23/10/2026
On belonging:
I left my hometown in Poland when I was 24. I was creative, sensitive and felt very different to my pears. I was sure there was no room for a young woman like me there. So I went looking for a place that would let me exhale, rather then be constantly searching.
When I came to Dublin, the city was international and open, vibrant and what seemed very wonderfully wierd to me. So different than eastern Poland, with its traditions and strict ways of conduct. Then life moved me to few smaller communities, and the old question kept returning : Do I belong here? Are those my people? Is this my place?
It took me a while to get that : belonging was never about other people.
It’s about accepting who I am and claiming my place in the world, without measuring myself against anyone else.
Belonging is inner work. The more permission I give myself to be exactly as I am, the closer I come to feel full, whole. When I don’t, I spend my life performing a version of myself that was never asked for, in a place that was never really waiting for that performance. I was an actor in a play that had no meaning , no truth in it.
But it seems so obvious now, my place is already given. I just have to take it. I show up. I express myself fully, I stand in my truth not questioning if it fits in….
Fitting in and belonging look alike, but they’re opposites really. Fitting in means aligning myself or adjusting to be like others, so I don’t stand out, I don’t look like the odd one. Belonging means staying marvellous, wild and different, and knowing I matter because I stand in my truth.
I understood that this could be my role: bringing something that couldn’t exist here without me.
So I give myself permission.
I belong, exactly as I am and because of that. I am - I belong.
X
With love
Pic Rebecca