🌹 Belonging, Exile & the Invisible Threshold
Why every woman on the edge of reinvention must cross the inner border of belonging before anything new can emerge.
There is a moment in every woman’s evolution
when she realizes she has been living in exile —
even if no one around her can see it.
An exile that doesn’t look dramatic from the outside.
It looks like success.
It looks like competency.
It looks like the woman who always figures it out,
always adapts,
always rises.
But inwardly…
something essential has been missing.
Because identity-belonging is not the same as true belonging.
Identity-belonging says:
“Let me adjust myself so I can stay here.”
True belonging says:
“Let me return to the Self so I can belong anywhere.”
And most women are taught the first long before they ever taste the second.
Exile begins quietly.
Not with a dramatic fracture
but with a subtle drift:
You soften a truth.
You mute a part of you.
You make yourself understandable.
You make yourself non-threatening.
You master the art of fitting the room.
You learn how to belong to others,
but you stop belonging to yourself.
And this is the invisible threshold every woman encounters
before any true reinvention can begin:
The threshold where she must choose
between belonging externally
and belonging internally.
Between her identity
and her Self.
Between safety
and truth.
Belonging to the Identity is always conditional.
Conditional on performance.
Conditional on approval.
Conditional on not being “too much.”
Conditional on being consistent with your past.
This is why so many women feel exhausted
even when their lives look full.
Identity-belonging requires maintenance.
And the more you maintain it,
the more you drift from yourself.
Belonging to the Self changes everything.
Belonging to the Self is unconditional.
Unshakeable.
Untouchable by circumstance.
It is the moment you feel that subtle click inside the body —
the unmistakable sense of:
“Oh. I’m back.”
A return without fanfare,
without performance,
without explanation.
A homecoming without an audience.
When you return to belonging with the Self,
reinvention becomes inevitable —
because the identity can no longer hold you.
This is the invisible threshold.
It’s not loud.
It’s not dramatic.
It’s not a social announcement.
It is a fracturing of the old inner allegiance
and the quiet claiming of a new one.
Reinvention begins with belonging.
Not belonging to a group.
Not belonging to a role.
Not belonging to a version of you the world recognizes.
But belonging to the Self
that remembers who you are
before you ever became who you needed to be.
When I guide women across thresholds,
this is the first crossing:
The moment she stops seeking belonging externally
and returns to the place in herself
that never left her.
The place that feels like truth.
The place that feels like power.
The place that feels like home.
Identity seeks belonging.
Self is belonging.
This is the crossing.
Welcome to the threshold.
Image Credit: Gitanjali Koppikar, Salt Flats, 2024