loved, or even safe.

Radical Belonging is not a simple self-love treatise. Focusing only on self-love ignores the important fact that we have negative experiences because our culture has targeted certain bodies and people for abuse or alienation. For marginalized people, a focus on self-love can be a spoonful of sugar that makes the oppression go down. This groundbreaking book goes further, helping us to manage the challenges that stem from oppression and moving beyond self-love and into belonging.

With Lindo Bacon’s signature blend of science and storytelling, Radical Belonging addresses the political, sociological, psychological, and biological underpinnings of your experiences, helping you understand that the alienation and pain you are experiencing is not personal, but human. The problem is in injustice, not you as an individual.

So many of us feel wounded by a culture that has alienated us from our bodies and divided us from each other. Radical Belonging provides strategies to reckon with the trauma of injustice; reclaim yourself, body and soul; and rewire your nervous system to better cope within an unjust world. It also provides strategies to help us provide refuge for one another and create a culture of equity and empathy, one that respects, includes, and benefits from all its diverse peoples.

Whether you are transgender, queer, Black, Indigenous or another Person of Color, disabled, old, or fat—or you more closely resemble the “mythical norm”—Radical Belonging is your guidebook for creating a world where all bodies are valued and all of us belong—and for coping with this one, until we make that new world a reality.

Dr. Lindo Bacon is a researcher and former professor, and for nearly two decades taught courses in social justice, health, weight, and nutrition. Dr. Bacon holds a Ph.D. in physiology with a specialty in nutrition, and master’s degrees in psychology and exercise metabolism. Dr. Bacon has mined their deep academic proficiency, their clinical expertise, and their personal experience to write two bestselling books, Health at Every Size: The Surprising Truth About Your Weight, and the co-authored Body Respect: What Conventional Health Books Get Wrong, Leave Out, or Just Plain Fail to Understand about Weight. Their newly released book, Radical Belonging: How to Survive and Thrive in an Unjust World (While Transforming it for the Better), takes their inspiring message beyond size, to shaping a culture of empathy, equity, and true belonging.