You hear the whispers and wonder what the hushed tones are hiding. Perhaps you’ve failed some cultural test you didn’t know was being administered. You’ve heard people say “we’re not a monolith” and yet, your uniqueness is used as a proof that you don’t fit. And honestly, you’re starting to think you don’t. You convince yourself that belonging is a gift meant for those who claim a single identity, so you resign yourself to wander, ever-seeking but never claiming a home.
Your own doubts replace the voices that once rejected you, and your internal critic creates a feedback loop by which you continually justify the heartbreaking stories you tell about yourself. You use fractions to describe your identity, yet you never end up whole. Why? There is an unspoken question that burns within. The heat ignites your doubts while the smoke shrouds your truths. One question has become an inferno which consumes your identity and incinerates the hope of resolution.
Where do I belong?
The question is birthed from insecurity or rejection. It arises because someone, somewhere told you that your story was insufficient; your identity incomplete. As time passes, and the question spreads uncontained, you formulate the only answer that seems plausible. The question that raged becomes a declaration that drowns your curiosity and floods your sense of self with disbelief.
I don’t belong.
Once you tell yourself this neo-truth for long enough, you begin to accept that you won’t ever find the home you long for. Despite this, you might still feel generally accepted by other people, but your acceptance is always contingent upon living into the identity they perceive rather than the one you offer and assert for yourself. You’re the racially ambiguous friend that white people love ,but never properly name. You’re the white-passing person of color that Black folks still invite to the barbecue, but don’t totally accept. You’re the light-skin afro-latinx person that can morph with any social context, so no one ever feels uncomfortable except you. On and on it goes.
If you read yourself in any of the words so far, I need to remind you of something.
You Belong.
Your unique genetic makeup and melanin levels are not barriers to belonging. They’re the keys. They’re your keys, particular to you; unlike anyone else’s. Your fractions are no longer necessary. Such language and ways of thinking are rooted in the narratives of white supremacy that created the construct of race and used it to justify incomprehensible violence, kidnapping, land theft and genocide. Let’s rehabilitate our language isn’t beholden to racist ideology.
I’m sorry you haven’t been seen or loved in your fullness. You deserve to be known as whole. A combination of the identities and cultures that shape you. A living mosaic that honors your ancestral lineage and land.
This sounds great, but what are two words of affirmation when you’ve heard volumes of rejection? What is acceptance from a stranger when your own kin have turned away? What is acknowledgment from a friend when society itself deems you invisible? Valid questions to be sure, but not the only words that matter.
You Belong.
Not to me or to them, but to yourself. You belong in the skin that you occupy. You belong in the cultures that you represent. You belong in the lineage that you claim. Can you let this idea of belonging be the seed that grows in the darkness of your soul? Can you return to it and with every reminder, let it expand until the doubt no longer has a stranglehold on your truth.
If today is one of those days when you hear the whispers and feel the flames of doubt rising higher and higher within, please take a deep breath and as you exhale, offer yourself the gift of this affirmation.
I. Belong.
Thank you for these words. I found myself in your words even though I don't have a complex racial identity. They transcend race, gender, age, etc...piercing the soul of those of us who have always struggled to "belong".
Always on time. Thanks for your work.