You Belong: A Call for Connection

Meditation teacher Selassie makes a case for how readers can find a sense of belonging amid turbulent times in her dynamic debut. “Contemporary life makes it easy to forget belonging,” she writes before reminding readers they “belong in every moment, to everything, and then, like it or not, to every(damn)one.” She identifies the delusion of separation and the pain of domination as the root causes of all “feelings of not belonging” before delving into strategies for grounding, knowing, and loving oneself in order to connect with others more fully. She instructs readers to feel gratitude for one’s body through meditation and to consider one’s “shadows” by confronting past events one has disowned. With grace, intelligence, and palpable compassion, Selassie weaves discussions of implicit bias, intergenerational trauma, and white supremacy throughout her coverage of more traditional spiritual topics, such as ego and conscious awareness. She offers thoughtful reflections on the Covid-19 pandemic (“centuries of separation and domination encoded into systems... [the coronavirus] has shown us how interconnected we are, and also how unequal”) and the impacts of the widespread shelter-in-place orders, as well as meditation practices and journal prompts. This is a powerful work of spirituality and anti-racism. (Sept.)