A Place to Belong

I think we all dream of home, a place where we are completely accepted, fully loved, and know that we belong. Life can easily turn into a quest for this place, the illusive home.

As a child, I thought home was a place. It was the house at 1421 Savannah Street in Mesquite, Texas, with the white-walled rooms decorated with pink, floral curtains and hundreds of stuffed animals. It was where everything happened, dinners with my family, games with my friends. It was the center of my life.

Over the years and several moves later, I started to learn it was less about the place than I had first thought. Places come and go; you can move a thousand times, looking for that one place and never find it. Because, ultimately, it's not the place that accepts you and loves you and makes you belong.

Over all those years and through each of those moves, one thing remained the same; I always had my family, and they always had me. There was always a close-knit core group, unshakable, bonded. Even in going off to college, they were still there to support, love and accept me.

As an adult, I'm standing on a threshold of life. Do I continue on, as is, struggling to construct for myself a home out of all that is lacking? Or do I take that step toward the home I long to have, where I know I'll belong.

At times, here, now, where I'm at, I feel forgotten, invisible. Like a lost piece of a puzzle, trapped out of sight beneath a sofa or couch cushion, not accomplishing anything or contributing to the whole. Just waiting to be found. In those moments of realization, I know one thing. I'm tired of waiting, tired of being invisible when I know there's so much more I could be doing.

I feel this pull, to go and contribute in ways I can't here, to join with the whole, to belong once again. In this knowledge, my advice to others is find where you can do the most good, contribute the most and where there's a core group that will absolutely love on you. When you find that, do not, for any reason, let it go. Take it from someone who let it go, you don't want to disappear into the invisible. Hold on to your home, and never let it go.