I want to belong to you
How do I do that?
Hi, friends. How are you doing wherever you are? I hope you’re well— well loved and fed and sheltered, but also well embedded in places and relationships that give you a deep sense of belonging.
I’ve been thinking deeply in recent months about the experience of belonging. Belonging is a word that has become, perhaps, so overused as to feel trite. And yet, as a social species, we can’t get away from our deep yearning for it, and our sometimes overwhelming drive to protect it if we’ve found it.
I’m aware in myself, however, of a distinct lack of understanding of how to intentionally create it, for myself or anyone else. I’ve felt it at times, but I’ll confess I’m not entirely sure how that came to pass. It felt kind of magical, honestly, like it just happened.
This framing is a problem. Not just for me, but I suspect, for many of us. I don’t think we can afford to offer up our access to a sense of belonging to happenstance and fate, simply trusting that someday we’ll stumble into it. Or, into a positive iteration of it, anyway.
Because belonging isn’t inherently positive, constructive, or life-affirming. The Ku Klux Klan gave its members a strong sense of belonging, did it not? And Donald Trump is offering up his own version of belonging, which has proven compelling for millions of people. More people than some of us would have ever imagined. Enough people that many beloved members of our communities and families are now staring down serious risk to their lives and livelihoods.
So, I’m hoping we can talk about our own experiences of belonging in order to come to some conscious understanding of how we each have found and contribute to it.
For those of us that don’t feel a deep sense of belonging, I hope we can think about what it would take, what we wish for, and what we can do to build it for ourselves.
I’ve argued since the beginning of this project that integrity trickles up. Our leaders will only ever be as integrous as we are, in other words. I suspect belonging— positive, constructive, inclusive, life-affirming belonging— also trickles up to the extent that it innoculates us against the contagion of negative belonging spread by leaders, and inspires the choice of inclusive leaders to put in their place.
Here are my questions. Feel free to pose your own, if you have them. And weigh in with whatever wisdom or wondering you have to offer. I could really use your input as I puzzle through all of this.
Do you have a sense of belonging in a relationship or community? How did it develop and what do you, or others, do to feed it?
If you had to put alternate words to “belonging”, what words would you use? What is the feeling of belonging in your body? How do you recognize the experience of belonging in your daily life?
Have you ever had belonging sour, or realized what that belonging required of you was no longer feasible or healthy for you? What did you do? Did you find alternate belonging somewhere else or are you still searching?
If you don’t feel a sense of belonging now, what experience of belonging do you yearn for?
Thank you in advance for any thoughts you have to offer.
XO,
Asha
On a side note, we’re steadily marching towards 1000 subscribers. Can you help us get there before our 4th anniversary at the beginning of the new year?
Amazing questions as I prepare to facilitate a conversation (and yoga class) on creating community for BIPOC and allies tomorrow night.
When I think of belonging I always return to these words from Maya Angelou:
You are only free when you realize you belong no place—you belong every place—no place at all. The price is high. The reward is great.
Belonging begins when I listen and align with my heart, which is of course, the hardest work of all, but the work I return to in daily practice, for only then can I belong to myself.
This can be such a concrete and yet existential question for me. I know I spent my first 30 years feeling like I didn't really belong anywhere. Now, I know I belong - to the earth, the universe, my spouse and family, and my two local town communities. They have all developed with concerted effort and time spent together and in communication. That is how I feed it and they feed me in kind. An alternate word for me would be 'connection' and it feels like warm, melted butter on bread; comforting, soothing and a relax of tension in the belly & brain. I recognize belonging with this feeling and it can come from reading messages, running into folks and catching up briefly, having regulars plans to meet (even if just once a year), spending regular time in my forest. After 20+ years, these add up to this delicious feeling in the body. Absolutely they have soured and folks I thought were "my people", weren't. I could say the search continues, but I realize that is more out of habit than truth. The need for "more" of everything has waned as I've aged and the appreciation for what I do have has increased. I am full.