Your tribe is a place where you are a big deal. Your feelings are a big deal. Details about you are a big deal. Your successes and failures are a big deal. Jokes about you, banter with you, stories with you and everything about you are a big deal. 

A tribe is a single person, or a bunch of people, even newly met strangers who make you a big deal. Over and over again. It does not even matter if you are a big deal. It matters that to them you are a big deal. And, it matters that they make you a big deal. They show up. Shake you up. Celebrate you. Make you feel human, seen, loved and cherished. Your company desired. They actually notice when you are missing, make place for you, wait for you, feel your absence and light up when you turn up or are present. They don't care who knows it or how often, but they are easy about you being a big deal for them. They don't breadcrumb, keep count. The fallouts will happen with a tribe, from caring too much but the bond won't break. It will bind stronger. 

You can be silly, serious, profound, profane, vulnerable, strong, and sometimes even messed up. The thing is the space in your tribe won't fall vacant just because you goofed it up. That place is yours. 

Sometimes you take a train journey risking everything you have, leaving everything you have known hoping you are going towards your tribe. A partner who you think is your tribe. In the hope of creating a brave new tribe. Sometimes, you risk life many times over ... For those you think is tribe. Hoping and thinking you are creating your tribe. Or thinking this bunch will hold you close. Only, to find it still elusive. That while you create and hold space for another, or even a bunch, they may not hold the same space for you. That you both are not really the same tribe. Even if they are parents, siblings, friends, family, partners or even your own children. 

Those who make a big deal about us are our tribe. Sometimes we have people who make a big deal of us from our birth, childhood and through the length of our life. And sometimes, we have to go through many disappointments to find the right tribe. 

You are never truly home until you have found your tribe. 

The hardest lesson in life is to get excited each time thinking we have found our tribe, or die a few times from being abandoned by those who we thought were our tribe or where we thought we had a permanent spot only to realize that we don't. 

How would you know you have found your tribe ? 

When you don't have to be asked to be made a priority. When you don't need to question if you are a big deal. When you don't even have to think twice whether they will hold space. When you know there is no chance of being missed or forgotten. And, celebrating you is so loud and vocal in word and action. 

That's your tribe. Everything else is breadcrumbing. 

- SS