Belong...

'Belonging to me is being seen, being heard, being valued, being safe. Belonging is not about fitting in but about being accepted, loved and respected for who we are.'

A truer definition I have been hard pressed to find, though I sought, though I searched...

Were we not created to seek connection?

Were we not created to have a tribe, a family, a group?

Something more than ourselves...something given and received with understanding of our own capacity for failure, for missing something so vital it damages a loved one without seeing until too late.

Something given and received with love of an equal nature...

Not a duty, never an obligation or a resented giving of time and energy.

We seek to be heard, our voices expressing thoughts and emotions...oh to be understood! What a gift.

We seek to be seen, our faces eliciting responses of love, of laughter, of joy...not pain or sorrow or disgust, contempt.

What a gift.

We seek to be valued, our presence wanted, necessary, and incomplete without it...oh, the joy of value cannot be overestimated.

What a gift.

We seek to be safe, to know deep down we are safe to be us, who we were meant to be at the core and heart of it all.

What a gift.

For years, years and years...it feels as old as the bones and fossils of mammals long since extinct...for so long the heart has searched the faces of loved ones for these gifts...

I hesitate in writing...I sit in contemplation a moment, thinking on what to reveal in this vulnerability, what is too much?

I have searched and found those few precious souls who along the way of my childhood full of faces empty, blank of these gifts, appeared to steer me back on the path of happiness, of joy in little things...who taught me that love often comes with a price, as witnessed at young ages, who shared with me the joy of what real love looks like, feels like, IS....

These few wise old souls who saw through the behaviour, the quiet wild child with eyes that saw far too much; understood much in a tone, a flick of the eyes, a stiffness of posture, a growing tension waiting to spring at the throat.

And they loved, cared, shared acceptance freely.

It is a story as old as time and repeated often...this is a story I have heard often in varying shades of grey and mix of characters. Many of my friends, most, have similar childhoods and like my siblings found ways to see the humour, morbid or not, in the circumstance.

I no longer search to belong...the heart pains and aches as it builds brick by brick to protect strength and energy...I look no further than within and know safety among forever friends and forever family who see the real deal and extend that sense of belonging just by breathing and being who they are.

Find your true and hold it close for the gift it is...

This my friends is what keeps us on this planet after devastating abuse...the tether that holds us in place while storms rage, while lost in travel along a highway of healing tears.

May you extend this very same sense of belonging to those in your circle and without...so many in need, so many lost looking for their tether, their reason for being.

We belong...love saves my friends, love saves.