The Word That Changed How I See Belonging

I joined a virtual event about Kigali and African traditions on a Tuesday afternoon, mostly because I had tea getting cold and nowhere urgent to be. I signed up out of curiosity — hoping to bring more living culture into the books I’m writing — and fully expected to leave with a few interesting facts and maybe a new Pinterest board.

Instead, I left with a single word tattooed on my brain: teranga.

It’s Senegalese. It gets translated as “hospitality,” but that’s like describing the ocean as “some water.” Teranga is a way of being. An invitation and a responsibility at the same time. It’s the kind of openhearted welcome that starts before you even open the door — in how you think about the person coming, how you clear space for them, how you make sure they don’t leave feeling like a guest.

I made tea afterward (a fresh cup, this time) and wrote the word on a sticky note. Seven letters in my handwriting. It felt less like a vocabulary acquisition and more like remembering something I’d always known.

The Cultural Cousin You Recognize Instantly

I grew up in Brazil, and the moment I heard teranga described, I thought: oh, we have this.

We just never named it.

It’s the friend who won’t let you leave without eating something. The neighbor who sends you home with a container of food and gets personally offended if you return it empty. The table that somehow expands to fit whoever shows up. In Brazil, generosity doesn’t announce itself — it just quietly assumes you’re staying for dinner and starts setting the extra place.

The word was new. The feeling was not.

The Problem With “Welcome”

Here’s the thing I keep thinking about: we live in a world drowning in welcome.

Welcome emails. Welcome sequences. Welcome packages. We welcome new followers, welcome feedback, welcome you to the community. The word has been so thoroughly automated that it has stopped meaning anything. It’s a checkbox now. A trigger word in a drip campaign.

Teranga is the opposite of that. You cannot schedule it. You cannot outsource it to a caption or a chatbot or a carefully crafted onboarding flow. It requires actual presence — the uncomfortable, inefficient, gloriously human kind. The kind where you put your phone down and actually look at someone.

It’s the difference between being included and being cared for. And once you feel that difference, you can’t unfeel it.

What Belonging Actually Looks Like

I’ve lived in several countries, and each one has taught me something different about welcome. In some places, hospitality means showing up with help. In others, it means giving space and not overwhelming someone. I have felt completely embraced and completely invisible sometimes within the same week, in the same city, around different people.

Belonging is not a place. It is not a passport or a language level or how long you’ve lived somewhere. It is a series of small moments where someone chose to make room for you.

Sometimes it’s remembering the snack that reminds someone of home. Sometimes it’s learning to pronounce their name correctly — and actually practicing before you say it out loud. Sometimes it’s just staying quiet long enough to really hear what someone is saying instead of preparing your response while they’re still talking.

Small things. Enormous impact.

What Teranga Looks Like On The Page

As a writer and as a mother raising a child far from where I was born, I think about this constantly.

What does it mean to write with teranga? To hold space for someone else’s story, not just use their experience as texture for mine? To write a character from a culture I didn’t grow up in and treat them like a person rather than a lesson?

When we first move abroad, we believe belonging is something we find — a place that finally fits, a community that finally gets us. But over time, most of us figure out the uncomfortable truth: belonging is something you make. For yourself, yes. But more importantly, for others.

You become the person who holds the door.

So now when I sit down to write, I think of teranga. I think of the strangers who made me feel like family before I gave them any reason to. The dinners where laughter did what language couldn’t. The people who mispronounced my name for months but tried, every single time, which somehow mattered more than getting it right.

I try to do on the page what those people did in real life.

Make space. Offer care. Remind people they are seen.

Because a story can do one of two things. It can close the door. Or it can hold it open, stand there patiently, and make sure everyone gets in.

teranga (teh-RAN-ga) — Senegalese concept of hospitality, generosity, and welcome. The kind that doesn’t wait to be asked.

Write it down. Put it somewhere you’ll see it.