belonging

While in principle groups for survivors are a good idea, in practice it soon becomes apparent that to organize a successful group is no simple matter. Groups that start out with hope and promise can dissolve acrimoniously, causing pain and disappointment to all involved. The destructive potential of groups is equal to their therapeutic promise. The role of the group leader carries with it a risk of the irresponsible exercise of authority.Conflicts that erupt among group members can all too easily re-create the dynamics of the traumatic event, with group members assuming the roles of perpetrator, accomplice, bystander, victim, and rescuer. Such conflicts can be hurtful to individual participants and can lead to the group__ demise. In order to be successful, a group must have a clear and focused understanding of its therapeutic task and a structure that protects all participants adequately against the dangers of traumatic reenactment. Though groups may vary widely in composition and structure, these basic conditions must be fulfilled without exception.Commonality with other people carries with it all the meanings of the word common. It means belonging to a society, having a public role, being part of that which is universal. It means having a feeling of familiarity, of being known, of communion. It means taking part in the customary, the commonplace, the ordinary, and the everyday. It also carries with it a feeling of smallness, or insignificance, a sense that one__ own troubles are __s a drop of rain in the sea._ The survivor who has achieved commonality with others can rest from her labors. Her recovery is accomplished; all that remains before her is her life.

A mixture, before the English, of irritation and bafflement, of having this same language, same past, so many same things, and yet not belonging to them any more. Being worse than rootless... speciesless.

You have to understand that only the very worst end up here: the ones whose anger made them kill, and who felt no sorrow or guilt after the act; those so obsessed with themselves that they turned their backs on the sufferings of others, and left them in pain; those whose greed meant that others starved and died. Such souls belong here, because they would find no peace elsewhere. In this place, they are understood. In this place, their faults have meaning. In this place, they belong.

I could tell he was just as scared to love as I, But we still both carelessly climbed into eachothers arms and before we knew it, love had found us.

There is no ownership. There is only stewardship.

But most of those to whom Ender's Game feels most important are those who, like me, feel themselves to be perpetually outside their most beloved communities, never able to come inside and feel confident of belonging.

Shrinking in a corner,pressed into the wall;do they know I'm present,am I here at all?Is there a written rule book,that tells you how to be__ll the right things to talk about__hat everyone has but me?Slowly I am withering__ flowered deprived of sun;longing to belong to__omewhere or someone.

Those who don't belong to any specific place can't, in fact, return anywhere.

Travel does not exist without home....If we never return to the place we started, we would just be wandering, lost. Home is a reflecting surface, a place to measure our growth and enrich us after being infused with the outside world.

I love, so I belong.

I belong therefore I exist.

Helping someone feel they belong is a magic all its own.

I looked forward to making friends at school, but I had come late and friendships had already been formed. I couldn__ find my way into their world. They seemed to have a secret code I couldn__ decipher.

It doesn__ matter where you__e at, when you__e with people you love, you__e where you belong.

My idea of "goodness" had to do with belonging in a small yet reciprocal way to something huge and beautiful beyond my understanding.

...not to look back or feel sad about things, that home is wherever I am.

I have no definable history before I was abandoned and taken in by the orphanage in Hong Kong. I truly am a blank sheet. I have been disconnected from my ancestors. I don't know who they are, where they came from or whether any of their line still exists. The ancestral umbilical cord that would have connected me to my past and linked me to my future, was permanently severed. It cannot be reattached

On the seventh day of the Seventh-month, in the Palace of Long Life,We told each other secretly in the quiet midnight worldThat we wished to fly in heaven, two birds with the wings of one,And to grow together on the earth, two branches of one tree."Earth endures, heaven endures; some time both shall end,While this unending sorrow goes on and on for ever.