Belonging

Rebecca Rogerson
Jun 21
3 min read

You belong here. You belong here. You always have.

There’s always been a place for you, not at the table, or down a road, or, in a single house of worship. There’s always been a place for you here, in your heart, in our hearts, and with the land—where the heartbeat throbs in the hearts of children who see your ugly parts and play with you, love you, anyway. But you don’t trust this. That you belong here, that your heart is a place of belonging that no one can steal or take; no one.

You don’t trust the little birds who visit you because they know your kind heart or the ants that circle the bathroom drain, hoping not to drown. You don’t trust the silent markers that show you the hidden crevices in mountains where secret ancestors—that watch over the land and airways—welcome you without knowing you.

You have been our daughter from the beginning. Even when you gave yourself away, threw yourself away to unkind boys on baseball fields, and took cheap drugs to try to lift off your calling to heal. We have always been with you, by your side, in your heart; the shiver across your skin.

We only know of how we love you, of how far you’ve come, of how beauty, joy and courage always touch your door, even when you unrelentingly bash at your guts for all you “did wrong”, and even when your mind is an unorganized hornet’s nest that keeps stinging itself, and when you tell yourself that you don’t belong and that you aren’t good enough, and have done everything wrong, again; we stare into your snowy eyes and remark to one another how full your spirit is, how much you care about everything, yet somehow, you keep yourself off the list.

You belong here, at this ugly time on a beautiful planet made of stars.

You matter in all you do, and when you go {die} and become something else, something more, you will finally understand mattering, and will wish—as we have always wished for you—that you will grasp the meaning of your life, of life. All life and everything in it, around it, through it, and made up of it.

Pay homage to your life at least once a year. Take the time to thank life for life, for having a planet to belong to, that you belong on, and belong with; until you descend and ascend to the realms of infinity where you will be released from mattering and from fears of enoughness, to belong to something else; to all of it, again.

Listen to us when we tell you—and your planet shows you every day— how life offers life and then, more life!

You belong, just as I do, as we all do. Just as life does.

Repeat: I belong here, I belong here. I belong here. We belong. We belong. We belong to life and planet. We belong to ourselves. We belong to each other. Mattering is who we are in meandering universes, where we try to carve out our stories that are already written in each other’s hearts.

Swoon over precipices of eternity. Kiss cedar leaves and remember how you’re adored. Wear beads: white, black, yellow and green to honour the planet that you are a part of.

Share the load of pain, hold hands when angry, and let the sweat that hums of primordial waters intermingle between you, again.

You belong to me. You belong to us, here, to the grains of sand and the anthills, the flowers petals and sky, to injured deers, wildlife and lost souls.

You belong to all of us, to all of it, and more!

Repeat: I belong to you. I belong to myself. I belong to all of it. I belong to everything.

We are the belonging {we seek}.