The Spaces Between Us

Rediscovering Real Belonging in a Connected but Lonely World

An autumn night at Red Rocks Amphitheatre

I recently read something that made me think about the role families play in shaping our lives and how we see the world. The thought hit close to home, because my divorce from my children’s mother didn’t just end a relationship; it blew apart a family. In its wake, it fractured the sense of belonging my children once took for granted. I will never forget my daughter’s reaction the first time we told her we were splitting up.

She laughed.

It was inconceivable to an eight-year-old. Three years later, when the marriage finally ended for good, no one was laughing. I still wonder how deeply that shaped them, and whether they have ever been able to rebuild the sense of security I once tried so hard to give them.

Perhaps it was my own background that set the stage for that unraveling.

I am never really sure how to respond when someone asks me, “Where are you from?” or “Where did you grow up?” I usually joke, “The witness protection program.”

I’ve never really known what it means to belong to a place. By the time I finished second grade, my father’s Navy career had already carried us from Pennsylvania to Rhode Island to Naples, Italy. I had at least seven different addresses before I graduated from high school. For me, home was wherever we happened to be living that year.

Friends, cousins, even grandparents were little more than a concept to me until much later in life. Even my own brother was seven years older, so by the time I was old enough to understand what it meant to be part of a family, he was already preparing to leave for college.

Maybe that is part of why, seventeen years ago, I was willing to walk away from my own. Let me be clear, I am not offering this as an excuse for walking away. That choice was mine alone, and it left marks I cannot erase. Still, it is impossible not to look back and wonder what makes some families hold together while others fall apart, and what that says about who we are as human beings.

I recently finished reading Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari, a compelling exploration of how human societies evolved and the shared stories that continue to shape our collective beliefs. Harari walks readers through our evolution, from primates and cousins of the Neanderthals to our present position at the top of the food chain, a species with powers that would once have seemed godlike. It is a fascinating read that offers surprising insight into the world we inhabit today.

Toward the end, Harari turns to a theme that struck a personal chord for me and, I think, helps explain much of the tension we see in our culture today: the collapse of the family as the central pillar of human life, or perhaps more accurately, the quiet transfer of that role to the state.If that last part made you pause, you are not alone. It took me a moment to get my head around it the first time I read it.

For most of history, the family was the center of everything, where we learned, found shelter, and were protected from the loneliness of the world. But it was also the source of authority, defining what was right and wrong. In those small circles there were no universal rules, only the family’s. A strong father might offer safety and guidance, or he might rule through fear. Families could be loving or cruel, supportive or suffocating, and there was little to protect anyone who fell out of line.

As societies grew, that kind of private power began to break down. During industrialization, the state stepped in to define and enforce moral order. Laws replaced family judgment, schools replaced parental apprenticeship, and courts replaced clan justice. The goal was to protect the vulnerable, the poor, the sick, the orphaned, from the family’s failures. In return, we paid taxes, obeyed rules, and accepted the authority of institutions that promised safety at scale.

By most measures, it was a fair trade, especially for the most vulnerable among us. It wasn’t a theft of power by the state but a quiet surrender, our collective request for help. Yet that shift carried a cost we are only beginning to recognize.

As we built larger systems to meet our needs, we fractured the small bonds that once gave life its texture: neighbors helping neighbors, families sharing burdens, communities held together by shared trust. We became freer, but also more alone. We gained scale and stability, but at the expense of intimacy.

I can’t help but wonder if that shift explains the quiet sense of disconnection so many of us feel today. We still crave belonging, but we search for it in new places, our workplaces, political circles, and religious tribes. Often these are people we barely know, some we may never meet, yet they have become our new families.

Psychologist and author Adam Grant explores this idea in his book Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don’t Know. He writes about how our modern tribes give us identity and belonging but also bind us to certainty. We join groups that affirm what we already believe, and in doing so, we mistake agreement for connection. It feels good to be part of something, to be seen, to have a side, but the cost is often curiosity. When belonging depends on loyalty, questioning becomes a kind of betrayal.

Harari might call these tribes a modern version of his “imagined communities,” our replacement for the intimate circles that were once the center of our lives. They connect us across vast distances, yet too often they divide us from the people right beside us.

Maybe the lesson in all this isn’t about what we lost, but about what we have failed to nurture.Life has scattered many of our families and oldest friends across great distances, and technology has rushed in to fill the gaps. There’s no shortage of tools to help us “connect,” yet much of that connection feels thin, more curated than real. I know it in myself. The words and images I share online often reflect who I aspire to be more than who I actually am. Taken at face value, they might look like a full life, but they don’t show who I really am.

Real connection rarely looks perfect. It looks like this—friends gathered around a table, sunlight, laughter, and a few unguarded faces.

Belonging can’t be found online, or in some imagined community. It lives only in the quiet space between us.

It isn’t grand or abstract, but simple, sharing a meal, helping a neighbor, calling an old friend just to listen.

For me, belonging still looks like walking in the woods with a friend, spending time with my son and daughter, curling up on the couch with Marilyn and Skye, or standing under the stars at Red Rocks, singing along with a few good friends and a thousand strangers who, for a few hours, feel like family.

Those moments remind me that belonging still begins close to home, wherever we choose to show up for one another.

Belonging can only be found in the moments we share with someone real.

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