Identity and Belonging: An Immigrant's Search for Home 🌍

Immigrant Identity: Where Do I Belong?

For many years, I have kept returning to the same question about identity and belonging: Where do I belong?

I came to the United States from India as a teenager. I studied here, worked here, found my love here, and built my entire adult life here. Slowly, America began to feel like home.

And yet, something as ordinary as looking at my passport or visa could remind me that I was still not completely “from here.” That feeling is difficult to explain. How can a place hold almost everything you have built and still make you wonder whether you truly belong?

Returning to India did not always answer the question either. I had changed, India had changed, and the home I carried in my memory was not exactly the place I returned to.

I found myself somewhere in between, not fully here or there, yet deeply connected to both.

Maybe being in-between is not an absence of identity. Maybe it is an identity of its own.

Building a life in a new Home while continuing to carry the Home I came from.

Is a Face Really an Identity? 👤

Identity is often described through simple facts: Where were you born? Where do you live? What language do you speak? What do you do? What do you look like?

But do these details really tell someone who we are?

A face is not an identity.

A face cannot show our memories, the relationships that shaped us, or the expectations we inherited. It cannot reveal how many times we have had to translate ourselves or the parts of us that never translated at all.

And yet, we make assumptions from faces every day. We assign race, religion, culture, nationality, and belonging before knowing anything about the person underneath.

Perhaps the real question is not simply, “Who am I?” Perhaps it is also, “Who am I when no one else is defining me?”

We are more than what another person can see. We are also everything they cannot see.

Mixed Media: Self Portrait of Nimisha Doongarwal- A face may be the first thing we see, but it can never tell us the whole story.

Living in the In-Between 🧭

Living between two cultures can feel like standing in a doorway. You can see both rooms and understand both spaces, but you are never sure whether you are expected to choose one and close the door to the other.

For a long time, I thought belonging meant arriving somewhere completely. I imagined there would be a moment when I finally felt settled, understood, and unquestioned.

But what if belonging does not work that way? What if some of us are meant to carry more than one truth?

I can love the life I built in America and still miss India. I can carry Indian traditions without following every expectation attached to them. I can change without rejecting where I come from.

These truths do not cancel one another. Still, living in-between can be lonely. Sometimes you wonder if you are too Indian for one space and not Indian enough for another. You become aware of how often you adjust yourself depending on who is around you.

Eventually, the question changes. Instead of asking whether other people accept you, you begin asking whether you have given yourself permission to be all the versions of yourself at once.

Is Home a Place or a Feeling? 🏠

I used to think of home as a physical place. Now, I am not so sure.

Home can return through morning chai made in a familiar way, an old familiar smell, an old family photograph, a piece of inherited fabric, or food that tastes like childhood. It can also be a person who allows you to exist without explaining yourself.

Perhaps this is why immigrants can miss home while sitting inside the home they have built. We are not always longing for a country. Sometimes we are longing for a feeling, familiarity, ease, and the freedom to be completely ourselves.

Maybe home is not only something we leave behind or eventually find.

Maybe home is something we carry.

Sometimes home returns through the smallest and most familiar things.

Giving These Questions Somewhere to Live 🎨

I do not have answers to all these questions. Often, I return to them through my art.

Art gives me a place where different identities, memories, and contradictions can exist together without needing to be resolved. On canvas, I can ask what a face hides, think about the identities assigned to us, and explore the identities we choose for ourselves.

My work does not answer the question, “Who am I?” It gives me the freedom to keep asking it.

That is the blessing of having an artistic outlet. It gives our inner conversations somewhere to live outside of us. It turns something invisible into something we can see, touch, question, and share.

Art gives my unanswered questions somewhere to exist outside of me.

Maybe Belonging Is Not About Fitting In ✨

For years, I thought I needed to find the right space to fit into. Over time, I began to wonder whether some of those spaces were ever created with people like me in mind.

Maybe belonging is not about making ourselves smaller, simpler, or easier to understand. Maybe it is about creating a space where we can arrive as our whole selves.

I still ask, Where do I belong? The question has not disappeared, but I am beginning to understand that identity and belonging do not require one final answer. Both can continue evolving as we move through places, relationships, and different versions of ourselves.

I belong to India, but I am not limited to the India I left. I belong to America, even when a document or a question makes me feel otherwise.

I belong to my memories, the relationships I have built, and the person I am still becoming.

Perhaps being in-between is not the absence of belonging.

Perhaps the in-between is where I belong. 💛

What Does Belonging Mean to You? 💬

Have you ever felt caught between cultures, places, or different versions of yourself?

Is home a country, a person, a memory, a feeling or something you have learned to carry within yourself?

I would love to hear your story in the comments. #IdentityAndBelonging #ImmigrantExperience #WomenOfColor #ImmigrantVoices 💛 Looking for something that fits your story perfectly? Explore my available works and bring texture, culture, and color into your home.👉 Shop the Collection

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