songs of belonging: ballads and boundaries

my writing praxis, part 2

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Hello gentle-people,

These days I am reflecting on the ongoing search for belonging I carry with me in my heart, mind, and body. I consider the ways belonging has been denied…and I consider the ways it has found me. I consider how hard it has been to keep my heart open to it. I consider my profound relief that in this past year, when I needed the most support, there were people there, holding me together. There were people there to let me fall apart as well.

I celebrate the community I have today, knowing it exists alongside shadows of grief marked by years spent in desperate aches. Knowing the echoes of loss are with me still.

I wrote this affirmation from a lonely place: “I don’t want to be needed, I want to belong. The songs of belonging are different, I can sing them with my whole body.”

Two things about me that frame this post: I am a singer-songwriter and someone who [unscientifically] studies birds.¹ I am curious about bird songs and the memories they hold. I may share some of my songs with you, someday. For now, I share in prose the “songs of belonging” that I have been singing for some time.

[also this Newsletter is too long for email and is available in full on the website/app]

A preamble

To the woman who once came up to me and said “You’re not singing in your real voice,” after I shared an original song in front of the church:

You set me on the path of diminishing self-confidence about my voice. Practice became an exercise in revealing I would never measure up to you.

Back then, I would have wanted your help to unlock my potential. But today, I sing in the absence of your affirmation and I am pleased with myself. Can you say the same? Or do you hear that same voice and are you struggling to free yourself from its cages?

May the fissures of your fractured being heal…may your voice sing you close to those who love you, beginning with yourself.

May they raise a boundary around those who have harmed you..beginning with yourself.

May you find your real voice. I have found mine.

“I don’t want to be needed….”

There were times I tell myself that I would rather have no gifts, no intelligence, no sense of humor…if it meant I had more friends. If it meant that guys would not be intimidated by me. If it meant that my phone lit up with requests for my company in fun activities rather than an endless stream of tasks and opportunities to serve. If it mean that I could be called on for being “wanted” and not “needed,” whatever that means.

—Rose J. Percy, “Needed But Not Wanted, Part 1”

I wrote these words from a very different place in life. It was 2017 and I was 25 years old. This was after I finished college and I am describing what most of my time there was like—I was wrestling with devocations that instrumentalized me.

Whenever I would disappear to take care of myself, I would hear things like "I miss your voice."

When people say things like, "I miss your voice," I hope they know that voice can close up when nerves and trauma take over. I hope they know that some of us wrestle with silence to find a soothing hum. I hope they know that years spent reading, listening, and honoring the most painful histories can leave you in a space where only ellipses can hold you….

“…I want to belong.”

When I was in these spaces, masking, I was so fragmented. If I knew being fully myself in a space meant having conversations educating others on how to hold space for all of me, I was either disengaged or decidedly selective about how I showed up.

As I was looking for images for this post, I searched “belonging” in Pexels,² a website for stock photos. A bunch of photos of boxes came up—folks packing or unpacking. I thought, “Wow, this is strange…” then I thought, “Well…belonging is a synonym for possession.”

So often belonging is sold to us through labels, identity markers, or hobbies that bring us joy. Belonging can range from a subjective experience to something akin to the Hogwarts sorting hat process³ or the identification of an enneagram number. So often efforts in belonging put us into the very boxes that present us in pieces before the world.

The stories that come alongside how we describe what it means to belong or feel its absence matter. For me, belonging is found among those who re-member us. Yes…this is a spiritually progressive broken record, but still, I can’t help but think of the “broken body of Jesus,” passed around in a room of those he hoped would see themselves as one. I think of him saying “Do this in remembrance of me”…and I wonder what part of that is meant to be a ritual among grievers.

I also consider the Portuguese word saudade, which means I remember you/I miss you. Both meanings are carried together…the residue of the past and the hope for a future meeting. We remember forward. I wanted to find people who were being this way…because I knew in their being I would re-member and re-call what has been broken in me.

We Remember

“the songs of belonging are different”

from stone to flesh 
(an original from 2021)

I once made a decision to respond to the wonder 
around me with a face made of stone 
to be human to myself alone. 

it worked so long as everyone knew I was accessible 
it worked so long as everyone used—
oh they did not even need to learn how 
but it happened 

I was there without really being there
when She stared back at me 
in the mirror She was only 
training us to shield,
to lock in, to build the 

damn 

what we built was not indestructible 
but it held up through the war
it grew weathered 
fell apart fell
together 

after all it was never really whole
just hiding holes 

I still see them now
these wounds talk under pressure 
but stay alive somehow
forcing light through the sores

no I do not wish for 
more lessons in agony 
I am training her 
in the mirror now
to see what I want to see

Humanity

In me first, then perhaps, wherever my arms reach.

I will not break down this poem since this is a poem about breaking down. Those who have been there and felt it need no interpretations but their own. This poem is for those where in a place like I was where all I had was “this ain’t it.”

Now as I consider what it means to be called into belonging, are the moments of training myself to see my humanity. A labor that is ongoing for sure, but one I had to do in contexts where I was training others to see my humanity.

Recently, in a podcast episode⁴ with Robert , he invited me to share what I am cultivating in this Substack newsletter. I explained a bit of this journey and named how my softness was often framed as a gentle landing for those with white privilege to unlearn their racism. Unpacking my racial trauma, I realized that while I lessened the impact on white people, I absorbed the shock. The blows landed on me and lingered for a long time.

They loved my voice.

They always came back to how much they loved it.

So I had to learn how to stop singing for them.

“…with my whole body.”

There are two main reasons birds sing: to protect what is theirs and to find their mate. One function is to create a boundary while the other is the hope of closeness.

The journey began with putting pieces of myself back together. As I go on to discuss in the podcast with Robert I discussed some ways to reshape how I wrote began with a project I called “Dear Soft Black Woman,”⁵ which helped me write for myself first. I wrote for those who could see themselves in the call to be a soft Black woman/femme in the world. I was shaping a boundary alongside the hope of closeness. Instead of being spread into pieces, I was stretched. I let emotions melt away in the poses I made as my body found new forms to inhabit.

Soon this unfolding helped me clear my weary throat a bit more. I am singing my songs as authentically as I can these days and because of it, I know my range. I was humming before, in the places where I was fractured, seeking to belong through utility, with my desires hidden under a stony exterior.

I was humming my humanity before. But now I can belt.

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Landing Track

Today’s Landing track is a couple of songs and a new affirmation, built on the foundation of the one that has carried me this far. The first song is an instrumental by The Vernon Spring called “An Angel I Know.” Bird songs make a wonderful appearance here. The second song is called “Unfolding” by Luca Fogale and the lyrics are affirmations in themselves.

AN AFFIRMATION

I love who I am today and the ways I have found belonging. 
              I keep good company – good company is keeping me. 
              I must be good company, too. 
I am worthy great friendships. 
             I know this because I have great friendships.
             It sometimes hurts to think about losing them… but it does not hurt to keep them close. 
It is not always easy for me to open up.
             But I know who is open when I’m ready to find my way back to their love. 
Not everyone gets to see all sides of me. 
             But I know where my roundness is safe, and where the circle is open for me to join. 
I was once fighting to belong somewhere, anywhere that would take me. 
             But I now know the gift of my presence. I am free to explore my range.

1. I am subscribed to a podcast called “Birdnote,” and it’s daily one-minute facts about birds. I find it so uplifting. I also love instrumentals that feature bird sounds, like the one in our landing tracks.

2. Most of the photos don’t match my vibe so I usually like to do a lot of digging—which is time-consuming, I know..but look at my thumbnails and tell me it ain’t worth it!

3. So sad that the seemingly imaginative mind of this series author could not dream up a place of belonging in her feminism for trans folks. I grieve that. || For those who need to know, though, I am Hufflepuff / Ravenclaw.

4. You can listen to more of that conversation in the episode on “Black Aliveness, or a Poetics of Being” on Black Coffee and Theology.

5. If you’re new here, this is an archived podcast. Its lessons live in me though.