By Cynthia Wands

I’ve just finished reading the book “Belonging: Remembering Ourselves Home” by Toko-pa Turner, and it’s a wonderful examination of attachment and identity. She’s an interesting writer, and really includes the reader in her journey to find her place in the world.

Belonging is such a loaded word for me right now, as I’m looking at characters who suffer from hoarding, or from a detachment in belonging to family.

I’m examining issues of belonging to friendships, memories, blogs, exile, debts, illness, cats, theatre companies, journeys, writing groups and teams.

I’m particularly interested right now in the sense of belonging to a house, witnessing a sense of our personal history there, and the attachment we feel when we find it as our “home”.

I found this quote from Toko-pa’s book just as I was thinking of the imprint of the place of home:

“It’s said that after arriving in a new place, we will have replaced the entirety of the water in our bodies with that of the local watershed in just a few days. Though these adaptations happen at a biological level, we are vastly unconscious of the implications a place has on our psyche. Just as humans carry an energetic signature, so too do geographies. However, like fish swimming in water, we are rarely aware of what energy a place holds until we leave it, or return to it after time away.”

Toko-pa Turner, Belonging: Remembering Ourselves Home (belongingbook.com)

I’m working my way through a maze to find where my characters belong in this script of mine. And I’ll keep you posted if I arrive there.