You Belong Here

I have spent most of my life feeling like I don’t belong.

“Wanting to belong” and “wanting to fit in” are not just phases of childhood or our teenage years.

This wanting follows us our whole lives.

This is because…

As humans, we need connection and acceptance in order to feel safe and in order to thrive.

We look for outer cues of safety, and when we're growing up, a lot of times this comes from what we can see and identify as sameness in another. However, because we're all so unique, many times any hint of difference sticks out like a sore thumb and there's not enough sameness we can see in another, to feel accepted and safe.

I started kindergarten at a school in Hawaiʻi where the students were primarily of Japanese ancestry. But I was considered “mixed:” Japanese, Filipino, Spanish, Chinese. I looked different.

Other kids would wear pants, shorts, simple cotton dresses, jumpers, but my Grandma dressed me in fancy dresses and patent leather shoes - and not just for the holidays! I looked different.

My parents were divorced and I didn’t live with either of them, so my "older-looking" grandparents dropped me off while a younger mom or dad would drop off my classmates. My drop offs looked different.

To add to it all, there were things going on at home that weighed me down like a giant soaking-wet blanket - a big heavy secret I didn’t want anyone to know, but I felt like everyone did.

As I got older, I also realized I was gay, and now we’re pouring fuel on the fire!

🔥🧯☄️ Hello!

Back when I was growing up, there was only LGBT, then that became LGBTQ, which became LGBTQIA, and now, I believe they’ve “given up” 😹 and just added a plus – LGBTQIA+.

All of this may seem ridiculous and I’m guilty of rolling my eyes a few times, but at its core, it’s an attempt to make each person feel accepted – that they belong.

There are two other things that have also made me feel like I don’t belong:

1. being a Highly Sensitive Person (HSP) and empath (they're not synonyms)
2. having a deep love for cats

Both of these add up to what we call at Love and Above Cat Club, an HSCP, a Highly Sensitive Cat Person.

NECESSARY SIDEBAR:

🪄 I want to dispel a myth.

When many non-cat lovers learn that I love cats, they immediately think I don’t like dogs. 🤷🏻

So I just want to say that I love all animals!!!

I really do!

I love dogs and despite being attacked by a German Shepherd when I was three, it didn’t stop me from loving them. I nurture all our wild animals outside: crows, squirrels, rabbits, raccoons, skunks, and opossums included, and I don’t even kill spiders I find in the house. Last, I have an inexplicable love for sheep and capybaras. 

But anyway.

Cats.

Cats and I have a deep understanding

Cats and I get each other.

(Photo credit: my Aunt Marie's cats on her counter 😆)

I know cats and cats know me.

The energy is just different.

As Highly Sensitive Cat People (HSCP), I think we gravitate towards cats because of their energy.

I actually think that most cats are HSCs - Highly Sensitive Cats. (Maybe we could include both people and cats and everyone and just say HSBs – Highly Sensitive Beings! 😊)

The "Highly Sensitive" nature is our shared foundation.

• We need to decompress from the energy of the day
• When we’ve had enough, we retreat
• We can get overstimulated - too loud, too hot, strong scents
• We pick up and sense the energy around us
• We need alone time

In 2016 when Cumin, my soul cat, got her wings...

I remember a good friend (non-cat lover) came by to drop something off. It wasn’t a condolence card or flowers. It was something completely unrelated and I remember he was taken aback by my grief. It had been about three or four weeks since Cumin’s passing, so to him, I should’ve been "over it" already.

Because I’m a private griever, this was the first direct experience I had where I realized how deep and special the love of a soul cat is and how not many people understand it.

After he left, I had all these other feelings on top of my own (HSCP, remember?) and I was angry, embarrassed, confused, and, well, lonely.

I felt so alone in my grief and in this deep well of love.

This experience, plus the realization that I relied on Cumin’s love for me vs. cultivating my own self-love is what sparked the idea of the Love and Above Cat Club. (See our About page :) 

I wanted to create a place where others like myself could feel safe, seen, understood and ultimately, LOVED. It’s why every order includes a card that says, “You Are Loved.” My hope is that some of you save that little card and put it up on the fridge or in your bathroom as a reminder…or give it away to remind someone else.

(We also made these YOU ARE LOVED Green Aventurine Stones, available in our shop.)

Our tag line is “Self Care for Cat Lovers” and self care, to us, goes well and waaaay beyond getting good sleep, taking the tub bath to decompress, eating well, etc.

Those things are important but we also want to bridge self-care with self-love and part of self-love includes the journey of finding the places, the people, the community where you belong - and where you feel it in your bones.

We need other people, we need connections.

It’s our connection with others that has the capacity to mirror us back, as we mirror them. These mirrors remind us of who and what we truly are. When we can start seeing ourselves the same way that safe, loving people see us, we can really cultivate loving ourselves. We see so much in social media that "learning to love ourselves is something we need to do on our own, by ourselves."

I believe this is partially true, but not the whole truth.

We need connections with others to know how to fully love ourselves - to mirror to each other our Greatness, our Uniqueness, our Love.

Love and Above Cat Club was created for You and Me. And all our fellow Highly Sensitive Cat People. You are welcome here. You belong here.

And You are so truly Loved.