belonging: being part of a unit
A lot of the people I know consider their family a unit they are part of, even if they hate it. I don't think you can understand what it's like to not belong unless you haven't had that feeling (or haven't had it since before kindergarten). A dysfunctional unit is still a unit
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Some of the hugs are just for the feeling you expressed in the cut, of being worried that people are tired of hearing about this.
I can only speak authoritatively for myself, but for me that's not true at all at all at all. This is something big and intense and close to your heart and I love and am touched by you doing the work to share it with us. <3 <3 <3
I'm so sorry that your biofamily wouldn't and/or couldn't give you a sense of grounding and belonging. I hope someday they can try to understand how deeply it hurt you to feel that their acceptance was conditional, and until then I hope that talking about about it with the people who do love and want to know you helps heal that feeling a little.
About building a unit--I really want to address that, but I don't know how except by explaining my experience. If that feels disrespectful or derailing to do in your space, I'm sorry in advance and I'll put it somewhere else if you let me know you'd prefer that.
But. For me, I kind of have opposite associations of one-on-one connections versus group connections? (And your post has made me very aware that I have the luxury to feel that way partly because my blood family gave me an incredibly strong sense of grounding and belonging.) But for me, there have been several times in my life that I've been part of a unit, a friend group that seemed fairly self-sustaining, and it always felt *less* real and *less* stable to me. Like, that I was accepted as part of the group because of my strong connection with the person who brought me in, or just because I'd generally been around so people kept inviting me around. But if i didn't have several strong one-on-one connections, it felt like my being there didn't really make a difference and my leaving wouldn't either.
The way it makes sense for me to build community (and that I feel that I have right now more strongly than I ever have in my life and it's so wonderful) is something that I've been thinking to myself as being a "heartweb," where I have strong one-on-one connections in mutually committed dyads, and then there are also strong pulls and meta commitments to people who are important to my people, which are stronger the more interconnections there are, and make it easier and more rewarding to form new dyad relationships with them.
So. It makes me really happy when the web gets incestuous enough that it pulls together as a group/unit, but that's not the part that I know how to foster or that feels real to me.
To take our group-- when I started getting close to Kylei, I started being included in group things, and as much as that was wonderful, I didn't feel at all like I actually belonged until I started developing and deepening independent relationships with you and with Abby. And now, the web of you me Abby Kylei feels strong and I'm very committed to continuing to foster all of those connections, whether or not there were group events, and I like Roger and Topaz and Allison and Anicka and Kei-Won-Tia and Camilia for themselves and for the meta connections, and would like to get to know them better, but haven't had the spoons to figure out what that would take. But. Like. Aside from organizing events, which is stressful but I want to try to get more dots in, I have *no* idea how to foster a group connection aside from fostering individual connections.
So. I don't know if the way I process and pursue connection does or could help toward building your sense of belonging. But I love you, and I will always love you, and you will always be part of my web and I hope to continue to pull closer to each other and therefore pull people that are kin to each of us closer.
<3
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that is my ideal kind of comment, please never hesitate to do so!
Your explanation of group connection is a thing that I do not like at all or want, it made it easier to explain the thing that I do like and want, which is what you describe as heartweb <3 <3
I also didn't feel tribe with you until we started connecting on a deeper one-to-one level. I am happy happy happy that we have/are. Fostering individual connections and sharing time all together are exactly the things I want ;-)
so yay yay and thanks so much for exploring this here for me to engage with. *HUGS*
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