You Are Therefore You Belong – What Is Unconditional Belonging?

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October is the month of ‘Belonging‘ in The Haven. This was a conversation I had with Lindsay-Celeste, and Kendra in 2021 about where we find a sense of belonging, and whether or not unconditional belonging is possible.

We feel like we belong when surrounded by people who belong in themselves. The most profound experiences of belonging are ones where people aren’t on a quest to belong. Where people aren’t striving to be seen and celebrated are anchored in themselves.

In our conversation we discuss:

• Why we won’t feel a sense of belonging in the outside world if we don’t belong to ourselves. And what that actually looks like in practice.
• The threats to self-belonging and how to distinguish between things that belong with us and things that don’t
• How each of us approaches the return to self-belonging when we feel disconnected
• The differences between situations where we feel we should belong, where we want to belong, and where it seems that other people don’t want us to belong
• What it might mean to accept the truth of universal unconditional belonging – that we belong here on earth because we were born here
• The importance of finding soft definition around the edges, so we can establish safety and protection in our communities
• The way in which communities “self-sort” when we are clear about expectations, characteristics, and boundaries of acceptable behaviour within a group
• The push-pull tension of belonging somewhere and the somewhere belonging to us (e.g. one’s home)
• How sometimes belonging feels easier when you’re somewhere you don’t naturally fit, and why it can be hard (especially for introverts and HSP‘s) to feel like they don’t belong where they ‘ought to’
• Why we should maybe follow the example of the dude in the hotel lobby…