Finding a Place to Belong

I have spent a lot of my life wondering where I belong.

I know plenty of people. I can move quite easily between different social circles and different kinds of company. In fact, I have become rather good at adjusting myself to fit the room.

For a long time I think I confused that with belonging.

But being able to fit almost anywhere isn't necessarily the same as feeling that somewhere is yours.

There is a difference between being included and feeling wanted. Between being accepted into a space and feeling safe enough within it that you no longer have to wonder which version of yourself you should be.

And lately I have begun to wonder whether my search for belonging has been as much about finding myself as finding other people.

Who am I when nobody needs anything from me?

It is a surprisingly difficult question.

So much of life is lived through our relationships with other people. We are parents, partners, children, friends, employees, carers. We carry responsibilities towards people we love and sometimes towards people we don't particularly love at all.

And somewhere amongst all those roles, it can become difficult to hear the quieter voice underneath them.

I have realised how often my own relationships with people come with an internal tally running quietly in the background.

Am I doing enough?

Should I be there more?

Have I let somebody down?

Am I failing at something I should be better at?

Even love can become tangled with responsibility and guilt.

Perhaps that is why some of the places where I have felt the strongest sense of belonging haven't involved people at all.

They have involved trees.

Or paint.

Give me an empty stretch of rugged coastline, open moorland or, best of all, a quiet woodland, and something changes.

I don't spend nearly enough time in those places. Everyday life gets in the way and there is always somebody or something that seems to need dealing with.

But I remember how it feels when I am there.

Quiet.

The landscape doesn't require anything from me.

The woods don't need me to be successful, useful, interesting or productive. The moor doesn't care whether I have answered my messages. An old tree isn't remotely interested in whether I have my life together.

I am simply allowed to be there.

And perhaps that is why I have always felt such a connection to wild places. Cornwall, in particular, feels like somewhere I belong — geologically, if not always socially.

There is something about its rock, weather, woodland, wild coastline and ancient landscape that feels familiar to me.

The quiet of making

I recognise something similar when I paint.

There is always resistance at first. Life is busy. There are more useful things I could be doing. Making art can even feel selfish when there are other people who need my time.

But when I finally become absorbed in a piece, something goes quiet.

For a while I am not trying to work out who I should be.

I am responding to colour, texture and instinct. Something appears on the surface before I necessarily understand why it is there.

Looking back at my work, I can see how often the same things have appeared: roots, paths, transformation, sanctuary, connection, things becoming buried and exposed.

Perhaps we reveal ourselves in the things we make long before we have the words to explain them.

Finding my people

I still want to find my people.

I love curious people. Creative people. Unconventional people. People who wonder about things, make things, notice things and share some of the values that matter to me.

And I want that wonderful feeling of being wanted rather than simply included.

But perhaps I have been waiting for other people to provide something that has to begin somewhere else.

Belonging to myself.

That doesn't mean not needing anybody. Quite the opposite. Connection matters enormously to me.

But perhaps real connection becomes easier when I stop requiring myself to become the version of me most acceptable to whoever happens to be in the room.

Maybe there isn't even one elusive, authentic version of myself that I need to uncover.

Perhaps the different versions are all me.

The artist. The mother. The friend. The woman who worries about money and the one who can become completely fascinated by a piece of lichen on a branch. The capable parts and the frightened ones. The person I have been and the person I am still becoming.

I don't know what my life would look like if I stopped measuring myself by how useful I am to everybody else.

I don't know who I would become if I stopped adjusting myself to fit the room.

And I certainly haven't reached the end of my search for belonging.

But perhaps I don't need to.

Maybe belonging isn't somewhere I finally arrive.

Maybe it begins when I stop waiting for somebody else to give me permission to take up my own place in the world.

And for now, I rather like the thought of beginning here:

I am my people.