Hello you,
Do you feel like you belong?
I’ve been circling that question a lot lately. Maybe it’s a tender thing to ask yourself, like a poke to a bruise not yet healed. It certainly can feel like that to me at times.
We are wired for belonging. Unlike other species, we slip out of the womb unable to do much for ourselves. No full range of vision, no walking; we’re born all soft and squishy with so many of our survival skills yet to be developed except our ability to build relationship. From the get go we are equipped to foster belonging. We gurgle and coo, we gaze loving at our caregivers. It’s how we survive.
And when we feel like we don’t belong it rumbles deep in us. It jangles in our nervous system like life or death. Even when we’re decades from being that dependant, milk-sweet babe we once were.
After these pandemic years of isolation and distance, I think a lot of us are carrying that fearful rumble inside. A deep longing to belong that has us reaching out with equal parts hope and desperation, seeking community wherever we can find it. It can drag us into the rip tide of false belonging.
False belonging feels like the high school clique. It’s a togetherness based on being the same. Whether it’s political beliefs or clothing choices, false belonging has no space for difference. It forces us to learn the regrettable art of shapeshifting, asking that we leave pieces of ourselves behind so that we can please others and fit in.
So many of us are already adept shapeshifters. We’ve been leaving ourselves for years. Abandoning the parts that don’t fit in. Belonging is the opposite. It asks that we belong to ourselves, whole, and let other connections grow from the truth we find there.
So how do you belong to yourself? Honestly, I have no three-easy-steps answer for you. I’m sorry. This is the work of years, as all transformations are, and to sell you on quick fixes would be shitty and untrue.
I do know, however, that you can’t belong to yourself without being in your body. That’s where this takes root.
It’s where you learn to speak the language of your nervous system, to cultivate safety, and interpret the whispers of your intuition. As you come into relationship with your breath, learn to be present to your embodied experience, and honour your need for rest, you build the skill of staying with yourself through thick and thin. You grow an unshakeable trust that innoculates you against the siren call of false belonging.
I want that for each of us.
I want a world in which we belong to ourselves and each other and the wider web of life. Where we feel how deep and interwoven our lives really are. And the way we bring that into being is by each of us doing our own work. Belonging ourselves back in.
PS - I’m currently taking on new clients for one-to-one work. If you’re feeling pulled to cultivate a deeper belonging to yourself then book in a free discovery call. Let’s chat about what that might look like.