Belonging Isn’t a Place. It’s the Women Who Choose Us.

For years, I chased belonging the way people chase destinations.

I crossed four countries: Tunisia, Korea, Japan, and Germany. For education, for career, for ambition, for a version of myself I was always in the process of becoming, and another version of myself I was running away from. With every move came a new apartment, a new language, a new university, a new workplace, a new map of expectations.

People would say my life looked bold and exciting. And in some ways, it was.

But underneath the surface was something no one really talks about.

That sense of home and belonging that almost every person somehow needs. And when you move, eventually, at some point, the definition of “Home” and “Belonging” that you used to have and know disappears. The further you go, the more you quietly lose the sense of home you came with.

The lucky ones find a replacement for those definitions quickly. The even luckier ones carry on living their best lives without needing to define those terms.

But for those like (maybe you, and) me, that disappearance generates inner turmoil.

In fact, belonging isn’t guaranteed just because you land somewhere new. Or because you speak the language, no matter how fluently. Or because you made lots of friends and can navigate the city without maps.

When strength becomes your survival skill. And your barrier.

Every time I moved (and I moved 8 times), I rebuilt life from zero. Including the times when I went from Korea, Japan, or Germany back to Tunisia.

New routines, new norms, new communication styles, new social rules. I adapted. I learned. I grew.

Work-wise, in the male-dominated fields I was in, being resilient and capable wasn’t optional; it was the entry ticket. So I went for the VVIP Package. Because resilience is a color I knew had to fit me perfectly. To have a seat at the table, to be seen and heard and taken seriously, to prove myself, come what may, to an endless influx of men who were always taller and bigger and louder and almost always older.

To the outer world, I was the woman who could do anything.

To my inner world, however, I was the woman who lost her North Star.

And nothing around seemed to help.

Living alone is the best teacher of independence. Living alone in a foreign country, or 3, deserves the corresponding Nobel Prize.

What nobody, and nothing, teaches you, though, is that when independence becomes automatic, it becomes invisible, even to yourself. You handle everything alone because you always have. You carry stress quietly. You don’t ask for help because you don’t even think in that direction. Until one day you’re so unwell you can barely move, and there are people around you, yet your instinct is still to say, “I’ll figure it out.”

Thankfully, despite my stubbornness and other issues that are a topic for another day, I somehow still managed to make friends. And very good ones, at that. (Doesn’t mean I knew how to ask for help or be less stubbornly independent).

The turning point wasn’t a career breakthrough. It was connection.

There’s a moment in every ambitious woman’s life—and we need to speak about it more openly—when achievement stops being the thing that fills you. When the next milestone doesn’t make you feel more understood. When strength stops feeling empowering and starts feeling lonely.

Needless to say, to someone who spent years defining herself through her career, reaching that moment built more turmoil over the already existing one.

Here too, thankfully, despite my stubbornness and those other issues, I somehow still managed to keep some of those very good friends I made.

In fact, what finally grounded me and punched a massive hole through that thick turmoil wasn’t success. It was friendship.

Female friendships.

The women in my life, across continents and years, became the first place where I didn’t need to be the “strong one” or the “independent one” or the “capable one.” They chose me not for what I could do or for what I achieved, but for who I was beneath the layers. They reminded me that softness isn’t the opposite of ambition; it’s what makes ambition sustainable.

They became my anchor in ways geography never could.

Belonging isn’t a place. It’s the women who choose us.

I used to think belonging was something I would find if I kept moving. The right country, the right job, the right environment.

Now I know: Belonging isn’t a location. It’s a feeling. The feeling of being seen, chosen, and understood.

It’s the women who check on you, even when you don’t know how to ask for support. The ones who soften with you, cry with you, hold your contradictions, and love the parts of you you’re still learning to love yourself. The ones who don’t need you to shrink or hide your truth to fit.

And just like that, a path started clearing up, right in the middle of the fog I spent the last 10 years in.

The definitions of “Home” and “Belonging” that my heart and soul had been longing for were walking closer, on that path through the fog (and through the massive hole in the turmoil), ready to meet me with a hug. A hug that I knew would feel like coming home, and to where I belonged.

“Home” isn’t a particular place, no matter how much I still love my room in my parents’ house in Tunisia.

“Home” is the emotional safety we build and the people who help us build it.

And “Belonging”?

Maybe the question isn’t “Where do I belong?”

Maybe it’s “Who makes me feel like I belong?”

Because at the end of all the moving, all the striving, all the reinventing, that’s the only form of home that never expires, never relocates, and never needs unpacking.

The world will keep changing.

Careers will evolve.

Life will move.

But belonging, MY “Belonging”, is in the women who choose me, again and again, wherever I am. Just like I choose them, again and again, wherever they are.