Blog / 2025 / Sense of Belonging (Restricted)

You can know a person by their language, because the words an individual chooses to use can reveal volumes about their values. Along those same lines, you can know a people by their language as well, and, by that measure, it’s safe to say that American values are changing.

Last weekend, The New York Times published a list of terms that the Trump administration is now limiting or avoiding entirely. These flagged words include “Black,” “Latinx,” “Native American,” and all kinds of terms that have to do with gender identities. This was alarming but not surprising, given the Executive Orders the 47^th President has been signing. The two items on the list that really hit the panic button for me were “pollution” and “confirmation bias,” since I see these as chilling indicators of just how thorough MAGA is being as it rewrites reality.

Still, the term that gutted me completely was “sense of belonging.”

Who are we as Americans now that naming our own awareness of being accepted is somehow counterculture? We may be able to acknowledge that we feel fellowship in our private lives, but what does it mean to the world that we can’t talk about it in the public sphere? It seems to me that we’re already seeing the damage our country can do now that it’s purposefully remaining unconscious of just how interconnected we all are, both in the US and with the rest of humanity.

I suppose the reason why Trump’s restriction on the term “sense of belonging” cut me so deeply is because I have no talent for feeling like I belong.

I mean, I know I do. I know that many people in my life—including Amy, who I’m painting in this video—go out of their way to make me feel welcome in this world, but my brain is set up to default to the “alienated” setting. I have to remind myself constantly to be conscious of all the people who want me in their lives.

It’s part of why I paint so many people. My portraits are markers of belonging—and of my sondering spirit, of course.