Seasons Greetings!
Merry Christmas to those who celebrate, it's also my daughter's birthday -- so today I celebrate my daughter! So while there's not a big dinner table for us tonight, there's celebration in community. And tomorrow, my father's side of the family is invited to my parent's house and my mother refuses to admit that this is for my daughter's birthday.
I find it hard to relate to my mother. In fact, I find it hard to relate to most of my family post Saturn return, it's been a decade or so since and I think I'm almost at a place where I no longer want to try and fit in. I've accepted my black-sheeped-ness, I have accepted my seat at the margin.
I have rehearsed a few responses for when my choices, nature and life are questioned at the dinner table, like some weird specimen spoken of/at rather than with/to. What they don't know is that I've been scheming a revolution from the margin (kidding, but also, serious.)
What's revolution, you ask?
Liberation is not an easy path to travel. And as dreamer, self appointed, self proclaimed, my biggest ally is my own imagination. And so when I say imagination for liberation, I truly mean it. It's not just a catchy name (is it a catchy name?) And so in my deepest moments of despair, of feeling (and being) othered, I have dreamt of and imagined pockets of belonging for myself and for people like me.
I don't know if you're like me but maybe you are. Pockets of belonging are little specs in time and space where I get a taste of what it would be like to belong, to truly belong. Sometimes it's with other petunias in the onion patch, sometimes it's with ducklings pressured to become swans and sometimes, it's with black sheep who've gone through attempts at bleaching their true colors.
I know that this might not feel like true community in the modern sense, because I think we've come to believe that community is the same as homogeneity and it isn't. A true community is diverse, like a thriving ecosystem, mainly. Monoculture never thrives.
Some recent pockets where I have belonged include:
- The bathroom...if you're a parent, you might relate
- Online communities that include Creative Living, Imaginal Body, the interweb and Pretty Decent Internet Cafe.
- At home, where I'm slowly cultivating a sense of home and having friends over, all while trying to keep it neat.
I would love to know what pockets of belonging you've been cultivating for your own self. Whether recent or throughout your lives. I'm pretty curious about the gardens of belonging we're tending to. So please do share!
Here's to all the Holy days and may we honor the dark and allow it to germinate the dreams we have waiting within us.
Much love,
Sara
