I am snuggled up in bed with one of my little men.  Perhaps it was a sixth sense, but I knew he needed me…. And as I snuck quietly in, I found him curled up in my bed, half asleep.  His little hot face buried into my neck and he choked out the words “I am sad and I don’t know why.”

My little bear.  I love that he is so open to feel his feelings and share them with me.  As I held him tight, he continued…. “I don’t know whether I miss home, my school, my friends.  I don’t know whether I miss Perdi or Percy or my friends from school 5 years ago.”

As I held him closer and stroked his hair, I whispered that it was ok to be sad and to feel sad and not know why; and I thanked him for sharing with me how he was feeling.  I let him wrap his hot little body around me and soon he looked at me and said, ‘I am ok now.’

“You are not alone.”

A phrase I read today from my sun lounger book of choice, Brene Brown’s ‘Braving the Wilderness.”  It reiterated what I have been learning in my coursework this week with the topic of connection and relationships.

I have written a great deal of my experience of loneliness and lack of belonging throughout this last year and it is heartening now to read the theory behind my feelings, hurt and confusion.

I was right to write.  As the theory in both the book and lecture have made clear, sharing pain is transformative; others are feeling or have felt my pain, my anger, my confusion, my shame, my lack of worth, my loss of self esteem, my grief, my heartache.  I am not, I was not, I never was and never will be, alone.

I was right to let go.  All of me, all of it.  To shed my old life, was to shed a skin, a cocoon and to allow my authentic self to be reshaped, to venture out courageous but vulnerable in to the world as me.  I have learnt firsthand that when you believe wholeheartedly in yourself, you find true belonging; you belong to yourself. I am no longer alone.  I like being with me.

And I like being with this little mini version of me; hot, tired, confused but not afraid to share.