#belonging — Public Fediverse posts
Live and recent posts from across the Fediverse tagged #belonging, aggregated by home.social.
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WE'RE BACK!!!🤍
MEET OUR GUEST FOR EPISODE 16 — ADRIAAN VAN KLINKEN
What happens when we place gender, sex, sexuality and spirituality under the same microscope?
This is a conversation about faith, identity, difference, sexuality and the spaces where they collide — but also about the possibility of creating something more inclusive, compassionate and liberating.
Episode 16 drops Friday, 11 September 2026🎙️
#Belonging #Belonginghappy #Theology #Queerspirituality #LGBTQ+Podcast
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You notice you're part of a harmony when another voice enters and everything rearranges.
Further reading: https://emotusoperandi.medium.com/your-self-care-action-items-f1c98bcedca6
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When somebody says to you that they like you, will you ghost them if you do not like them?
#dating #socialpressures #livedexperience #poll #reflections #boundaries #neurodiversity #mentalhealth #vulnerability #selfworth #belonging #solitude #relationships
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Past relationships taught me that...
#dating #socialpressures #livedexperience #poll #reflections #boundaries #neurodiversity #mentalhealth #vulnerability #selfworth #belonging #solitude #relationships
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I am considering ceasing to pursue dating, as I feel that the societal message suggests I should not attempt it.
#dating #socialpressures #livedexperience #poll #reflections #boundaries #neurodiversity #mentalhealth #vulnerability #selfworth #belonging #solitude #relationships
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In Search of Heart’s Content
Tabula AnimaeThere is a place in Newfoundland called Heart’s Content.
The name sounds almost too perfect to be real. It feels less like the name of a town and more like a promise, a prayer, or a destination marked on an old spiritual map.
Heart’s Content.
To say it aloud is to ask a question: What would it mean for the heart to be content?
Perhaps that is why the place has begun to draw me. It lies along Trinity Bay, surrounded by cold water, rugged coast, open sky, and the lingering silence of an old Newfoundland outport. Yet its name suggests something deeper than scenery. It seems to speak to a restlessness within us—the hope that somewhere, if we travel far enough, simplify enough, or listen carefully enough, the heart may finally stop reaching for what it does not have.
But Heart’s Content is not only a poetic name. It is a place with a remarkable history.
For generations, its people lived by the sea. Fishing grounds connected families to one another and to distant markets. Boats carried food, supplies, letters, news, and stories between communities scattered along the coast. The harbour was not the edge of the world. It was the road into it.
Then, on July 27, 1866, a new kind of connection came ashore.
The steamship Great Eastern entered Heart’s Content carrying the western end of a telegraph cable that had been laid across the Atlantic Ocean from Ireland. After years of failed attempts, broken lines, storms, financial losses, and cables lost in deep water, Europe and North America were permanently connected by telegraph.
Messages that had once taken days or weeks to cross the ocean could now travel in minutes.
For a time, this small Newfoundland community became one of the most important points of connection on earth. Diplomatic instructions, business decisions, news reports, personal messages, and the affairs of nations passed through its station.
It is striking that such a great change in human communication did not first arrive in one of the world’s largest cities. It came ashore in a quiet fishing town.
Heart’s Content became a place where distant voices arrived.
Perhaps there is something symbolic in that.
The human heart also sends signals outward. Sometimes clearly, sometimes faintly, sometimes through storms, distance, fear, or silence. It hopes that someone on another shore is listening.
We often think of contentment as a withdrawal from the world, as though a contented person no longer needs anyone. But the history of Heart’s Content suggests the opposite.
Contentment is not disconnection.
It is not isolation.
It is not becoming so self-contained that no message enters and no longing leaves.
Perhaps contentment is learning how to be connected without being consumed.
The telegraph cable was built for connection, but it was not invulnerable. It could break. It could decay. It could be lost in deep water. It required constant attention and maintenance. Operators listened carefully for signals that were often faint or distorted. Engineers repaired the lines. Workers tended the equipment. People at one end trusted that someone at the other end was receiving what had been sent.
Every connection depended upon someone tending the line.
Human relationships are much the same.
Friendship, marriage, family, community, faith, and belonging do not remain strong merely because they were once established. The lines between us must be tended. Messages must be sent and received. Silence must be interpreted carefully. Breaks must be repaired. Someone must be willing to listen.
Contentment does not mean that we cease to need these connections. It may mean that we learn to receive them as gifts rather than demand them as proof of our worth.
We spend much of our lives believing contentment is somewhere else.
It is in another town, another house, another vocation, another relationship, another season of life. It waits beyond the next accomplishment, the next recognition, the next book, the next healed wound, the next burden lifted.
We imagine that if we can only arrive at the right coordinates, the ache within us will become still.
So we study maps.
We calculate distances and ferry crossings. We look at houses, roads, hospitals, churches, winter temperatures, moving costs, and the practical realities of uprooting a life.
These questions matter. Dreams must survive contact with reality.
But beneath them lies another question:
What are we really searching for?
Perhaps we are searching for a quieter life.
A life where the horizon is not crowded. A life where weather still matters, where the sea imposes its own rhythm, and where the artificial urgency of the world loses some of its power.
Perhaps we long to live closer to elemental things: wind, stone, wood, water, bread, fire, and silence.
Perhaps we are searching for a place where we can hear ourselves again.
Yet there is also the possibility that we are searching for escape.
Distance can feel like salvation. We imagine leaving behind the noise, the conflict, the expectations, and the accumulated disappointments of a lifetime. We imagine that a new landscape will allow us to become new people.
But wherever we go, we take ourselves with us.
The heart crosses every border.
Its wounds are packed among the dishes. Its fears ride in the passenger seat. Its disappointments board the ferry. Its longing for recognition arrives before the moving truck.
No place, however beautiful, can spare us from the unfinished work of becoming whole.
And yet this does not mean we should never move.
Sometimes a change of place is not escape but pilgrimage.
A pilgrim does not expect the road to erase the self. The pilgrim travels in order to encounter the self more honestly. The destination is not magic, but it may become a place of revelation.
Perhaps Heart’s Content is not a place where one arrives already content.
Perhaps it is a place where one learns contentment.
The sea might teach it.
The sea cannot be possessed. It cannot be controlled or hurried. It gives and withholds. It may be calm in the morning and fierce by evening. Those who live near it must learn humility. They must pay attention. They must accept limits.
Winter might teach it.
Winter narrows the world. It asks what is truly needed. It reveals whether a house is sound, whether the fire is sufficient, whether neighbors can be trusted, and whether solitude has become a friend or an enemy.
A small community might teach it.
In a small place, anonymity is difficult. People may know our strengths, our weaknesses, our history, and the condition of our roof. Community can be comforting, but it can also be demanding. It asks us not merely to occupy a place, but to belong to it.
The history of the cable might teach it as well.
The cable brought the wider world into Heart’s Content. Workers arrived from other places. New technologies, customs, ideas, and social distinctions entered the town. For decades, the community stood at the meeting point of local life and global communication.
Yet eventually the technology changed.
Radio, telephone systems, automation, and newer forms of communication made the old cable station less essential. In 1965, nearly a century after the cable arrived, the station closed.
The signal stopped.
A town that had once stood at the center of global communication had to discover who it was when the world no longer depended upon it in the same way.
That may be one of the most important lessons in the history of Heart’s Content.
What happens when the role that once defined us is gone?
What happens when the work ends, the children leave, the institution changes, the audience moves on, or the world no longer needs what we once provided?
Can the heart remain content when it is no longer central?
Much of our discontent comes from confusing usefulness with worth.
We want to matter. We want to be heard. We want our work to endure. We want some evidence that our lives have not passed unnoticed.
These are human longings. They are not shameful.
But when our contentment depends entirely upon being needed, praised, recognized, or remembered, the heart becomes fragile. It begins to measure its value by the strength of the signal returning from the other shore.
No reply means failure.
Silence means rejection.
Obscurity means insignificance.
Yet Heart’s Content remained after the cable station closed.
The harbour remained. The houses remained. The churches, paths, cemeteries, stories, and people remained. The town was more than the messages that passed through it.
Perhaps we are also more than the messages that pass through us.
More than our work.
More than our titles.
More than our accomplishments.
More than the attention we receive.
More than the role we play in someone else’s story.
Contentment may begin when we no longer require the world to constantly confirm that we exist.
The apostle Paul wrote that he had learned to be content in every circumstance. The important word is learned.
Contentment did not simply descend upon him. It was practiced through hunger and abundance, freedom and imprisonment, companionship and loneliness.
Contentment is an apprenticeship.
It teaches us to distinguish between what we need and what we have merely been taught to want.
It asks whether a larger house will enlarge the soul.
Whether recognition will quiet insecurity.
Whether possession will heal loneliness.
Whether achievement will finally persuade us that our lives have mattered.
Often, the heart’s content is not more.
It is enough.
Enough work to be useful.
Enough rest to remain whole.
Enough companionship to remain human.
Enough solitude to become honest.
Enough beauty to awaken gratitude.
Enough purpose to rise in the morning.
Enough grace to rest at night.
True contentment is not passivity.
It does not mean accepting injustice or losing the desire to create, serve, change, or grow. It is not the death of longing.
It is the freedom to long without being ruled by longing.
It is the ability to love what is present without pretending that everything is perfect.
It is gratitude without blindness.
Peace without indifference.
Connection without possession.
Perhaps the name Heart’s Content is both an invitation and a warning.
It invites us to imagine another way of living.
It warns us not to confuse the symbol with the substance.
We could move to Heart’s Content and remain deeply discontented.
We could remain where we are and discover that contentment has been quietly waiting nearby.
Or perhaps the inward and outward journeys belong together. Sometimes the soul needs a new landscape in order to recognize what it has been seeking all along.
Perhaps the real question is not simply, “Should we move to Heart’s Content?”
Perhaps it is, “What do we hope to find there?”
A slower rhythm?
A renewed vocation?
A place where our gifts are needed?
A community in which we can grow older with dignity?
A landscape spacious enough to hold grief?
A refuge from the machinery of constant urgency?
Permission to live differently?
These are worthy longings.
But every longing must be tested.
Is it leading us toward greater love, or merely farther from difficulty?
Is it calling us into community, or into isolation?
Is it inviting simplicity, or only another form of consumption?
Is it awakening courage, or disguising fear?
The first step may not be crossing a border.
It may be making an inventory.
Not only of possessions, but of desires.
What must we carry?
What can we release?
Which ambitions no longer belong to us?
Which identities have become too heavy?
Which relationships must be tended?
Which broken lines need repair?
Which distant voices have we stopped listening for?
A move across a continent and over the sea forces every object to justify its passage. Perhaps contentment asks the same of our inner lives.
What is worth carrying into the next chapter?
Not the next life after death, necessarily, but the next life before death—the life that may still be waiting for us.
The old transatlantic cable reminds us that connection can cross immense distances, but also that connection alone cannot make the heart content.
We live in an age with more lines of communication than the people of 1866 could have imagined. Messages travel instantly. Voices cross oceans without effort. We are surrounded by signals.
Yet we are not necessarily less lonely.
We have multiplied our cables without always deepening our relationships.
We can communicate without listening.
We can transmit without understanding.
We can remain constantly connected and never feel known.
Perhaps contentment is not found in receiving more messages.
Perhaps it is found in learning which messages matter.
The voice of a spouse.
The concern of a neighbor.
The cry of someone suffering.
The quiet movement of the Spirit.
The sound of the sea against the shore.
The silence that tells us we are still loved even when no applause returns.
I do not know whether we will ever live in Heart’s Content.
Its winters may be too long. Its distance may become too great. Its realities may prove less romantic than its name. Every beautiful place is also an ordinary place. There are bills there. Repairs. Illness. Conflict. Mud. Wind. Loneliness. Disappointment.
But perhaps the search itself already matters.
Perhaps the name has begun its work simply by asking what contentment means.
There may be no place on earth where the heart is permanently satisfied. The heart carries a longing too deep for any house, landscape, community, or accomplishment to fill completely.
But there may be places where the heart learns to listen.
Places where it becomes less distracted by noise.
Places where it remembers that its worth does not depend upon how many messages pass through it.
Places where it learns that connection must be tended, but not possessed.
Places where it stands before the horizon without needing to own it.
Heart’s Content may not be a final destination.
It may be a direction.
Toward simplicity.
Toward attention.
Toward relationship.
Toward enough.
Toward a life less governed by fear, accumulation, and the need to be recognized.
Toward a heart that no longer waits for the world to applaud before it agrees to be grateful.
And so the search continues.
Not only for a town on the coast of Newfoundland.
Not merely for Heart’s Content.
For a contented heart.
#ancientMap #becoming #Belonging #coastalNewfoundland #Connection #ContemplativeArt #Contentment #creativeReflection #enough #fantasyCartography #Gratitude #heartShapedCove #HeartSContent #innerJourney #Listening #nauticalArt #Newfoundland #peace #pilgrimage #sacredGeography #soulMap #SpiritualJourney #SpiritualReflection #transatlanticCable #TrinityBay #vintageMap -
Authoritarianism doesn’t begin only with bad leaders, dangerous ideologies, or manipulated information.
It also grows in emptiness: in closed youth centres, underfunded libraries, commercialised public squares, and feeds that replace conversation with performance.
https://associationredefine.substack.com/p/where-do-we-gather-the-geography?r=6l8ed8
#CivicIntelligence #Democracy #PublicSpace #Belonging #DigitalDemocracy #AIAndSociety #SocialInfrastructure #DemocraticResilience
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A Decade Abroad: The Shifting Sands of Belonging for a Former Expat
A 31-year-old who moved to Tokyo at 22 to cope with depression now feels displaced after a decade abroad. What does this mean for long-term expats?
#ExpatLife, #TokyoLiving, #MentalHealth, #Belonging, #CulturalIdentity
https://newsletter.tf/expat-in-tokyo-for-10-years-feels-lost/
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After living in Japan for 10 years, a former expat now feels a strong sense of displacement. This is a common issue for many long-term residents abroad.
#ExpatLife, #TokyoLiving, #MentalHealth, #Belonging, #CulturalIdentity
https://newsletter.tf/expat-in-tokyo-for-10-years-feels-lost/ -
Some places make belonging feel effortless.
Everything is structured in a way that leaves no friction: paths are clear, rhythms are shared, nothing pushes you to the edges.
It looks natural from the outside.
But it’s not accidental.
It’s the result of systems designed well enough that people don’t have to fight to be part of them.
#Education #Belonging #PublicSystems #SocialInnovation #LearningBeyondSchool #CivicDesign #Democracy #YouthEngagement #SystemsThinking
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Folks like to connect sentiments with colours. They say, #green is the #colour of #hope. I find green and #blue elevating and inspiring. This #door and building remind me that a home is for #comfort and #safety. Inspiration from old fortifications -> safety. Grand spaces feel intimidating. When owned, one will defend out of #fear, not #pride, nor from a sense of #accomplishment. Small homes please with #comfort & a sense of #belonging.
#twoone #Barcelona #Spain -
Folks like to connect sentiments with colours. They say, #green is the #colour of #hope. I find green and #blue elevating and inspiring. This #door and building remind me that a home is for #comfort and #safety. Inspiration from old fortifications -> safety. Grand spaces feel intimidating. When owned, one will defend out of #fear, not #pride, nor from a sense of #accomplishment. Small homes please with #comfort & a sense of #belonging.
#twoone #Barcelona #Spain -
Folks like to connect sentiments with colours. They say, #green is the #colour of #hope. I find green and #blue elevating and inspiring. This #door and building remind me that a home is for #comfort and #safety. Inspiration from old fortifications -> safety. Grand spaces feel intimidating. When owned, one will defend out of #fear, not #pride, nor from a sense of #accomplishment. Small homes please with #comfort & a sense of #belonging.
#twoone #Barcelona #Spain -
Equality gives everyone shoes.
Equity makes sure they fit.
Belonging lets you rock your Crocs without drama 😂💚Systemic change starts with comfort + respect ✊🏽
Not conformity. Not performance. Not silence.#Equity #Belonging #SystemicChange #LiberationNotTolerance #CommunityJustice #RadicalEmpathy #InclusionMatters #SocialJusticeMeme #PoliticalEducation
👇 Tell me: what’s YOUR “shoe” in life you wish people understood? 🗣️
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JUN-KAN PERMACULTURE IS ON A MISSION OF REPAIR
Just off Notre-Dame Rd. in Petersburg, Ontario is the Jun-kan Permaculture Garden. The garden sits on one of 20 acres in the Petersburg Community Garden, and volunteers tend permaculture food forests and annual vegetable terraces.
The garden was started in 2022 when the land’s owner, Daryl Dore decided he no longer wanted to rent his fields to cash-cropping commercial farmers. Dore contacted Doug Jones of the Waterloo Regional Community Garden Network and proposed that his land be available to individuals, especially new Canadians.
While the proposal was eagerly accepted, years of cash cropping and heavy pesticide use had left the soil damaged.
“In a word, this soil was dead. And poisoned,” Barbara Hankins, one of Jun-kan’s volunteers, said.
Permaculture gardening operates on the basis of symbiosis and diversity. A wide array of individual species are planted in cooperative guilds to work in concert with each other and the environment. Together, they thrive and improve the quality of the land they are growing on.
This is where the name Jun-kan comes from. The garden’s website explains, it is a Japanese word that translates roughly to “the universe,” or “the cycle of life”. In accordance with the principles of permaculture, Jun-kan’s first step was to plant swaths of five distinct cover crops: clover, alfalfa, buckwheat, field peas, and rye. Quickly, the earth began to heal and the gardeners started producing food, still with permaculture in mind.
“[We ask ourselves,] ‘what does the ground need? What do the plants need? How can I give to them because they are giving to me?’,” Hankins said.
In turn, the land gives back to its farmers, not just in food, but in a more existential way as well. This is especially helpful at Jun-kan, where many of the volunteers are new Canadians and do not own their own land. People are given the opportunity to form a relationship with the land they may not otherwise have been able to. This is crucial for a sense of belonging.
“This garden supports a huge diversity of growers from around the world, and it’s nourishing to see how the diversity of culturally relevant foods, approaches, skills, stories…the diversity enhances our resilience as a community of gardeners,” Nikola Barsoum, one of Jun-kan’s founding volunteers, said.
The ethos of repair and repurposing extends beyond physical gardening and the dignity of the volunteers as well. In 2023, ongoing war in Lebanon put Hankins’ family in danger, and here in KW, her house burned down. The garden provided the family with relief, repairing them in the wake of the tragedies. The bricks from their home were salvaged and used to cobble Jun-kan’s community fire pit.
“We went through so much that year. This was my therapy. Coming out here, and just being with the land, with the earth, with the butterflies, and feeding the insects and the birds… Watching things grow is very therapeutic,” Hankins said.
Restoring the land, offering a dignified community for newcomers and a sanctuary for its volunteers, Jun-Kan is on a mission of repair. For more information, the garden can be found on Instagram @junkanpermaculture, or on their website.
#agriculture #BarbaraHankins #belonging #dougJones #Gardening #junKan #nikolaBarsoum #Ontario #permaculture #Petersburg #RandyMoore #waterlooRegionalCommunityGarden #ZackMason
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Digital #language #inclusion is crucial for #equitable #participation in #socialmedia, especially for marginalised communities.
🤝 #Federated social services support vulnerable #languages, preserving #culturalidentity and fostering #belonging.
🏡 #Regional and #country-focused servers create #culturallyrelevant environments, promoting #civicdiscourse and #economicmobility.
👉 https://jaz.co.uk/2025/07/01/digital-equity/?Fedizen.EU #Fedizen #Fediverse #ActivityPub #News
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Love and the Distance: The Role of Presence in Online Learning https://mikepaul.com/love-and-the-distance-the-role-of-presence-in-online-learning/ #Belonging, #Edd, #OnlineLearning, #PositiveAtmosphere, #ScienceOfLearningAndDevelopment, #VirtualLearning, #VirtualSchools
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I invite you to subscribe to my #GlobalConversations YouTube channel where I post recordings of my conversations with #equity practitioners. So far I have posted on topics related to #inclusiveleadership #culturalintelligence and #GlobalEDI. https://youtube.com/@urbanequity416 #EDI #equity #inclusion #belonging #justice
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Is it me, but have people returned to Twitter? It seems that I don't see too many people on this site outside of academia. #equity #inclusion #belonging #organizationalchange #culturalintelligence #culturalhumility
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Many of my followers will notice I don't toot much about urban planning and I'm ok with that.
This is a fresh account and will have new discussions about, in no particular order, #orgchange #equityandinclusion #belonging #globalmajority #wine #craftbeer #bourbon #inclusiveleadership and #culturalintelligence.
At some point in 2023, I want to be #ProSci certified and in 2024 trained in #CQ. The latter can happen sooner if someone pays for it.
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A friend of mine tagged me on a recent #LinkedIn post about White-identifying #EDI practitioners not doing enough as opposed to us who are from the #GlobalMajority. We have been doing this work for a while now and it never seems to be enough to #organizational leaders. Something has to give. If you haven't seen the post, here it is.
#DEI #DEIB #equity #inclusion #justice #belonging #inclusiveleadership #leadership #culturalintelligence #transformationalleadership
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I can't wait to get these going next month. I know you can't wait either. #GlobalConversations #EDI #belonging #inclusion #cq #culturalintelligence #inclusiveleadership
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Are we gonna bring back #FollowFriday again? I know it's Saturday, but here are my suggested follows so far
@sheilarfoster
@marsharamroop
@c1typlann3r#citybuilding #equity #inclusion #belonging #cq #EDI #DEI #DEIB #culturalintelligence #GlobalDEI
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Where are my mixed ethnicity/heritage #GlobalMajority people at? We need to have a conversation about your lived experiences navigating work and personal lives.
#equityandinclusion #EquityDeserving #EDI #DEI #belonging #organisationalchange #organizationalchange #CQ #culturalintelligence #culturalhumility
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I'm gonna throw some hashtags to gain some traction with new and existing users.
#diversity #diversité #inclusion #equity #équité #antiblackracism #antiasianracism #decolonisation #decolonization #organizationalchange #orgchange #culturalintelligence #CQ #belonging #leadership #inclusiveleadership #Raptors #wethenorth #TFCLive #billsmafia #ktbffh #finoallafine #Cdnpoli #onpoli #fitnessat50 #fitnessover50 #emea #apac #latam #EDI #DEI #DEIB #GlobalDEI #culturalhumility #urbanplanning