“I am not a little bit of many things; but I am the sufficient representation of many things. I am not an incompletion of all these races; but I am a masterpiece of the prolific. I am an entirety, I am not a lack of anything; rather I am a whole of many things. God did not see it needful to make me generic. He thinks I am better than that.” – C. JoyBell C.
Where do you belong?
We are always trying to decide where we and others belong.
As humans, we are wired to put each other in boxes. Even if they don’t fit, even if they’re simplistic. Even if the box is actually a really complicated place whose “hereness” and “thereness” is not even clearly definable.
But even on top of putting other people in boxes, we are often driven by a need to categorize ourselves.
Why?
Because in categorizing ourselves, we find where we truly belong.
Exclusion hurts, so we’re hungry to belong.
If you think I’m making this up, check out the work Dr. Matthew Lieberman has done with brain imaging, corroborating what most of us already know to be true: being left out hurts.
In fact, these findings even suggest that social rejection activates the same neural pathways as physical pain.
Ouch.
When you don’t belong anywhere.
So what am I getting at?
It was always a question for me- “where do I belong?”
Born American, I grew up in a Hispanic household with Cuban-born grandparents and American-born parents who raised me up on a steady diet of fluent Spanglish.
In elementary school, after completing my homework, I would plop myself criss-cross-applesauce on the floor of my great grandmother’s room. There, I’d watch telenovela after telenovela. It’s how I learned to speak Spanish.
I didn’t know how to say “laundry” until I was at least ten (I would just call it ropa sucia).
But then I would go to school (the site of many acute traumas, sadly). There, the extent of my Hispanic-ness was called into question. I simply wasn’t “Hispanic” enough to be considered “the real thing”.
Well, but I wasn’t not Hispanic either.
I was American, and I was Hispanic…right?
Enter: England.
As if it wasn’t complicated enough, at 13 I got what felt like devastating news for any Miami girl. We were moving to England.
It felt like the world was ending.
England?!
Of all the places, why did I have to go live in the cloudiest, rainiest, grayest, windiest country imaginable? And what would happen to my teeth???
(What would happen is my dentist was horrified. Too much tea turned my teeth yellow for a bit.)
I had a hard time with vitamin D for the following years, but turns out, the weather was the least of it.
I discovered that outside the US, being American is not seen with such star-spangled admiration, so I carried around this part of myself like a big ugly birthmark I couldn’t get rid of.
The British Girl.
But a strange thing happened.
When I was in the UK, everyone outside my family saw me as the American girl. Then, when I came back to Miami for the summers, everyone saw me as British.
I was often defined by where I had been rather than who I was. Still, I wondered where I truly belonged.
Was I just a human cut into thirds- one third Hispanic, one third American, one third British?
Or was it more complicated?
The Watered Down Identity
Now I’m 5 months away from turning 21, and I have lived in 3 different countries and 5 different cities.
Sometimes I wonder if that means my identity becomes that much more watered down. I wonder why it bothers me when others don’t mind the same thing.
To me, it boils down to belonging. It’s cool to have kinship with strangers, to know that you are united by language and history even without knowing each other personally. It’s fun to talk to someone and realize “oh, so your family does it the same way too!”.
When you live at the intersections of cultures, it’s hard to find that, because you’re not 100% “in” any group.
Instead, it’s like you’re just half-dipped in several cultures.
The Gift Of Being Your Own Category
So being a cultural hybrid-halfling is definitely isolating at times, and can feel like a life-sentence of failed connection.
However, there is another side to the story.
I think of it like the origin story of a superhero- someone different from everyone else, who dreams to conform but steps into their power by finally embracing their uniqueness.
#1: You’re the ambassador.
When you exist between cultures, you’re something of a myth-buster.
An American who travels? An introverted Latina? A British student with good teeth?
You get to challenge stereotypes, and represent a nuance that changes the way other people engage with your culture.
Sometimes, it means defending where you come from, and sometimes it means apologizing for the atrocities of your country’s history.
Whatever it is, the control is in how you respond.
#2: You don’t take beliefs and customs for granted. You think seriously about what to embody, and what to leave behind.
When you have been immersed in British culture as well as Miami culture, you have a large array of choices to make.
In lots of ways, these are two opposite ends of the cultural landscape, so it can feel like a shock to go from one to the other.
However, in knowing both worlds, you get to choose for yourself.
Personally, I have tried to let go of the superficial attitudes of Miami, as well as its terrible conception of punctuality (expect everyone to run 15 minutes late always).
That said, I really admire how people in Miami have such passion for life. It’s a city full of art, music, food, and overall adventure. I want to live a life rich with all those things!
Similarly, I try to let go of the British tendency to diminish and brush under the rug. British culture is frustratingly indirect, asking questions which should be statements and leaving those who don’t know the “code” to guess what they mean.
However, I hold deep respect for British pragmatism, and the keen focus on what is “sensible”, which includes the (what I, as a Miamian, would consider) crazy proactiveness to plan holidays over a year in advance.
#3: You know how to adapt.
When your life consists of regularly shifting among geography and culture, you start to become really good at building back your community, support network, and sense of belonging.
You become proficient at picking up bits and pieces of new languages.
You learn how to recover from the inevitable faux pas with grace.
It’s no longer awkward to make new friends or scary to go on public transportation alone. Now, you are an antifragile cultural explorer who is unfazed by clicking “reset” time and time again.
The amazing part is how this then translates to other parts of your life.
You start to see microcosms of nuance in other people, and learn how to walk the line between warmth and assertiveness regardless of the professional, personal, or geographical context.
Most noticeable is the confidence you develop knowing that no matter where you are, whether there is signal, whether you speak the language or not, you will be able to fend for yourself.
Moreover, you can find stability in knowing yourself, and isn’t that the greatest treasure of all?
You get to decide where you belong.
The reward of wrestling with my sense of belonging all my life has been to finally see that belonging is an artificial construct.
When the lines between “us” and “them” are clear, we let other people decide where we belong, which is comforting, but not empowering.
Having other people deny my sense of belonging has challenged this natural tendency to let the world decide which box I fit in.
But being denied belonging also taught me to fight for it.
It has taught me that when people say, “Your Spanish is not good enough for you to be a ‘real’ Latina”, I am allowed to not believe them.
(And let’s face it- most South American Latinos don’t know a single word of the hundreds of endangered indigenous languages that existed on the continent before Spanish ever did).
Ultimately, it is up to you to determine your cultural belonging, and to explore your history with openness and curiosity like the microcosm of nuance you are.
In doing so, you will not only unlock resilience, you will also unlock peace.
Thought To Action
- Draw Your Connection Map: Write down five people or communities—old friends, classmates, mentors—you’d like to reconnect with or better understand. Choose one and take a small step (message, coffee invite, honest hello).
- Practice a Micro Habit: Pick something meaningful you stopped doing (writing, hiking, reading quietly). Commit to just five minutes a day — it’s the momentum that matters.
- Turn Discomfort Into Question Curiosity: Instead of “Why did I fail?”, ask “What did this effort teach me about what matters?”.
- Document Your Slow Wins: Keep a tiny journal of weekly wins — not outcomes, but efforts that felt worth doing (like choosing mindful reading over passive scrolling). Let this remind you how small actions accumulate meaning.
- End With Gratitude + Intention: Close your reflection session with gratitude for the effort you showed, then set a gentle intention for the coming week.
Sources
No external sources were used for this post.
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