Sacred Exile and The Journey to Belonging

What if the life you’ve outgrown is the one you’ve called “home” for years?

In this episode, Eimear shares a deeply personal story about leaving behind the familiar—and what it really takes to build a sense of belonging that starts from within.

Through the lens of her own midlife move across continents, she unpacks:

• How your environment shapes your identity more than you realize
• Why belonging isn’t found in a place or person—but through self-expansion
• And why being called a “difficult woman” is something to celebrate

This is for every woman who’s asking “Who am I now?”
For the one who no longer fits where she’s been—but isn’t quite sure what comes next.

It’s not about reinvention. It’s about reclamation.
 And it begins with this:
 Home is not a place. It’s who you choose to become.

✨ Grab the free Morning Reset audio mentioned in the episode → https://www.subscribepage.com/my-morning-reset

🎧 Listen now and come back to yourself.

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Transcript

Sacred Exile and The Journey to Belonging : Transcript

[00:00:00] Welcome back. This week I have called this episode Sacred Exile and the theme of the episode is belonging. You know, where do you feel like you most belong? And it's been a theme that's been on my mind for several years, and I just wanted. Dip into it because it's huge. But I think when we're in midlife, it's a theme that's very alive for us.

There's those thoughts of, whew, is this as good as it gets? Is this all there is? Have I missed my chance? Is it too late? Looking around at our environments on every level and thinking. Does this fit me anymore? And it's a time of transition and change. You know, physically in our bodies there's the joy of [00:01:00] menopause, sweet Jesus.

And there's looking at relationships that maybe have changed. There's change in our home environments, probably with children if we are parents having left home. So it's a tumultuous period in in many ways. And so this theme of belonging is sort of threaded through these years. And what does it mean to belong?

What does home mean? This is a theme that's been on my mind a lot because I am an immigrant here in America. I'm a citizen. I am married to an American. I've raised three children here. They moved when they were quite young from England. There's always been a little bit of confusion in my mind about where do I belong.

When I lived in England and I was raising my children there and I was working there, I didn't hear it as much, but you would be asked, where are you from? Or you just weren't as like interested in [00:02:00] when the English soccer team were playing, for example. And you always supported Ireland when the rugby matches were on, so you weren't quite at home in one sense, but I was very at home in another sense.

So this theme of where do I belong, I think has many layers. And I just wanna touch into a couple and maybe explain to you about why the topic is or the title of the episode. I decided to call Sacred Exile. I just wanna talk about three main things, and the first is the importance of environment and how it shapes us.

For me, in in Dublin, I think that environment shaped me. Obviously, we're all conditioned by our childhood experiences and our cultures and our families of our origin. And when I think about Dublin now, it's where I'm from, but it's not home and it's not where I feel like I belong. [00:03:00] And so when I think about Sacred Exile, I kind of feel like I'm an immigrant.

It's not like I can't go back, but I feel there's this sense of leaving behind things that don't feel like they belong to me anymore, that they fit who I am Now, if you've ever, if you are an immigrant and you go back home, I had an interesting conversation. With a lovely woman. I only spoke to her once.

She was a friend of a cousin, and I was speaking to her about the process of becoming a citizen a couple of years ago, and she had done it, and so my cousin put me in contact with her and we ended up on a conversation. Talked about the admin bits and bobs for doing the citizenship, and then we ended up in a much deeper conversation that was on this theme of belonging, and she was from England and had lived in Australia [00:04:00] and now lived in America, had raised children in America.

And we talked about this, where you feel like you belong. It's a complicated topic when you are someone who is. Raise children in one country, maybe married to somebody from another nationality. So it's got layers of complexity. And she said something to me that I, that I remember at With a smile when we were talking about going home to Ireland.

She said, there's only so long you can be standing in somebody's front room having a cup of tea. And I was going, oh my God, that's so funny. Yeah. When we go back and we're the visitor. Going to people's houses and having a cup of tea and having these little snapshots of interactions that are quite short and usually not very deep.

It feels like that there's only so long I can stand in somebody's front room having a cup of tea. I'm not here anymore. I don't belong here. My kind of roots are here, but maybe I can't [00:05:00] settle back into this in the way that it feels for people who have. Never left or only left for a short period of time.

So environment really shapes an identity when we're young and when we leave and we try and go back to an environment, we feel that difference because we've changed when we've been outside of it, and the different environments that we've been in have shaped our identity and we take different sort of cues for belonging from them.

I think the second point that feels interesting to me in this. Little dip into this large theme of belonging is how it requires expansion. For me, this is what comes to mind for me, particularly when I think about expansion, is when I came to the US I was quite unhappy. I came here, if you've read my book, choose Yourself.

I talk about it a lot. Um, it was kind of an unexpected move and we came [00:06:00] from my husband's. Career, and I wasn't a big fan of the move. I liked the idea in a way, but I think that was more escapism. I didn't really feel a particular draw, and I definitely didn't feel a draw to Miami. That felt like eternal summer for somebody who's got such white Irish skin that it like, what am I doing here?

I definitely don't belong and fit here. This environment doesn't really suit me. And oh my God, the bugs. Geez, if you've ever been to Florida, they have big bugs and they have like, I mean, I got used to a lot. I got used to like lizards and all sorts, and now I live in New Mexico and if I see a snake, I'm like, eh.

But yeah, it's like the environment was like a big shock for me. But yeah, belonging requires this expansion and for me, that was unwelcome. I didn't want to. [00:07:00] And then I found that I was going to be miserable if I didn't. So I was, it was sort of forced. I was sort of, again, sort of exiled from a version of myself that I had liked and from an environment that I was liked.

And it took me on really what I see now as being quite a sacred journey. Although it felt very disruptive at the time and. Through that disruption and through that expansion, I felt a much deeper sense of belonging because I was shedding layers of, I guess, conditioning and I guess, you know, masks and a bit of fakery and who I thought I should be.

And then became very interested and curious about who I might be and who I could be. And so it was very much a forced [00:08:00] expansion, but it led to a much deeper sense of belonging. And I think that that's, doesn't need to be forced in that way. Like a big geographic move in your forties. We get those signals when we're feeling a sense of unease with.

Where we are like, this doesn't fit. I don't belong in this situation anymore. It doesn't have to be like swampy, sweaty, hot Miami in August. Um, it can be any circumstance where you just tapping into yourself feel, I don't belong in this situation anymore. And it can be in the smallest things, you know, when you're around people.

Who drain you and you're around people who nourish you. I was recently on a trip to the UK and I was around people who I hadn't spent a lot of time with in a long time, and it was deeply nourishing and they're people like that. You can spend five [00:09:00] minutes with them and it's just like, oh, a deep exhale.

Your whole nervous system is like, oh yeah, I belong. And then you can spend time in places with other people and it can feel like such an assault on your nervous system. The tension, it's draining energetically. And, and that's a sense of belonging too, like oof this, I mean, we all have to adult around the place and be in places and spaces with people.

That are not gonna be our besties, and we have to perform certain functions and obligations and engagements, but we also need that balance. And we just need to be recognizing when we're in too many spaces where we're feeling like that and that we need to recalibrate and, and, and find our way to those spaces and [00:10:00] relationships and places that nourish us.

So I think belonging does require this sense of expansion into, you know, breaking out of a shell of conformity and pleasing everybody else and taking that journey into nourishing our own deep needs. I think it's only that sort of sacred journey that can. Um, nourish that part of us that is looking to be seen and to be honored.

For me, it felt like kind of a car crash, sort of dramatic awakening, I guess, or breaking out of that, that shell or just wasn't looking at things. I just wasn't, I was just busy, I guess, at that stage of life and being kind of ripped out of the normal and put in somewhere else. Felt unpleasant, and [00:11:00] I'm incredibly grateful for it now.

Incredibly grateful for it now, but the, the moment comes in in different ways for everybody and I think that if we ignore it, we contract, I guess, and we can get. Contorted into patterns that will lead to resentment, resentment towards ourselves for not answering that pulse inside us that is looking to be seen and heard and and resentment towards those around us, and that's like very destructive, corrosive.

Energy. We're just here for something bigger and juicier and more meaningful, and it requires expansion. Being [00:12:00] used to a place doesn't mean that you belong there. Being used to a place a situation doesn't mean that you belong there. And the third thing that I want to kind of play with the last idea is this idea of being.

A difficult woman. If you've ever been called a bit awkward or a little bit crazy or a little bit out there, I wanna celebrate you. I'm a fucking difficult woman. I am a difficult woman. Hella fucking hallelujah for difficult women. The world needs more difficult women, not more compliant women. It takes F all to be labeled difficult as a woman.

Awkward. It just means that you say no. It just means that you don't tolerate other people's crap and that you speak your truth. It seems [00:13:00] pretty cool to me. So if you've ever been called difficult, awkward, welcome, you are entirely in the right place. Yeah. Difficult is a signal when somebody else says that there are people and places.

There are people I won't spend time with now and places I won't go, and that causes a little bit of disruption in my life. It causes a little bit of friction in some areas of my life, and that's okay. I'm a difficult woman and that's okay. I think to compromise who you are to fit into a space to make other people feel comfortable is too high a price that's not belonging, that's acquiescence.

I am not here for that. Are you here for that [00:14:00] at 40 plus? Are you here for that? Really? I think belonging. Means that some people are gonna call you a difficult woman, and maybe that is something to celebrate. That's all I'm gonna really say this week. I feel that's where I want to close things. I think maybe just to speak to that title again, sacred Exile is really this choice to leave.

There's choice to leave situations and places and yeah. Where you don't belong anymore so that you can expand into the places where you truly do belong. And I think that's kind of sacred work. It's a a really sacred journey that [00:15:00] we all need to take. I think lots of people don't, and I think that's really sad.

I think that's really sad for me, beginning on my journey when I was there in Miami, feeling pretty shit and kind of being forced into a, an expansion. It began for me with small, small changes, just a small introduction and. That was really important for me to kind of get momentum and to begin to expand beyond what had been comfortable and conditioned and into what was more where I belonged and more the truth of myself.

And so if you feel that you're kind of ready to build a life that fits the truth of who you are now. I just want to invite you [00:16:00] to start small and I made this little audio recording a couple of weeks ago and I just shared about it on social media. I'm updating my website, uh, at the moment and it's gonna be there, but for now, I'm gonna leave it for you in the show notes if you would like it.

It's called The Morning Reset, and it's just a daily practice to anchor into yourself to really start. From a place of really belonging to yourself before the world starts getting noisy, and you start scrolling and you start getting pulled away from that truth. And I think you'll find it really helpful if you find that helpful.

Here's a next step that I invite you to do. If you listening to it for a while and you feel that there are some points of friction for you and some of the words that I use, write your own. And record it in your own voice. I think [00:17:00] that's really powerful too, that you have your own voice that you tune into.

Try the morning reset for a while, and then maybe create one that's very specific to you. That is exactly the message that you feel in your particular circumstance that you need to hear and what you need to hear affirmed for you, so that you will start your day off in a really powerful way, sort of very much connected into belonging to yourself, because that is sacred work.

Okay. Stay. Awesome. I'll see you next time. Bye.