Ever Felt You Belong Everywhere and Nowhere?

You contain multitudes.

Have you ever had the sensation you belong everywhere and nowhere? A decade or so ago, in a flash, I understood this was the energy underlying the swirling I was experiencing—not quite sure what was next, not feeling completely compelled one way or another. For someone long-guided by the motto If it’s not a “Fuck Yes!”, it’s a “No”, the lack of inspiration, direction, and excitement had me in a tailspin.

I’d spent the majority of my adult life fully turned on—excited by something or other, seeking to understand, looking to explore, pushing boundaries, building skills. I routinely chose experiences over security, life force over material goods, freedom over constraints. The result has been a life path full of deep dives—into science and art and wilderness and spirituality. Of travel to far reaches of the planet. Of doing things that felt new or uncomfortable or even a bit scary until the boundaries of my comfort zone expanded and these things were no longer new or uncomfortable or scary. Each exploration brought new learnings, new communities, new opportunities; each contributed meaningfully to who I am today.

The multiple worlds I’d explored didn’t always align or even overlap. At times, I became restless—not able to just be an artist, or an athlete, or an academic. Those who kept me intellectually challenged wouldn’t or couldn't adventure with me; those who adventured with me couldn’t converse the way I needed. The level of self-expression and self-adornment I relished at Burning Man wouldn’t hold up when I was presenting as an expert in a public hearing. The kind of travel I favored—setting out for months at a time—didn’t fit neatly with any “job”. Convention bored me. Linear thinking bored me. I wanted deep, juicy, meaningful. And so, once I’d soaked up the juicy growth from one deep dive, rather than stay and reap the rewards of commitment—financial, relational, communal or otherwise—I’d move on to the next horizon. And, for a long while—decades really—there was always a new horizon, always something that excited me. I was happy.

Yet, something had changed. Friends settled into marriages and families. People became more serious. The easy access to worldly adventure presented by my local community dwindled. And perhaps, I had changed too. What was clear was the gnawing sensation I was experiencing: I belong everywhere and nowhere. I began wondering: Was this becoming a pattern? Instead of running toward something, had I been running away from something?

I questioned and swirled for some time. Eventually, I came to more fully understand that it was none of these things. I most definitely had been running in directions that made my soul sing. But in doing so, I was butting up against the whole trouble that our society likes to put us in boxes. In fact, it rewards us for being in boxes. Boxes sorted by profession or class, race or wealth, sex or sexual orientation. Boxes gilded in gold for those who follow the rules. Tattered boxes on street corners for others. Sure, I had become adapt at leveraging conventional boxes just enough to make it possible to do all the crazy exploration I’d done. But the truth of it is, I resisted those boxes. I didn’t fit neatly into any box—and, I suspect, neither do you. It was as if I had understood innately and very early on that which was expressed by Jiddu Krishnamurti, “It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society.” [While widely quoted as such, it seems the sentiment, but not these exact words, originated with Krishnamurti in a piece written in the early 1950s. This sentiment was later echoed by the likes of Mark Vonnegut (Kurt’s son), Aldous Huxley, Henry Miller, and more recently in the work of Gabor Maté (see: The Myth of Normal: Trauma, Illness, & Healing in a Toxic Culture).]

I wasn’t running away from anything but convention. I became aware that the source of my restlessness was related to something more profound: I contain multitudes. Yes, as Walt Whitman so famously said, “I am large, I contain multitudes.” The trouble was not just the boxes but that I had not integrated these many facets of me into a cohesive whole. Instead, I had been code-switching between roles, skills, appearance, demeanor to fit the particular situation, the particular box—a practice that is at once tiring, confusing, and ill-adapted. It served me—and quite well—in whichever situation, community, endeavor I was pursuing but it didn’t allow me to be fully-expressed in one place, at the same time. Once I understood this, it was clear I was ready for integration, for embodiment of all of it.

Like so many of us, I was never shown any of this in childhood. It was only through my own digging, my own deep thirst for understanding myself, the world around me, other people, that I even learned “integration” of self is a thing. Or understood I was in no way alone in this experience of discordance.

Warrior poet Audre Lord so beautifully said:

My fullest concentration of energy is available to me only when I integrate all the parts of who I am, openly, allowing power from particular sources of my living to flow back and forth freely through all my different selves, without the restriction of externally imposed definition.

Ahhh…this was it: to be able to gather and lean on my fullest concentration of energy and bring that to the world. And, so, I began more intentionally walking the path of integration—owning and embodying not just these disparate personas but also my shadow parts and my light, my masculine and feminine energies, my wounds and my strengths, all of it.

In addition to further explorations of psychology, ritual, mindfulness, somatics, and more, my life-long teachers and healers—water and wilds—have been right there alongside me. Their power is indisputable: Immersive time spent in, on, and around water and wilds has a way of soothing our nervous systems, evoking sentiments of awe and connection, belonging and love, and imparting profound truths about the nature of existence and our place in the vast universe of everything. Their intricate, complex, interconnected, and reciprocal workings provide robust models for a life of blossoming, thriving, loving.

Water, for example, is the Universal Solvent, the Great Integrator, a connector, an agent of transformation. She models the work of integration as she wends and churns her way through watersheds, at once eroding and depositing, fluid and fierce, finite in volume and impossibly infinite in forms of beauty, taking these seeming dualities and embracing them all to form the pulse of our planet. Along the way, she picks up the chemical and biological signatures of all she touches, stirs them up in an alchemical stew, and bestows us with life. I know of no more beautiful and powerful model for how to be in the world.

I take great solace in the words of Maya Angelou, who said, “You only are free when you realize you belong no place—you belong every place—no place at all” (in Conversations with Maya Angelou). Apparently, I knew this all along.

To your freedom and mine.

xo Wendy

I’d love to hear from you!

What parts of my journey resonate with you? Are you embracing and nurturing all of you? If not, how would you show up in the world if you truly abided your soul? Where would your heart take you? What gifts would you cultivate and share? What work would you do? What words would you say? Who and how would you love?