To belong has always been difficult and elusive for me. I was always aware of being marginalized, at home, at work, in social groups. I felt different from those around me and that my passions were not those of others. I did not even know people who shared my passions, that included classical music, country life, fine art and literature and of course animals, primarily dogs and horses. This was not the life into which I was born. Nor was it the social world into which I was placed, in the New Jersey post WWII suburbs of Union County, just out of reach of the old cities where my parents grew up, Newark and Elizabeth, and newly placed in upwardly mobile suburbs, trying to escape the poverty of their childhoods. I felt I belonged in the stories of the English novels I read about the aristocracy or village life, or the movies I saw on television, mostly westerns. I lived with the sickening feeling in the pit of my stomach that somehow a terrible mistake had been made and I did not belong where I was and to whom I was with, in other words, my family. Sadly, it was a feeling that never went away and only grew lager through the years of my life.
I worked on getting my life right as an adult after college and later graduate school when I had more control over career selection and the kinds of people I would later work with and come to know. It was better, and I believed I was happier. However, it was still hard work to belong. I still felt marginalized off to the side, and that I wanted to talk about subjects that were of no interest to anyone else. During my first job, I was saving money to buy a horse. That consumed me, and I was very passionate about that. The horse made me happy for a while when it came to pass, but the work and expense did not fit in with my schedule and life responsibilities, so I had to give it up. I tried to broaden my outlook of what constituted happiness, and focused on getting married.
I married twice more, and it was not until I was with my second husband, still feeling marginalized, that we had the opportunity to act boldly, inspired by our Unitarian Minister, Vanessa Southern’s call, to Live Boldly. I had recently turned fifty, and it was the Millennium, the world felt drunk with optimism. Suddenly, my husband and I had a chance encounter with a man who was selling a young male borzoi, and we leapt at the opportunity to buy him. Then, we purchased several more borzoi to live with, show and later breed. Through the love and beauty of these sublime creatures, I found my peace when I found my dogs and their breeders became my friends. It was here I belonged.