The Places We Belong
Thoughts on identifying our roles in our families, in our world and…on Substack.
Hello Dear Reader,
I write to you today on a very rainy morning here on the island, the most consistent we’ve had in a while. It reminds me of my early days living here when the rains would come reliably every night while you were sleeping, and be gone by morning. But that weather pattern, like many things, has changed and we learn to adapt to find home with the new.
This being my first official piece for Tending Altars, settling on a topic to launch this fresh writing practice with has felt a little daunting. What gives a true first impression of what it is I want to offer here? My in-recovery perfectionist’s brain worries that if I choose wrong I can wave goodbye to some subscribers, but also more than that, is the feeling of being a fledgling here and curious to see who I’ll show up as in this new space. I’m not always good with doing things “wrong”.
Honestly since joining this platform a few weeks ago and trying to navigate yet another new online space, I sympathize with older generations who often grapple with technology. Given, I’m only thirty-four, but I’ve been a part of enough online social apps to know that there are unspoken rules and an invisible guidebook of etiquette for how to be in the right way. I a little bit feel like I’m standing in a blank white room asking, “WILL SOMEBODY PLEASE JUST TELL ME WHAT THE RULES ARE?”
While I am curious to figure out how Substack wants me to be here — how to use the “notes” feature, engage with fellow writers, optimize my automated emails — I’m also leaning into “fuck it, I’ll show up in a way that feels good”. Ultimately, I rehomed my writing practice from my website and Instagram to this space to encourage myself to write more consistently and by having an audience who chooses to be here because you are actually interested in savoring long form, inspired writing, I am held accountable to that commitment to myself. So, thank you. Really what I’m getting at is, as I’m trying to learn this new space, I am finding my place of belonging.
I have spent more than seven years exploring the intersection between spirit and creativity through my artworks and business I call Hina Luna. In doing so I have stirred the pot of its (my) purpose, taste testing, adding and subtracting conceptual ingredients, all to eventually reduce it down, as best I can, to this:
Identifying and connecting with our sources of personal belonging to inspire a lifestyle that both pays homage to those sources and intentionally weaves them into our everyday.
Leave it to me to turn something seemingly simple into the abstract. Through this writing practice, I expect to encounter unexpected moments of self discovery — a tender offering to both myself, and an invitation for you too. Topics we’ll dive into here may prompt us both to excavate the inner caverns of our hearts and subconscious, to be honest with ourselves, to be more authentic with one another and the way we show up in the world, to become clearer on our places of belonging.
This week I’ve been thinking about the different places in our lives we belong to and how each have varying levels of clarity, definition, and security. The level at which we feel at home in and identify with our ever-changing bodies; our role within the dynamic of our family nucleus; who we are in our friendships; our purpose at our jobs or within our career space; who we are within the greater web of community; how we show up and make change within the collective. I would argue that each and every one of us is in a constant state — even subconsciously — of finding our place.
My husband ran into a friend last week, a born and raised local-boy who could hardly believe that a transplanted white woman and art gallery owner asked him if he lived here. “It’s like they forgot who’s actually from here”, the friend said in his thick Pidgin, I imagine in a complicated combination of jest, anger, and heartbreak; his belonging questioned, when he is intrinsically of this place, not only belonging to it, but it to him. That’s one of the strategies of colonialism, an attempt to sever the ties of connection between place and the people who belong to it. When successful, the result is a displaced body of people, forcibly untethered to their source and left questioning their place of belonging. As generations go on and the effects still linger, to outsiders, the clarity of who belongs and who’s visiting becomes muddled.
2020 catalyzed a lot of change throughout our world. For perhaps the first time ever, every person in every country was experiencing the same thing. While we were dissuaded from being together in person, communities leaned on and equally supported one another, holding hands into the unknown. As we slowly, more than a year later, emerged from the cocoon, many of us were reconsidering how we spend our time and how we relate. Eyes were opened. We became more honest about how we really feel about our jobs, the friends we’d previously spent our time with, where we spend our money, and how we participate in collective social justice. Old identities were shed and we were ready to start anew asking ourselves, “who do I want to show up as on the other side of this collective hibernation?”
As I continue my quest in putting together the puzzle pieces of my lineage, any bread crumbs I discover along my path help me to feel clearer about who I am within the sphere of my family history. Each thread of discovery lends an open hand, bridging me to the culture and the old ways of being that my people existed in for generations upon generations before everything changed when they immigrated at the turn of the twentieth century. Within one to two generations, so much was lost in the transition but was also passed on. Great-great grandmother only spoke the tongue of the Mother Land and kept chickens in the backyard of their rented neighborhood home. Great-great grandfather made wine in the basement. Great grandfather worked hard in mines, wineries, factories and mechanics as a young man and was able to buy a modest house that they raised my grandmother in; a house I knew as a very young child and still have lasting memories of to this day. He found his place in this new world by anglicizing his Italian name and eventually gaining citizenship. My aunt tells a story of a time she was riding passenger in his old car and ducked in embarrassment when she spotted her classmates. Soon after, he bought a new car.
While traveling through Italy with my partner in the autumn of 2022, we spent five days in one of my ancestral regions. It’s hard to know whether or not it was confirmation-bias, but being there felt like a homecoming. I wholeheartedly loved everything I was met with — the wide landscape of the Tuscan hills, the charm of the circular-built town, the colors, the people, the history, recognizing family names on signs. I fantasize about a time in my life when I can spend more extended time there, to build a more intimate relationship to the place and, ultimately, to my ancestors. The irony is not lost on me that I, four generations in the future, am aching to return (as a more frequent visitor or part-time resident) to the place that my ancestors left due to poverty; that I am willing to abandon, even partly, the place they worked so hard to secure for the chance to return to where they left from. Would they be up in arms? Are they rolling in their graves? Or would they hold their hearts and weep with relief that through me they would be going home?
I’m unsure how to conclude, having taken you from an anecdote about seeking writer’s inspiration and leading to a hanging question of how to be a good ancestor. But this is how we bridge concepts and make connections. It is through storytelling and curiosity that we relate better, how we see the humanness in one another, keep our hearts open to change, and understand what it means to belong.
I will leave you with a few reflective questions to journal to or carry with you to ponder throughout your day:
Mine all mine: Where do you feel a sense of absolute security in your relationship to your body and self-identity? What was the process to getting there?
It’s all relative: How would you name your role(s) within your family dynamic? Your partnerships? Your friend group? What spoken or unspoken responsibilities do you inherently take on in your relationships with other people?
Finding your lane: How has your participation in collective issues and change evolved or changed? Where do you find yourself now in relationship to this?
You belong here,
I love all of this and have thought so much about the feeling of ‘home’, why some places feel like that & are like siren songs… thank you for this beautiful Love Letter 💗