“I and the others moved seeking to connect our fragmented pieces, our hands outstretched, begging to be nourished with who we are. Instead, the ancestral homeland shakes us, deconstructs us, and cracks us open, ushering in new resilience and perspective.”
@superball there are parts of this that really hit. My situation is a bit different since I emigrated as a kid. So it’s not so much an ancestral thing, but there’s so much that still resonates.
@mycrowgirl it’s something I think about a lot: where do I belong? I thought I might make a trip to Germany at some point, just to see . . . but this article gives me pause. Belonging is, after all, something different than blood, which I know too well, even just from my immediate family. So what is belonging, then? Maybe it’s a mutual calling between me and a place or situation, whatever we may be. . . . 🤔
@superball yeah, it’s something I’ve never been able to really resolve beyond “living in the moment mindfulness” which has always been something of a salve for that moment but never really takes root. And I feel doubly (quadruply?) displaced since the West Germany of my childhood (pre-reunification) and the Rustbelt/Appalachia of my adolescence… also don’t exist anymore in so many meaningful ways. I’ve accepted (more or less) that I’ll be perpetually unmoored. 😌
@superball@mycrowgirl not to butt in… these are also questions and impulses I’ve been wrestling with. Nonhuman community/ancestors and a relationship to the land are where I’ve ended up, well not ended up but more like how I’m trying to locate myself. My feelings of being unmoored are strange because me and my family have been in this area for generations, yet I still have that feeling somehow, of being dis/misplaced
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