Tribe

From yesterdays DailyOm: "Part of being human is the search for an individual identity. Bound to this strong need to establish a unique persona, however, is an equally intense desire for acceptance. It is when we find our individual tribes that both are satisfied. Our tribe members are those people who accept us as we are without reservation and gladly accompany us on our journeys of evolution. Among them, we feel free to be our imperfect selves, to engage unabashedly in the activities we enjoy, and to express our vulnerabilities by relying on our tribe for support. We feel comfortable investing our time and energy in the members of our tribe, and are equally comfortable allowing them to invest their resources in our development."

I've been thinking about the idea of tribe a lot recently. Probably because I broke ties with two different tribes I was a part of last year: my spiritual community and my mama-writer's group. Both tribes were deteriorating from within and I chose to make a clean break. This leaves me without a feeling of intimate tribe in my life; even though I do have a couple very close friends still, so I am not completely on my own.

On the other hand, when I returned to the queer community earlier this year, I felt like I had come home to my tribe. Those were the exact words that entered my heart at the time. Although I haven't formed any close friendships yet, there is a belonging I feel with people who reflect my queer and bohemian lifestyle. It's the one group of people I never feel out of place with as an artist, modern primitive, or any of the other quirky expressions of my unique personality.

But most importantly, I feel like I'm becoming a part of the Zaadz tribe!

Our tribe members are those people who accept us as we are without reservation and gladly accompany us on our journeys of evolution.

I got so much support on my post in response to yesterday's QAR. What a wonderful feeling! I feel like this is the one and only place I can be completely transparent about my evolutionary process and my commitment to consciousness, which are the most important aspects of my life. I feel like Zaadz is the safest place on the planet for me to learn to reach out and nurture new friendships. I've let insecurity keep me passive, bound up, and small for so long. On this beautiful island in the ocean of the internet I feel as though someone is holding space for me to grow into everything that I am. Zaadz is the soil and sun in which my bursting seed is nurtured.

Julia Cameron writes in the Artist's Way books about finding friends, peers, and mentors who can mirror our bigness, people who reflect everything that we are capable of, people who would never do anything to make us shrink away from the best in ourselves. Zaadz seems to be a huge community of those people. No dream is too big here. No idea too outrageous. It's a tremendously beautiful comfort to my soul.