Day 7: Belonging

       I was worried about this challenge. Like I said, so many accomplished writers, so many great articles. I try not to write for others because then I just worry about whether I'm as good as some. But I do have to say this is great, stepping out of your comfort zone, and finding there is a whole community of people that have the same fears and worries as I do about writing. People that have a common interest and it's good to see people come together to share and support each other despite their differences, and so many writing styles. To be able to pick a topic and stick to it for a whole month, with things like cooking, knitting, family, faith, you name it, so many talents to learn and share!
Bear with me if I repeat myself, sometimes I have trouble getting my thoughts straightened out and I tend to say the same things over and over again lol.
       So where was I? Oh yes, I missed a day and was trying to catch up, and my mind has changed on topics so many times I've lost count. So I'll do this today, because it sort of ties into community. 
Being a part of something is great. At some level, everyone wants to feel like they fit in or belong, it's just in our nature.
  I'll be honest, I spent a huge portion of my life feeling like I didn't fit in or belong anywhere.  A bit of background to explain that. I grew up under social services, so I lived in foster homes, group homes, receiving homes, hospitals, centers, you name it. In the space of 14 years (not counting the 3 years I went back home to live with my birth mom from grade 2 to grade 5), I lived in a total of over 150 placements. A couple of them were repeats, but yes I was moved over 150 times. I lived all over Central Alberta pretty much. I did the math, it works out to an average of 34 days per placement. Some I stayed much less, some I stayed longer. The longest I was in one place was a year and a half. I have two amazing wonderful loving foster families that I have known for most of my life, and they have become as much family to me as my birth family, sometimes more-so. But I was never officially adopted. So yeah, you can just imagine it was difficult to say the least feeling like I didn't ever really belong anywhere. Sometimes I still struggle with it. My father was non existent, I never knew him. I know the man that my mother claimed to be my father, based on him being around when I was born. But with 7 kids and at least 5 different fathers that I know of, it's not a stretch to say we can't be sure he was around when I was conceived. I met him once, for all of 5 minutes when I was 18. I was living in Edmonton at the time and he had another family in Calgary. He mentioned the only way to know for sure was to get a paternity test. Back then I think it was like $500, wayyyyy too much for me to afford at the time. I was torn. As much as I felt I needed to know who I was I also didn't see the point in knowing if my father was some guy I never knew who had a whole other family in another city and didn't seem to want anything much to do with me anyways. It'd be like just another "placement". So I never got it done and I never really talked to him after that. My mom would always say "you should call your dad".... I'd just avoid that. It bothered me alot later on, feeling like I didn't know who I was, because I started thinking about my name and the fact that I don't even really know where or WHO it came from. One of my sisters fathers, my mom never married, but she just stole the name and attached it to half of us kids. So my name isn't even me at all. 
       And if not knowing my earthly identity has taught me one thing, it's that I am grateful for the opportunity it has given me to be completely my own person. Who I am isn't shaped by the family tree, as messed up as it is lol.
And living in sooooo many places has let me meet so many great people, that later on I find are all somehow connected and THAT is scary but that's another story for another time lol.
 But the whole point of saying all this is just to say that being a part of a great community, a group of people, having something to belong to and that can make you feel like you can contribute, it's a great thing, take advantage of it, enjoy it, be blessed by it. You never know who might come along that needs a place to belong, so bless someone else by it, I know it has blessed me so far  :D