What do you belong to? Where do you belong?

[IHeartKingThistle]

I'd love some responses on this - I'm writing a collection of poems for my MA and I'm focusing on groups of people and the sense of belonging that you get from being in a group of some kind. Apologies if that sounds pretentious - I'm trying very hard to avoid that!

Please can you tell me what groups you are part of, or have been part of, that make you feel like that, even a bit? Anything at all would be appreciated.

I’m a dance mum. They’re a scary bunch but I suspect I could ask them to help me bury a body. So long as your child doesn’t compete against theirs you’re safe

Animal welfare, I’m a fosterer for a well known animal charity and work as part of a close knit team of volunteers.

I feel like I’ve found my people.

I also belong by the sea. Not that I have to see it daily. More that I couldn’t live somewhere land-locked. Comes from growing up in a seaside town I think.

I also belong in book shops. Smells like home. Can happily own books I’ve never read.

Netball team ...picked it back up at 40 after not playing since a teen.
Book group...we're a diverse group but we love a chat about books
Writing group...
Used to play the steel pan..so steelband
Every year parade at Nottinghill Carnival with a 'chocolate mas' band...
My family..sat with my DM, DS, DH and 2xDS.

My coven. It's like having a close family, only one that you have carefully chosen and have loads in common with. Like so many other pagans, once I realised that what I was feeling had a name, and a community, it was like coming home.

My team at work. We are a small specialist team, embedded in a larger one, and so we have our own methods and models.. and a lot of fun.

Books for me, too.

I’m Scottish - I always feel like I firmly belong in Scotland , it’s like something in me , part of my personality .

I’m a student of one university and graduated from another a few years , I feel a part of the latter more so .

Lifetime Celtic supporter ...

I’m a confirmed catholic as well but struggle as I came out as gay last summer and worry I don’t belong so much there .

Girlguiding as well - I was a member from age 4-25 and it’s still very important to me even if I don’t have an active role any more .

Also my old workplace - I still feel my second home is there sometimes and feel like I’m with family when I see my colleagues .

I also feel like I ‘belong’ with my family , I’ve got a very confusing mix of relatives via divorces and adoptions and remarriages but I feel very, very much my aunty’s niece, and a cousin , daughter , granddaughter, etc . I traced my family tree which cements that feeling of Scottishness ,with little bits of English and Irish , and shows me my place in the wider scheme of things , if that makes sense .

I'd love to find a book group to gel with.

The army is where I felt my sense of “belonging”.
Other than that, I’ve not been a part of any kind of organised group, and have honestly felt a bit lost ever since

Wales, l lived away for many years and when I finally was able to move back it was very emotional. I didn't move to the area I was born but it's still home.
I see another poster used the word Hiraeth, there's not really an English translation. But to me Wales is where my heart belongs.

In my younger years I was part of a very large group of people who would meet up with their cars. The music was good, almost everyone was friendly and it was an amazing experience to meet new people who would drive from other towns. We were all so young and free with lots to look forward to in the future. The cars ranged from absolute bangers to things you would see on fast and furious. There was thumping stereos, bright uv/ led spectacles installed in or under some cars, there was the roar of the exhausts, laughter and fun. The police were often around for various reasons mostly traffic related but there was never violence.
Those were the days.

I'm a massive introvert so I'm not physically part of anything but I'm in a community with the k-popper / Korean drama watchers.

I'm also in the teaching community.

My church, my walking group, my wonderful friends/family/ husband! I’m so, so lucky to always have their love and support!

I belong with my DH - I came from a pretty broken family and the day I met DH I felt like I had come home - 30 years later I still do.

I live in Scotland and have walked all my life. The Arrocher alps are my local hills, but I now live near the Cairngorms. The mountains of Scotland always feel like home to me, it is where I reconnect with my teenage self and there is some deep comfort in the fact I get the same sense of connection as a women in my 50s as I did as a young girl. I feel I belong in the world when I am up a mountain, alone or with my DH or friend. The hills and my husband are my touchstones in this world.

Where you belong can change. I grew up in an isolated rural community then left to go to University and never returned to live, just for holidays. I don't belong there anymore and visits home are hard, I'm out of place and have no value within that society, my skills and achievements are too abstract.

I have now worked at my current employer longer than I lived in my childhood home. My best friend at work says when she started working here she told her family 'I've found my tribe'. It does feel like that, we're scientists so all very nerdy. People tend to stay with the company a long time and I have work colleagues I have worked with for decades. After DH and my DBro (who has taken a similar journey to me) they are my family.

I emigrated to the UK and it was a wrench to leave my home country, particularly as my family of origin had fallen apart.

Now I belong here, to my church community, to my academic research group of which there are a few internationally ( belong to all), my workplace University but also my Alma mater abroad. I belong to the family I created with DH. I also belong to my local community. I'm also European and have a strong sense of connection to the EU.

Thanks OP, that's been useful to think through.

I'd love to find a book group to gel with.

I was in a book group once, I was the nerd, I was always the one who had finished the book and had the most views about it. It broke up after a couple of years. DSis is in a FB book group and loves it, MN answers a lot of that of need for me now.

count i found a recent visit home very hard. I'm in a liminal place between two countries in my mind.

I'm another one to say Wales! I feel so grounded when I'm back home. A connection with the land and the people. My people, my past. I love travelling but couldn't imagine settling anywhere else on earth.

I'm from a small island and although I no longer live there it will always be my home, when I go back to visit I feel very much at home and part of it, if that makes sense.

This is such a profound thread, OP, thank you.

I am a changeling - I’ve changed class, location, accent, aspirations - and don’t truly belong in either my old world or my new world.

I love the reply about belonging to books. Me too. I had a grim childhood and sometimes I think Laura Ingalls Wilder, Elinor Brent Dyer, Thomas Hardy and Jane Austen were the parental guidance and support I never had.

I also belong to my husband and children. Everything I ever wanted, but never dared imagine I would have.

Two places spring to mind. The first was years ago, when I used to ride an RDA / riding school pony as a volunteer at a city farm in London. We schooled them, tried to stop them developing too many naughty habits that could make it difficult for a novice or disabled rider (mostly children too so it was important), and also to give them new things to think about and stop them getting stale and bored. I never fitted in in the city really, it was noisy and crowded and I was too shy. But with ‘my’ pony, I belonged. We were a team. He tried his heart out for me and I loved him. I loved looking after him, grooming him, giving him his hay and then standing watching him eat, all warm and cosy away from the cold night.

Eventually I moved away and had to leave him behind - it broke my heart a little. Even more so when he was sold shortly afterwards and I couldn’t afford him. Although I heard later that he found a great home in the country and was a happy boy, so it wasn’t tragic for him at all, but it was sad to me. But his stable was my happy place, much more than my flat and definitely more than my job!

The second place is sitting on the sofa with my DS in my arms, now. He is 3.5 and extremely busy and important so we don’t snuggle too much as it doesn’t always fit his schedule (), but when he comes to snuggle he fits into my arms perfectly. And I know I’m where I need to be, right there and then.

Oh yes, and I belong to London. Everyone here is from somewhere else, we are all so different socially or geographically, and yet we have made it our wonderfully eccentric home together.

Interesting thread. I’m autistic, so not very clubbable anyway, but as a child of Geordies living in the South, a feminist among sexists, then being an Englishwoman living in Scotland, I’ve never really fitted in.
As a Christian I do feel I have a home with God. I love that old hymn that says “We walk by faith as strangers here, but Christ shall call us home”. So true!

Not unusual at all... but two vastly different races/cultures - and when people ask me if I feel more 'apple' or 'banana' for instance I can ONLY say that I feel half-apple/half-banana as I don't know any different... Am sure my input will have helped enormously...

I belong to the people who don't have a clue where or if they even do belong