Stories of Belonging in Montpelier

It’s not easy to just fit in and belong. And it's okay. But even if you don't fit in right now, or feel like you don't belong now, high school and school is just a small part of your life.

"One of the things that was really frustrating for me was that I was still not finding my writing community…I wasn’t enjoying being a writer here."

"I love living in such a tiny city–I call it our Capitol Village–where you can walk everywhere and everybody knows everybody…I can’t imagine living in a better place…Right now we’re in trying times, right?"

"People that have money don't look at other people that are poor, you know. Like when my son went to school and a lot of people that had houses looked at me like I was trash sometimes… And I just wanted to fit in like everybody else."

I’ve been here since 2001…There’s some mixed feelings about what stands out during those earlier years, good and bad.

"I struggle with belonging every day. I identify with the mentally ill, also known as psychiatric survivors…I’m finding that me and my peers are consistently invisible, marginalized and even endangered."

Now I definitely feel like I belong here... I’ve seen the community go through a lot. We’ve really pulled together over some pretty significant events.

Somebody got into [my son’s closed social media] group and was saying racial slurs and slurs against the LGBTQ community, and his friends immediately shut it down..no, that is unacceptable… that’s not ok.

I feel like since we moved to Vermont, it's just been more my home than either of my other homes, and I felt like this is where I want to stay forever, it's great.

"I really love a lot of Montpelier and I feel like we have a really strong sense of place here and sense of community, and I also frequently struggle with the way we continue to be divided."

I’m really fed by nature, and as I travel in New England as a African-American descended from enslaved people…and I look at how class has affected white people’s privilege and rank, nature is one of those things that has been taken away from people who look like me that we’re just getting back.

"I just love the scale of this community. To me it’s like the perfect size for a town…The richness that comes in those incidental contacts with other members of your community."

By creating a space and welcoming people, that’s a way to initiate the process, rather than waiting for somebody to welcome me. That’s a big part, I think, of feeling like you belong. Somebody’s got to welcome you, so it might as well be me.

A lot of us in the 65-85 group…[we] have been the mainstay of all of the organizations in town, for decades, and we are aging out, and we are seeing that the next layers…have different demands on their time, they’re not going to be able to do it the way we’ve done it.

I moved to Montpelier in 1999. I thought about moving to a lot of different places, but when I saw Montpelier I thought I could live here. I like Montpelier because it has a nice park, a great bike path, grocery stores and restaurants, and a great book store.

Hubbard Park is my favorite place because we like to go for walks with our dog, and it’s a place that’s so close. It’s nice to have that in the city – to be able to connect with nature, see others, see other dogs and enjoy being outside.

For the last 9 years I lived in the Heartbreak Hotel in Plainfield, which was totally destroyed in this year’s flood…It was a really special place…very homey feeling. I just couldn’t really imagine myself living anywhere else.

How have your friends impacted you positively in your life?
I think I am always sort of adjusting how I feel about the world by having conversations and being with my friends.

I have always felt connected to my family. If I have a problem they’re always there to help me, so I feel like they are some of the people I’m most connected to.

The different relationships in my early time working for the Vermont Historical Society: getting to know some of the volunteers: older women who had spent their whole lives in Montpelier and Barre and who took me under their wing.

I always knew I wanted to move back to Vermont or I thought maybe Maine. I knew I wanted to live in a small town and it was just circumstance that I ended up back in the district I was educated in.

What is one of your favorite holidays and why?
It’s probably Christmas week, not just Christmas day, because work slows down, and it’s winter time which is one of my favorite seasons.

I picked my job because it was a good path to follow and a stable career to support my family. My favorite part is that I get to interact with people all over the state and the country.”

When your talent you have, your skill to share in the community is found valuable and appreciated, [that] makes you feel belonging…I am married here, I have a job…and I have my non-profit project [Shidaa Projects, Inc]…so the belonging has been over time.

The Coop in Montpelier…that always felt like a place where you could just meet people and talk, right? And….it was all around food, handmade foods, eating and sharing food.

I find that as I go around when I’m on crutches or when I’m using the chair, people are very conscious of the limitations and very helpful. The people around here are great. The buildings, on the other hand, aren’t.

I realized that team sports weren't for me. But I did participate in all of the sort of quintessential Vermont sports growing up and continuing into you know the present, like mountain biking, skiing, biking and it influenced me a lot, just with being connected to nature and like community and friends.

In high school I realized I wanted to be a social studies teacher and in college I majored in American studies....I really appreciated learning in college about the world and becoming trained in something.

When I think about my sense of belonging in Montpelier…I think about my neighbors and the space that we had to just relax outside…it was just a place to be.