The Cost of Loving You. Belonging and the Family of Origin

Belonging is the direction to which every compass is set. It is the magnetic north if not always the true north.?

Sometimes, the compass is clean; we are clear. We know the freedom of belonging based on being rather than on doing.?If we are lucky, our original belonging was simple. You belong, no question. We stand with you when you succeed, when you falter,?through all the messy beauty of your path to adulthood.?We will grow with your growth, keep up and stay steady.?Even when we are frightened, we will be boring in our reliability.

Sometimes, the compass is less clean; the directions are more complex. Our belonging seems to hinge upon fulfilling certain tasks.?We often know them without being told. Be the partner to a parent, keep secrets for the family, hide your intelligence, silence your curiosity. Sometimes several jobs at the same time.

Tuned in from the beginning to the needs of others we are stealth in our navigation, as we simultaneously understand that belonging can be taken away at any point.?In this sense, the way to belong stands in the way of change. And all growth is change, of course, a melding and expansion and settling in only to lift off again.

Our parents and other caregivers also had compasses. If they were clear, they likely had the mobility to rise to the unfolding occasion of us. If, however, a parent or caregiver’s compass was set to the original fields as the North star, the challenge of the new — the natural challenge of us — might have been too much to bear alone. It is an easy unconscious movement to displace onto the innocent. When resting back feels unreal or even dangerous, we begin to lean forward.

And, as the little ones, we will do it, become it, take it on — or at least try to.?In the early years, and sometimes later,?it does not occur to us that there is anything else.?There isn’t in the beginning. Belonging is the most precious instinct, and we look to the closest ones to make room.?We don’t question the cost.

As time passes, we notice. Hey, your weight is too much for me.?Why do I have to fulfill your unmet needs? In your unhappiness, you can’t even see me. Every time I reach for something, you destroy it.?As we file away these experiences — the subtle undertows or outright blocking of natural trajectory — we are also forming our defenses, often without realizing it. We may go along with, while we simultaneously nestle into a cloak of resentment (the beginning of saying yes when we mean no).?We may try to put a stop to everything through withdrawal or rejection (these options may become the default versus the discernment).?We?suppress our feelings so as not to have to stand for them seemingly against others (sometimes the beginning of negative self-soothing ways).

The thing is, the notes we begin to take are usually the same ones they once took. We see them in the faces of old photographs and in the cryptic messages written on yellowed envelopes kept safe between the pages of long-unopened books.?That we belong to their belonging is right there in the turned down lips of the grandmother and the tipsy grin of the grandfather. The excitement and uncertainty of the five children as they carried their one small suitcase off the boat at Ellis Island. In the deep thin lines crisscrossing?the face of the uncle who was actually two years younger then than we are now.?In the names of those who came so we could live carved into headstones so far from home.?

That we belong to their belonging is often forgotten in the din of our own upbringing where we believe we are to blame and we are to save. In the noisy kitchen of current dynamics it feels like all the reasons and all the solutions are right here among these dishes and these lilies and these dusty corners.?We don’t think to look out toward the wars, or the escapes, or the starving ones, or those who died at the precipice of?youth … those who are the breath and breeze outside of these four walls. ?

In finding them, we find ourselves. They are the ones who bless us simply because we live.?Simply that. They are the more as we look for more. They take care of the caregivers as we become caregivers to whomever and whatever is a sapling of the now.?Understand. This is a choice.?Taking our place in this way is a choice.

The ancestors — especially those who set the price of belonging as they tried to navigate the cracks in their foundation —?help me set my compass to true north, just a few essential degrees adjusted. With them at my back, and at the backs of the close ones, I can move out of the magnetism and into the light.?

Copyright 2022 by Suzi Tucker