BELONG {long to be}
I found myself telling someone recently, “ I just don’t know where I belong.” And she replied, “ You belong everywhere and to everything.”
And in that moment, that old story of “ I’m different” came right to the surface.
I smiled b/c I know this. I know this. I know this. I took the hebrew name, Shamirah bat kol — to name myself into the world, “daughter of all.”
Talking with my kids about so many shootings this week in our country, is it the guns? is it the pain of not belonging? is it .. the list goes on and on.
We circled the idea of how to find ourselves in the world, why and how people can get so disconnected that they take the rage out on others, and what can happen when we don’t feel like we belong in the world, or to each other. What horrible crimes, violence, murder, can happen when we don’t feel connected. Simple, yet so powerful.
I told them I spent a long time feeling separate, different, isolated- observing more than living. It’s one of the reasons I love to read, it’s where I can go hide and where I belong to the page, the story, the words.
And yet, In many ways, I have found my place in the world. Not the human world as much as with being snuggled up with my dog, and the trees on my street and the way the mud forms in my backyard after it drizzles and then I walk barefoot to feel the earth, and the earth sticks to the bottom of my feet. and I like it.
Belong. {long to be} I realized that my belonging grew ( OF COURSE) when I allowed myself to BE and to honor the longing that is being human. So many of us have these unexpressed longings. Sometimes, we don’t even know what it is we long for! But I know deep in my bones, that this experience is part of what it means to be in a body.
To be alive. To live in the mystery.
Some say it’s an existential longing to be reunited with the Divine one.
Some say it’s the longing for Mother/ Womb.
Some say it’s related to the fact that we are going to die.
Some say it’s the effect of the societal oppressive systems we live under.
I don’t know. I just feel that LONGING TO BE. And that’s where I Belong.
