Belonging: The Place We All Long For

When I first saw the theme for this year’s Mental Health Awareness Week “Belonging Matters” I smiled. Not because belonging has always come easily to me. Quite the opposite. Perhaps that is why the word stopped me in my tracks.

There is something deeply human about wanting to belong. To feel welcomed. Seen. Accepted. To know that there is somewhere, or someone, where you don't have to explain yourself before you are allowed to be a part of something.

Mental Health Awareness Week runs from 12 - 18 October 2026, and this year the Mental Health Foundation of New Zealand is inviting us to think about connection, community and those small moments that remind us that we are not alone.

And for me, belonging is a complicated thing.

Because I have spent much of my life feeling as though I don't belong anywhere.

The strange ache of feeling different

From a very young age, I remember having this deep, almost inexplicable feeling that I didn't quite belong.

Not here.

Not to this family.

Not to this neighbourhood.

Not even to this world.

I felt different.

It is difficult to explain something like that when you are young. You don't necessarily have the words for it. You simply carry the feeling. And when you grow up feeling different, it can become very easy to believe that there must be something wrong with you.

I now understand much more about why trauma can leave us feeling disconnected, isolated and somehow separate from the rest of the world. These are feelings I have lived with for a very long time. And I know I'm not alone in that.

I hear versions of the same story again and again within the mental health and trauma community.

I feel alone.

Nobody understands me.

I don't fit anywhere.

And isn't it extraordinary?

Millions of us can be experiencing the same feeling of not belonging, while simultaneously believing that we are the only one.

Perhaps that tells us something.

Perhaps we belong to each other more than we realise.

Loneliness isn't always about being alone

Carl Jung expressed something about loneliness that has always profoundly resonated with me:

“Loneliness does not come from having no people around you, but from being unable to communicate the things that seem important to you.”

I think there is great truth in that. I have experienced loneliness in crowded rooms. I have stood amongst people who shared my love of music, my passion for animals, my understanding of trauma - and still felt deeply disconnected.

And I have also experienced the opposite. I have been completely alone and felt profoundly connected. Because belonging isn't necessarily about how many people are standing around us. It is about whether we feel seen, understood and connected.

There is a vulnerability in allowing ourselves to be truly known.

What if they judge us?

What if they don't understand?

What if we reach out and nobody reaches back?

For someone like me, who experiences rejection sensitivity, that fear can be particularly loud. Sometimes the mind can make the decision for us before we have even given connection a chance.

They won't want me.

I'll be rejected.

I won't fit in.

So, we retreat.

And the retreat protects us from rejection, but it can also deepen the loneliness. Learning to recognise that pattern in myself has been part of my own healing. Because another person's response to me is not a measurement of my worth.

That doesn't mean rejection doesn't hurt.

It does.

It simply means I am learning not to let the fear of rejection decide whether I am worthy of connection.

Sometimes belonging has fur and feathers

And here is where my own understanding of belonging becomes a little unconventional. Some of the deepest experiences of belonging I have ever known haven't involved people at all. They involve my beloved pets and animals all over the world.

My precious fur babies have given me an extraordinary sense of being accepted exactly as I am.

No explanation required.

No performance.

No pretending.

Just presence.

There is something incredibly grounding about sitting beside an animal and simply sharing the same moment in time.

The same is true for nature. I can walk along an almost deserted beach and feel completely surrounded by life.

The ocean.

The wind.

Birdsong.

Trees moving in the breeze.

The sand and earth beneath my feet.

I can be completely alone and yet feel deeply connected.

Music can do the same thing. Have you ever heard a song and felt as though somebody somehow reached inside your own experience and put it into sound? That feeling can be extraordinary.

For a few minutes, something inside us whispers:

Yes.

That's it.

Someone else feels this too.

Perhaps belonging isn't always about finding our tribe.  Perhaps sometimes it is about recognising that we are already part of something much bigger.

The tiny moments of belonging

And maybe belonging doesn't always arrive as some huge, life-changing connection. Perhaps we overlook it because we are expecting something bigger.

A stranger smiles at you, or someone holds a door open. You notice a rainbow at the same moment as someone else, and you exchange that little look that says, did you see that too? A child laughs, and before you know it, you’re smiling and laughing along with them. You help someone across the road, and they thank you. Someone remembers your name. Or someone asks how you really are, and, for once, they actually wait for the answer.

These are tiny moments.

Almost nothing.

And yet perhaps they are everything.

Little reminders that we are participating in this strange, beautiful, sometimes painful and complicated experience called life together.

Maybe belonging begins with a small reach

I don't have an answer for belonging. I'm still learning it myself. My healing journey has been messy, uncomfortable and full of contradictions. I have discovered beliefs about myself that I didn't know I was carrying. I have had to question the old stories that told me I wasn't worthy, wasn't wanted, wasn't enough.

And sometimes I still struggle with them.

But I am beginning to understand that belonging isn't something we necessarily find.

Sometimes, we help create it.

A conversation.

An invitation.

A moment of kindness.

Being brave enough to say, “This is how I feel.”

And being willing to listen when someone else says the same.

Perhaps belonging begins when we stop waiting to feel completely safe before we connect. Perhaps it begins with one tiny step.

Hey.

I'm here.

I see you.

Do you see me?

And perhaps somewhere between those two people, something quietly changes.

A little less loneliness.

A little more connection.

A little more hope.

Because maybe we were never meant to walk through this strange human experience completely alone. Maybe belonging matters because, underneath all our differences, there is something profoundly similar in all of us.

We want to be seen.

We want to be heard.

We want to be loved.

We want to know that our presence matters.

And perhaps the most beautiful thing we can do for another human being is simply to make a little room for them.

Room to be imperfect and different. To allow them to speak or be silent…

To let them know they belong.

Ko au ko koe, ko koe ko au.

I am you, and you are me.

Maybe belonging isn't about finally finding somewhere we fit. Maybe it is about discovering that, in one way or another, we have been part of this story all along.