Finding Home and Belonging

+ June's writing workshop

When I was younger, I thought I would never find a place to call home and settle down. I moved from New York to Washington to Alaska, every couple of years picking up and moving to the next town. I travelled abroad for months at a time. I had a bumper sticker of a Tolkien quote that read, “Not all those who wander are lost.”

I am a third-generation American. I often wonder if there is something about the immigrant mindset that makes it difficult to feel like you truly belong anywhere. When your ancestral roots are left far behind on another continent, you are always a visitor wherever you land. This is true for my Jewish ancestors especially, having been in diaspora for 2,000 years.

The word diaspora was created in the late 17th century in reference to the Jewish people. From the Greek word diaspeirein, meaning ‘disperse’, and dia ‘across’ + speirein ‘scatter’. We are in a state of diaspora. We are dispersed, scattered across the world. In this way there is always a sense that you do not belong, and this was certainly true for my Jewish ancestors who were perpetually persecuted, disenfranchised, raped, pillaged, displaced and ultimately victims of genocide (another word created for Jewish people). Moving around, though not ideal and often forced, was a means of safety.

This ancestral trauma may have echoed in my bones as I traveled from place to place always looking for home. But I was more privileged than my ancestors. I did not need to move around for safety. Instead, I moved due to restlessness, always searching, seeking, a place where I felt like I belonged.

I never thought I’d find one until I found Taos.

I have lived in Taos for almost 20 years. Eric and I got married here, pregnant here and raised our daughter here. We have lived in six houses in Taos County, owned two of them, but we have stayed in the proximity of this community this whole time. Rationally, our decision stemmed from wanting our daughter to have one place that she belonged to, that she could call home. We wanted a “hometown” for her where she could always return and find her people. Unlike where Eric and I grew up in the suburbs of big cities, we wanted her to have a small-town life where people had known her since she was a baby and she had a kinship with them. We might be a little family, but we have a large community.

I always thought that was the reason we stayed. But now I know it’s more than that.

One day while standing on the edge of the Rio Grande Gorge on one of my walks, I had the sense that I was always meant to arrive in this place, that my whole life led up to this moment on the precipice of a 650-foot drop to a river. I knew then that I did not belong to this town or this community or this country, I belonged to this land. And not just this little corner of land, but all the land. The whole Earth was my home, welcoming me always into her embrace.

In my youth, finding a home meant that everything would be perfectly aligned as if there would be a welcome sign with my name on it. Now, I understand that no place is perfect. There will always be things about Taos that I don’t like, but it is where I chose to stay and put my roots down, at least for now. Everywhere I go, I am home. I am a citizen of the world. An earthling on her starship. An integral being in a giant web of life.