At the Edge of Belonging, We Find Ourselves

Part of Terms & Conditions, an evolving body of work exploring how we renegotiate the inherited definitions that shape how we work, create, belong, and become.

I have been thinking about how communities form by defining who they are and who they are not. Every group contains some version of an in-group and an out-group. I experienced this firsthand by joining two different writing groups recently: one for established writers, where I felt like an invasive species disrupting the ecosystem, and another for people exploring their written voice, where I felt like a keystone species among peers.

I found the first writing group while browsing my local bookstore. True to my blogger-mom era, I discovered the flyer for Writing for Renewal pinned to the bulletin board at checkout. At the time, I had been reflecting on my relationship with podcasting. It was clear that my love for producing episodes could no longer rely on novelty and naivety alone. I wanted to refine my practice and understand it more deeply, and writing felt like an intuitive next step. So I signed up.

In the first meeting, I realized everyone identified as a professional writer except me.

Immediately, I was transported back to my twelfth grade AP literature classroom… My hand scrambling to produce a cohesive essay in forty minutes on a foreign prompt about an unfamiliar poem. I could feel Ms. Cappelli’s gaze hovering over me. This is where I learned that I was not a writer. That I was not a good writer.

I came back to myself in my seat at home, in my Zoom writers group. Among these strangers, I could be anyone I wanted to be. Despite what I had been believing about myself without question, I was here with a group of writers and I was welcomed. Our first prompt arrived, and so I became a writer.

When we question our unquestioned assumptions about ourselves, new identities become possible.

By the end of the five weeks, I had not become a novelist, and my technical writing skills had not improved by any measurable standard. But I had an opportunity to question who a writer is and why I did not qualify myself as one. In other words, I questioned my conditioning. That shift gave me more confidence to write, and to seek a class that felt more aligned with what I needed writing for: creative expression. When it came time to share, I spoke to the larger themes and direction of my piece as if it were concept art, where the value is in the process rather than the finished product.

Realizing how much joy I got from speaking my ideas aloud, I found my way to another course from storytelling coach Micaela Blei called From Voice to Page. Without the experience of being the outsider in the first group and experimenting with sharing my ideas out loud, I would not have had the knowledge to find a space that felt so aligned. There was something humbling about straying from my natural ecosystem and then returning to a group with more clarity. It helped me understand myself better. Being the outsider stretched me and sharpened my edges. Coming back into a group that felt more aligned felt like finding home. I was not abandoning growth by returning to my peers. I was integrating what I had discovered at the edge.

Both communities gave me something essential.

I am left thinking about how growth often happens in the space between belonging and not belonging. Being an outsider stretched me. Being in resonance affirmed me. Both shaped my voice.

I learned so much about writing and speaking from these two classes, and I am deeply grateful for both teachers and the students who made those rooms what they were.

I’m taking inspiration from philosopher Todd May who writes about identity in Our Practices, Our Selves, which is that who we are is shaped by the practices we participate in. Identity is not a hidden essence waiting to be uncovered, but something formed relationally through the rooms we enter, the people we encounter, and the languages and stories we live within. This is part of what draws me to narrative therapy’s non-individualist philosophy. It refuses the idea that there is a singular, fixed self to expose. Instead, it invites us to see identity as socially constructed and continually revised. Our power lies in how we participate in and reinterpret the stories available to us. So if you are considering calling yourself a writer, a blogger, a speaker, or something not yet fully named, I wonder what stories about yourself are still wedged in place, waiting to be questioned.

With care,

Molly