Mairi Morassut

Community offers the promise of belonging and calls for us to acknowledge our interdependence. To belong is to act as an investor, owner, and creator of this place. To be welcome, even if we are strangers. As if we came to the right place and are affirmed for that choice.

We can never truly belong if we are betraying ourselves, our ideals, or our values in the process. That is why it’s a mistake to think that belonging is passive and simply about joining or “going along” with others. It’s not. Belonging is a practice that requires us to be vulnerable, get uncomfortable, and learn how to be present with people

belonging is made of the affective or material ties and obligations that link the individual to others.

define [be•long•ing] as: a feeling of deep relatedness and acceptance; a feeling of “I would rather be here than anywhere else.”