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In Our Search for Belonging, We Are All Longing to Be…
Belonging. This word has been showing up everywhere for me over the past week. Coming up unprompted in seemingly every conversation. Surfacing over and over again in the sea of information flowing before my eyes on a daily basis.
Belonging.
Belonging.
Belonging.
Like the universe was beating a drum.
Like the universe was chanting a mantra.
Like the universe was telling me to pay attention.
I can’t remember the circumstances when it initially surfaced in my consciousness last week but I do remember thinking at the time that the word “belonging” contains the words “be” and “longing”. Thinking that inherent in the notion of belonging was a deep longing. A longing to be.
A longing to be seen.
A longing to be met.
A longing to be celebrated — to matter.
A longing to belong.
Then, out of the blue, my dear friend, Winona Lewis, sent me a beautiful poem she’d written about, you guessed it, belonging. A poem entitled “All of Me” in which she gave voice to her heart’s desire — her lifelong, as yet unrequited, quest for belonging.
A poem which ended with the powerful question: “Can we come up against each other and really be seen, be different, be deeply loved.”
A poem that inspired a juicy conversation last Friday in which we explored what it means to belong, to be loved for all of who we are.
Belonging came up again in an exploration of core needs with my coach on Monday morning. Later that day, a dear friend brought it up during a walk on Doran Beach, sharing that she was wrestling with her own search for belonging, trying to understand what it means for her. And just yesterday in a conversation with another dear friend I hadn’t spoken to in ages, there it was again, belonging. Completely unprompted.
And these are just the instances I can remember.
Belonging. I’m soaking in it! And it seems it’s this week’s special in the menu of our collective consciousness.
