Belonging

A question that many queer/LGBTQIA+ people ask frequently over the course of our lives is “Where do I belong?”

A sense of belonging doesn’t always come easy to us, we who are too often are rejected from our families and communities of origin for our queerness.

For many of us, arriving at a place of self-acceptance and self-love represents a kind of interior belonging—a sense of I belong to myself—but so many never even get to that point.

It still took me a long time to find a queer community that I felt both seen and reflected in. I stood in my own way for many years. Finding those connections, that sense of family and home, is an ongoing journey, one that doesn’t always happen in a straight line.

Many of us live in cultures where the messaging is, at best, that our lives will be difficult, filled with challenges and setbacks by virtue of this indelible part of ourselves—our queerness. At worst we’re told that we are worthless, sub-human, and will never have love in our lives or anything of value to contribute to our communities. These messages, whether explicit or implicit, loud or quiet, hurt us deeply, mark us indelibly, and leave so many of us wounded so profoundly that it takes a lifetime of work to process and heal and unlearn what we’ve internalized.

Access to resources and queer community can make a difference—queer social groups, bars, and community centers can be a lifeline for those seeking to be with others who see them and love them, rather than, at best, accept or tolerate them. Resources like these tend to exist in larger population centers, and for queers living in rural communities far from those support systems the situation can feel quite isolating and dire.

This is all to say that it isn’t easy for us. It never is.

Digital culture has offered some respite, helping queer people connect and build community together over large distances. Queer media—television, film, music, literature—create opportunities for queer people to see themselves reflected in the art that we consume. 

As an adolescent, David Levithan’s Boy Meets Boy in fact saved my life. I had experienced my first serious rejection and, already despairing that I’d never find romance and intimacy in my life, found a book with characters exploring those same things. And not just that—the world of this story was one where queerness wasn’t questioned. Two boys could hold hands, kiss in public, go to prom together, without fear of violent reprisal from their peers. This was a world where the quarterback of the high school football team was also a drag performer and was crowned homecoming queen. In 2004 this was a world that didn’t exist, but David made me feel like it could, like it one day would. At a low, self-destructive time in my life this was a vision of possibility that lifted me up again, that gave me hope of one day finding where I belonged.

I believe that for queer people finding a sense of belonging in the world is part of our spiritual work. Finding communities of like-minded people who see us the way we want to be seen and who reflect our values and identities is an important part of how we validate our identities as queer people, and an important part of how we grow. We deserve to see ourselves with dignity, we deserve to feel proud of who we are and the work we’ve done.