Can olive trees grow in Reading?

On belonging, community & occupying juncture points

“The work is the whole
body inside the idea of belonging
somewhere, even if not for long.”

- Stacie Cassarino

Olive groves, everywhere

Hi Friend,

A few weeks ago, I noticed my little olive tree had started to grow tiny black fruit.

Heads up - like most Thursdays, I had another post planned.

But today’s felt more urgent. Maybe I’ve been carrying it for a while. Maybe because it’s my birthday week, and I always get a little nostalgic round about this time.

It started when I heard Pulitzer prize-winning novelist, Barabara Kingsolver, on The Shift podcast. Speaking of the Appalachian setting of her magical novel, Demon Copperhead, a modern David Copperfield retelling, she said, “We imprint on the landscapes of our childhood in such a way that nothing else feels right”.

I replayed this line and felt it in my bones.

I’ve always felt viscerally attached to the Cypriot landscape I grew up with. And left at 14. The mountain skylines, turquoise Mediterranean sea, thrum of cicadas, dusty motorways, whitewashed houses, embedded in the core of my nervous system. Olive groves, everywhere.

Nothing else feels right.

At a cellular level.

When I bought that small olive tree, I imagined it flourishing in my garden here in Reading, like the ones outside our old home back in Nicosia. I keep re-potting it to give it more room to take root. I worry about it in winter. Is it homesick?  

---

I don’t talk about being mixed heritage often. But here’s the thing when you: you’re always homesick for the place that you’re not.

While it’s easy to take for granted the richness of holding two – or more– cultures, you forever inhabit a strange place of half-ness.

Of both and neither.

My friend, co-Cypriot halfie, and writer, Tiffany Philippou wrote on being hard to place here. For me, it’s always been about nor being quite Cypriot enough but then not that English either.

Mispronouncing words in both languages.
Missed cultural references.
I’m scrambled whenever anyone mentions Blue frigging Peter.  
I’m polite when people tell me that I can’t be Cypriot because “you’re blonde!”
That I don’t look like who I say I am.  
That I’ve hidden pieces of myself, my story.
Because explaining is exhausting.  

Instead, I joke that my dad’s village was built by Lusignan monks in the 14^th century, before the Venetians invaded, and my Papou (grandfather) had green eyes and was also fair-skinned.

When my brothers recently did those genealogy DNA tests, they found they have a high percentage of Italian. Turns out it’s true.

My test is in the drawer, untouched, two years later. Another story

Three little English-Cypriots imprinting a landscape without knowing it

---

I’ve been thinking about belonging in my work, too. As I’ve grown my writing and poetry practice alongside my PR business, I find myself occupying two worlds again.  

I don’t love the word “intersection”. It reminds me of the one-way IDR traffic-system that circles Reading. But I find myself at another intersection of creativity and business. The juncture point of feeling as at home in a room full of female founders as I do in a poetry workshop.

All the while navigating the tension that comes with the duality of this work. The push and pull of delivering the client consultancy I love, advising multi-million TO businesses on comms strategies while sharing this interior world of writing and poems.

Of showing my full self.

Part of this has been locating a place on Substack. Thinking hard about what I offer here. The community I want to keep building through this newsletter. A place where creativity grows alongside my business. How I invite other people – and their full selves - into this space too.

Is community how you find your own kind of belonging?

---

The Palestinian- American poet, Naomi Shihab Nye, says,“Love means you breathe in two countries.”

This feels true. Being drawn to other people who are also figuring how to belong. To find their place in the world.

Growing up, my best friends were other “half and half-ers” who understood the joy of their Yiyia’s cooking as much as the exotic-ness of imported digestive biscuits. When I moved to the UK, my first close friend was half-Singaporean. We’d laugh about how scared our friends were of our dads with their thick accents. We still do. Hi Bert!

I bonded with my longest-standing client over the hotbed of our childhoods in the troubled Middle East of the 80’s. So many of my friends are second-generation immigrants or spent their own childhoods also feeling like outsiders.

You learn to make the edges the centre.   

Because separateness connects. “You too” can be a superpower. 

---

Checking in on my olive tree, I notice the purply bruise-coloured olives are barely the size of a seed.

But it’s growing.

It’s taking root.  

Thank you for reading this first personal essay, friend. If this resonated in any way I would love it if you could share this piece. And in the comments - or hit reply to - tell me, what’s taking root for you right now? In your work? Your creativity? Where you are in the world?

Back next week with a short and sweet February creative caffeine fix.

With love,  
Antonia xo