As a lifelong traveler, I often wonder where I belong.
As I have slowly built up my life in San Francisco and carefully (and flexibly) reinvented my identity among the cross-culture, racial, and spiritual experiences, a similar question keeps surfacing— Who am I?
In an interview with Bill Moyers in 1973, Maya Angelou said, "You only are free when you realize you belong no place – you belong every place – no place at all. The price is high. The reward is great."
Decades later, Brené Brown once said something very similar, “I feel I belong everywhere I go, no matter where it is or who I’m with as long as I never betray myself. And the minute I become who you want me to be in order to fit in and make sure people like me is the moment I no longer belong anywhere.”
I would love to call it the life of "in-between" — between body and mind, heart and brain, different cultures and religions, and between suffering and awakening.
In any therapeutic work, I believe one primary goal of the therapist is to instill the concept of the "Self" within the client's conscious awareness. - How do I feel? What is my unique experience in this world? What are my true desires and needs? How do I look at myself? (Often, when our authentic"Self" feels diminished, the ego steps forward to defend her - I need to please to be liked. I need to achieve higher to be seen. I need to speak louder to be heard ... but the case is precisely the opposite - behind all this lurks depression, a feeling of emptiness.)
I belong to myself. And I’m very proud of that.