When belonging is a birthright

Everywhere we turn, conditions are placed upon us.

They are written into the fabric of our culture — in the ways politics divide, in the inequities tied to race and class, in the expectations bound to gender, sexuality, and religion. They echo through our ancestral lines — voices that said survival meant shrinking, belonging meant silence, or love had to be earned. These patterns live in our bodies until we begin to remember another way.

And they seep into our inner lives — whispered agreements that tighten around us:
I’ll rest when the work is done.
I’ll be lovable when I’ve proven myself.
I’ll belong when I fit the mold.

These conditions aren’t abstract. We all hold stories that tell us love is something to be earned — stories that can dim who we are, or, if we’re willing, become teachers that lift us into who we are meant to be.

I’ve lived both sides of that truth.

In January of 2020, I was seated at a table with an executive coach and three peers, all chosen as “emerging leaders” in a company I loved working for. On paper, it should have been a moment of recognition and pride. But when the coach asked a simple question, something inside me crumbled. Tears welled up, and I blurted out words I could hardly believe were mine:

“I don’t even recognize this version of me. I can’t do this anymore.”

It wasn’t just exhaustion. It was grief — grief for the leader I no longer saw in myself in this place, for the way I had been doing it “their way,” dimming my own spark to fit expectations, to fit the mold. That way of leading, that way of being, was not aligned with who I truly am.

But the real shift came in what followed. By allowing my peers to see me raw and undone, something cracked open in the room. One by one, they too began to share their truths — unpolished, unguarded, equally raw. My vulnerability became an invitation, and in that circle of emerging leaders, the walls came down and honesty flowed more freely than it ever had before.

This wasn’t the first time I’d been brought face-to-face with the story that I didn’t belong.
I heard it in a boss who admitted he never thought a woman could handle fieldwork, and in a female manager who looked me in the eye on my very first day and said, “You don’t have what it takes to be here.”
Different voices. Same message: your worth is conditional.

But nature tells a different story.

Pause for a moment.

Feel the warmth of the sun on your skin. Picture a river flowing steadily and unhurried. Neither asks you to earn what it offers.

This is the wisdom of sacred reciprocity — living in right relationship with all of life. It is a way of being that honors the balance of giving and receiving with reverence, gratitude, and love.

I felt this truth alive two weeks ago, standing in circle with Wild Minnow co-founder, Jessica Lang, and seventy-four other beautiful souls in the Heart of the Healer community. This lineage, guided by don Oscar Miro-Quesada, is rooted in sacred reciprocity — a way of life that reminds us that belonging isn’t something to be earned; it is the birthright of every being.

Sacred reciprocity grows from here — not as a lofty concept, but as a way of living in right relationship. It is the practice of honoring the balance of giving and receiving, remembering our interconnection, and tending with care to what sustains life. It restores balance, reminds us of our belonging, and repairs the fractures in how we relate to one another and to the Earth. In a culture that thrives on separation and scarcity, this way of being is not just healing; it is necessary.

So, I invite you to pause again, and notice: Where do you still feel the weight of conditions in your life? And where might you soften into love without condition, allowing reciprocity to flow?

May these moments ripple outward, reminding us that to live aligned with love is to live aligned with life itself.