I am coming off of hosting my fourth Sacred Spirit Retreat and I wanted to share what I opened the retreat with because I think it is something a lot of us are quietly carrying.

Belonging. Not the performance of it. The actual felt sense of it in your body.

In this episode I talk about what belonging really is as a regulated nervous system state, not just a feeling of being liked. I share why Brené Brown's distinction between belonging and fitting in changed one of my core filters for how I spend my time. I talk about the small community moments, like the Squamish acknowledgement nod, that quietly shaped my sense of home over 20 years of living here.

Then I go somewhere more personal. Last summer a friend said something to me in the car that I hadn't been able to say to myself. That my deepest place of not belonging lives inside my own Indigenous reconnection journey as a Swampy Cree woman. I share what that revelation felt like, what I have been doing with it, and how spirit responded by leading me to a 50 year old book called The Wishing Bone Cycle: Narrative Poems From the Swampy Cree Indians.

I close with a reading of the Turtle poem and an invitation: scan the room wherever you are and make someone belong. Even just for a minute.