EP85 No One Gives You Permission to Belong

In this episode, I reflect on the meaning of belonging in a world that can often feel divided, uncertain and increasingly hostile.

As an immigrant, I've been thinking a lot about what it means to feel at home and how fragile that sense of belonging can sometimes be. I explore how our earliest experiences of belonging, or not belonging, shape the way we move through the world and influence what we seek from our homes as adults.

When we move countries, cities or go through major life changes, home often becomes something we are trying to recreate rather than simply a place we live. I talk about our deep human need for connection, safety and acceptance, and why creating a home that reflects who we truly are matters more than ever.

This is a conversation about identity, home, community and finding your place in the world. Because belonging isn't something someone else gives you. It's something we can create for ourselves through the spaces we live in, the people we welcome in and the life we choose to build.

It's not about having the biggest home or the most beautiful one. It's about having a place where you can be fully yourself.

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This podcast has been shortlisted for a UFurnish Home Award in the Best Interior Content Creator Category.
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Hi, I’m Tash South — interior designer, renovation consultant, and founder of South Place Studio.

In this podcast, I share practical renovation advice, along with deeper insights into home and belonging.

If you’d like more resources and support, head to:
https://www.southplacestudio.com/freebies

If you’re navigating your own renovation, my RenoVersity programme offers a structured, guided and thoughtful approach to renovating with clarity, confidence and intention https://www.southplacestudio.com/renoversity

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Transcript

Belonging In A Loud World

0:00

Hey everyone, so I've been thinking a lot about the idea of belonging lately, and just how complicated that word can be. Because on the surface it sounds so simple, doesn't it? To belong, to feel at home, to feel like we fit in. But I just don't think it's ever really that straightforward, and especially not at the moment. I don't know about you, but recently it feels like the world has become just so much harder. There's so much tension that is sitting right under the surface of everything. Everything seems loud, opinions are loud, the politics are loud, the division is loud, and you just see it everywhere. You see it in the news, you feel it in conversations, or sometimes even just walking through the city. So at the time of recording this, it is May 2026, and just a couple weekends ago in London, there were these far-right marches. And I mean, alongside that, we're also just hearing more and more about hate crimes against certain communities, against people who are simply just trying to live their lives. And especially for an immigrant like me, for someone who has chosen to live so far away from the place they were born. I think that when you see these things and when you feel what they mean, even from a distance, it really does something to you. It just makes you more aware of how fragile that sense of belonging can be. It also just makes me realize how some people can simply just look at a face or look at a person and decide that you don't belong there. They have not experienced for themselves how difficult it may have been to make a completely new life and a new home somewhere else and try and find that belonging somewhere else. How it can simply just be made on looking at someone and making a decision in their minds that you don't belong. And it's strange because it brings me back to my own experience of belonging. Now, if you've been listening to the podcast for a while, you'll know I've spoken about this before, so I won't go into too much detail again. But I grew up in South Africa during apartheid, so under a racially segregated regime. In a place where belonging was quite literally structured, uncontrolled, and unequal. You experienced every day as a person of colour that you were not as good as others. It was everywhere in your education, in your housing, in the places you could visit, like the beaches and the malls and everything. Everywhere told you that you didn't belong in certain places, and that really shapes you. Even if as a child I didn't realize it fully at the time. So it's you know, it's not just a feeling for some people, it's something really, really deep. And something that sits in the back of their minds. If you're an immigrant, if you are part of a certain community at the moment that is being attacked, there's something that always sits in the background at the back of your mind that influences how you wake up in the morning, how you move through the world, how you address your everyday. Those things have an impact on people. And others assume that it's so easy to just go and be in another country. And it isn't. It's really, really difficult sometimes. I remember when I first moved to

Apartheid And Early Messages

3:46

London, I remember that feeling so clearly of being here physically but not feeling quite rooted because that takes time. It takes time to feel like you belong. You have to learn a new rhythm, a new culture, a new way of living. And there are all these small subtle things that come up, whether it's a culture or language or how you say things or tone that can make you feel slightly out of place. And so it takes a long time to find that rhythm and feel like you belong in a different place, and you carry your old home with you and your memories with you, and your habits and your way of seeing things, but at the same time, you're trying to build something brand new in a foreign country, and for a while you kind of exist somewhere in between the two until you can build up how you want to feel in that new place. And I think that when you've experienced that, whether it's moving countries or moving to a new city within your country, or changing your life in some other kind of big way, it really does change your relationship with home. And because suddenly home isn't just your house, it isn't just where you live, it becomes something you're trying to recreate

Moving To London And In Between

5:05

and something you're trying to feel again. You're trying to feel at home again, like you belong. And I do actually think that's why I feel so at home in a big city like London. So many of our friends with families are now considering moving out of London. They want some more space, they want to perhaps get away from the city life a bit more. But to be completely honest, as an immigrant, London is a place where we all seem to come together, we seem to connect, we seem to have similar views if you find your people. And I I think that that's why London is such a great place. It's because there are so many people here from all different parts of the world, and we are all trying to find this place where we feel comfortable, where we feel like we belong. And I think London gives us that in a way because it's so diverse, it obviously has its issues, um, lots of bad things out there in the world at the moment about London. But for some of us, it is a place where we haven't found anywhere like it where we feel comfortable and where we feel like we can make a home when we're from somewhere else. And so I thought I'd come and do this episode today because I've realized that over time this is what I've been doing in a this quiet way over time through my work, through renovating, through designing, through creating spaces. You know, I'm not just designing homes, whether it be for myself or for clients. I've always been trying to create that feeling of home, whether it be for my own family, for me, or a place where clients can feel that. It's to create that feeling for people, that sense of having a place where they feel grounded, where they feel safe, where it's that place they can walk in and just be themselves. And I think that really is what belonging truly is. It's not just about having the most beautiful home or the biggest, most impressive home, or the most put-together life. It's that feeling that you can be fully yourself in a space and not only in your home but in your wider environment. And I think the thing is that so many of us are still waiting for permission to feel that way. Permission to take up space, permission to express who we are, and permission to belong. But I think what I've come to realize is that slowly over the years

Home As A Soft Landing

7:27

is that no one will give you that permission. You have to take it and you have to make your home a place that you want to be, and you have to make it a place, if you want to, where you want to invite others into who share your beliefs and people you want to connect with, who make you feel like yourself as well. And so I think that's what home is so precious and important to me. It's that place where you can not only create it for yourself, but you can make it that kind of soft landing place for others as well, for your family, for those friends who perhaps don't have that feeling, or perhaps they're having a difficult time at the moment. You can invite them in even just for a moment. You can create a sense of comfort and belonging and calm and welcoming for others within your home as well. So, in this episode, I wanted to quickly go over a few things. So, number one, I wanted to talk about your story and how what happens to us shapes our sense of belonging quite early in our lives. And then number two, I wanted to talk about that kind of human need for belonging. And then lastly, I wanted to talk about how we can start to rebuild belonging through our own homes and what we can do with our own homes to start to reflect who we are and our personality and what we want from our homes to create that sense of being comfortable and belonging. Okay, so let's go back to that first point: our stories. So I've covered a little bit about my story then about growing up in apartheid South Africa and how even if I didn't realize it at the time, it really did affect how I felt about myself, um, you know, your self-worth, your sense of belonging. I think when a child is exposed to those sorts of ideas and beliefs, it really does affect them deeply. And I I think as we grow, we don't really realize sometimes just how deeply that has affected us. And I think that is why I also decided to come and do this episode today, is because I can see in the world what is happening is affecting children, it's affecting their beliefs. As adults, we are behaving in a way and showing children through our actions how to behave, and a huge worry of mine having children of my own is that children learn through seeing and they copy that behaviour. And so when we are exposing them to everything that is happening in the world today that is seems

Your Story Shapes Your Home

10:12

to be mostly full of hate right now, our kids are being exposed to that, and that is really, really concerning to me. Um, firstly, because it happened to me, and I know how it can affect you badly, and then of course, secondly, because how are we ever going to get to a place that is better when our children are learning what they are currently seeing at the moment? So, you know, that is a big concern to me as well. And to link this back to home, I think we have to do some self-exploration when we are creating our home. So I just wanted to encourage you to look at your story, you know, look perhaps into the things that may have happened or affected you during your childhood, if you had quite an unusual childhood like myself, or even if you had the best, most happy childhood. I think our past can always give us some clues as to what we need to include in our homes that we are making for ourselves, what we need to include in our surroundings to help us heal from that, or to help us recreate that if we had happy times. So I always think it's really nice to look back sometimes when you're starting to make your home or you're starting to renovate in those very early stages and think about it beyond it just being a physical structure. Think about what you need psychologically, what you need physically, and try and incorporate some of those things that come up for you. Try and incorporate elements to help that along into your new home. And that is exactly where we'll have that opportunity to rebuild that sense of belonging for ourselves, to make our own homes like we want to have it, to perhaps make our own homes to have things that we really, really wanted to have as a child that we we couldn't have, and now we we can because for adults and we have a choice and we have perhaps the resources to be able to make that for ourselves, which I think in itself is such an amazing thing. Which brings me nicely on to the second thing I want to talk about, which was that human need to belong. So humans are wired for connection, not independence. Um, and you know, I'm quite an independent person, I think so many people are, but really our deepest human need is to belong, and that is shown every day in our need, in our wants to gather, to share stories, to feel seen, to feel safe. And so I just think that's such a beautiful idea to bring into our homes as well. Some people love to entertain and some people don't, but it doesn't have to be a huge group getting together in your home to make you feel these things. You can get back to that human need by doing this in a small way, whether you're inviting just one or two friends over, whether you are gathering just with your own family unit every evening. And we all want to feel seen and we all want to feel safe. And that is yet another reason why the state of the world is so upsetting at the moment, because I feel and we should feel those of us who do have homes so fortunate

The Human Need For Connection

13:34

to have those because so many are not feeling safe at the moment, so many people have been displaced, so many wars, so much aggression, so much hate. And so I think the more that we can make these places where we can do these things that we need as humans, like gathering and sharing our stories and feeling seen and feeling safe, it's all part of it. It's all having that feeling that we want to belong. And I think it's just really a perfect opportunity when things are feeling this bad to try and create more moments like this, whether it's in our homes, whether we go to other people's homes, or connect even in other spaces that we we feel comfortable or at home in. It's just to keep thinking about our human needs, you know, that feeling that goes way back, that primal feeling of wanting to belong, wanting to be part of a tribe, and that desire for connection. So, next I wanted to talk about rebuilding and belonging through our homes and just how we can show up in our homes. So I feel how sometimes the sense of not belonging and not feeling that sense of comfort and feeling like we can be ourselves in our own home, of not feeling rooted, can sometimes come from when our homes feel maybe temporary and we'll feel a little bit cautious or not fully, it's not fully us. And I find that sometimes this does come with a lot of people who rent, and I've rented homes as well throughout my many years of of having to before I bought a home or in between renovations or whatever. Um, I've rented as well. So I really do connect with that, and I wasn't in a place where I could have enough time to make the rental feel like home, but for people who do rent long term, there are definitely things you can do to make it feel more like yours. Even if you're not allowed to decorate or add colour, there are things you can do to your rental home that can make it feel

Rebuilding Belonging Through Design

15:50

like yours. You can add the furniture and the artwork and the rugs and the accessories and everything that you love to make it feel like yours, to make it feel cozy, to make it feel welcoming. And so I would just say, you know, don't play it safe, whether you're renting or you own your own home. Express your identity fully and don't design for fitting in. Design for yourself, design for how you want to feel and what is going to add to that sense of belonging for you and your family. I think we can all get caught up in various things like resale value and not going too crazy on colour. But I always say, as long as your base is right, if you are renovating and you get your base right, your layout, light, flow, all of those things, concentrate on those, get those right, and then it's there and it's great. And if you think ahead, you can make it flexible for the future, and then you can just have fun with it. You can go over the years, over the months, layering in everything that you love to make your home feel like yours. And something that I love to talk about as well is bringing in those elements from your history, from your culture, from your past, from your heritage. If those things are important to you, then include them in your home. And I do think that having them around us plays such a big part in reminding us about that sense of belonging, reminding us where we come from. And it can be small things, it can be one piece of art that is from your heritage, or that is a hand-me-down from an older relative, or whatever it might be, having those elements in our home that remind us as we move through our homes of people or places or memories, those are the things that make a huge difference to making us feel like our homes are ours, and that that they do have the sense of belonging for us. And again, we're rebuilding, we're slowly creating that sense of grounding. We are rebuilding for ourselves a place where we feel at home and where we feel like we belong, and whoever else comes in as well. You want to perhaps make them feel the same way. And your home can hold multiple identities. You can include items from your past and your present, you can include items from your heritage and your current life where you've decided to make your new life. So I think it's a really exciting opportunity to mix these things up and make something really unique. So, yes, ask yourself which parts of your story exist in your home? And if there's nothing there yet, I really, really encourage you to start exploring that because it can be a really, really fun thing to do in your home. And so I just wanted to end off today by saying thank you for spending your time with me today. Bit of an unusual episode this week, but I just wanted to remind you that you don't need to ask permission to belong. Some of us have learned that the hard way. Many of us are waiting to feel settled enough, successful enough, sure enough, but belonging doesn't just arrive one day. I really do think it is something that you create and you build over time. And I think for a long time I was waiting to feel like I fully belonged in this country for starters, in my work, even in my own home. You know, it took a bit of time to get that feeling to build it up. But what I have realized is that no one gives you that permission. So I just wanted to end off the episode by saying, take it, take that permission, and let's just be kinder to each other, I think, is how I would like to end off the episode. But until I see you next time, everybody, I hope you have a wonderful couple of weeks, and I shall see you in the next episode. Bye for now.