How I Belong

This book is for you.

It is about believing things can be better.  It is about a kind of special kindness we can be shown, the kindess of being explained, the kindness of Understanding.

One of the most wonderful words is ‘Because’.  We can become scared, or hurt, and usually it is when we have been surprised, by something we did not expect, or something we did not Understand. We do not always know the way the world works, and we all have to figure it out as we go along. 

There are two kinds of figuring out, the one is where we are explained something by someone who loves us. The other kind is where we find out for ourselves after making a mistake. 

The magic word that helps us remember the lesson, is ‘Because’.  It is the word that explains how the unpleasant surprise happened, and how we can try to make sure it does not happen to us again.

‘Because’ is about Understanding. ‘Because’ explains the Reasons about all sorts of thing.

The kindness of this book, is about Understanding that when we want things to be better, we have to do it ourselves sometimes, even if it is hard.

The best kind of freedom we have is when we are free to dream, together, a dream where the world is better than it is today,

– a world where everyone feels safe, where everyone understands how precious our world is, and where we care about it and everyone who lives in it.

Why would we want the world to be better? 

Because, even though it is sad to learn, it is true that not everyone is safe.
Our world is a little sick.

People are shouting at each other. Grown-ups shout when they become afraid. They shout when they think no one is listening.

And grown-ups have let things get bad because they kept telling themselves that someone else was coming, 

Because they had been told when they were little, that someone else was coming, because their mummies and daddies once told them, and so on and so on and so on.

And so, some of the children who were sad, and lonely, and felt empty inside, and who had never been shown how to love themselves, they thought that having lots of stuff would make them feel better. 

If they felt small they thought bossing people would make them feel braver. They thought this Because when they were small and someone bossed them, it made them feel even smaller.

And all the bossing, and the collecting of more and more stuff, made us all run around, busy, trying to also have enough incase someone came and took it all.  Because when you are afraid, and you do not understand how to be safe, you become afraid of everything. 

And when people are afraid all the time, they get unwell. Because worrying all the time is not a happy way to be in our bodies.

And so the grown-ups, they all got quite unwell.

But we are a beautiful people and at the end of the day, the good ones, most of us, want to be free.

We cannot forgive what they have done;
but we can forgive the people that did it,
Because, they are people,
and Because people make mistakes. 

And people will make mistakes with us, and we will make mistakes.  That is what it means to be a person in this world, it means to not always know, or Understand or remember how to show care to ourselves, and to others and to the world we live in.  Because, we know, in our hearts, that is what we would want.

Our hearts know things.