21/12/2025
Hockey Players, Vampire Slayers, and Belonging š«
My mum and dad loved me very, very much.
I want to start there.
I was loved. I was protected. I was fed, clothed, kept safe. I had a big family too. Lots of cousins, gatherings, noise, people. But almost all of them had brothers and sisters, and most of them were older than me. Even surrounded by people, I often felt like I didnāt quite fit. Close, but not quite inside.
My parents were heroes in their own right. My dad was once a paratrooper. Strong, disciplined, dependable. My mum was strong too, fierce in her own way, someone who stood up for herself when it mattered. I grew up with safety. With loyalty. With strength.
But like many parents of the 80s and 90s, they struggled with showing affection. It wasnāt how they were raised. Love was there, absolutely, but it wasnāt always expressed in ways my nervous system could feel.
And when I was young, I remember feeling a yearning.
A deep one.
I was an only child, and even within a big family I felt slightly out of step. So I disappeared into fantasy. Books. TV. Films. Narnia. Quantum Leap. The Lost Boys, Star Trek. The Mighty Ducks. The Three Musketeers. Batman Forever.
Stories were where I felt something bigger.
I remember watching The Mighty Ducks when I was little and feeling so sad at the end. Not because it was a sad film, but because I wasnāt part of something like that. A team. A community. A place where you belonged.
Then The Three Musketeers came along. Chris OāDonnell as DāArtagnan. Angry. Cocky. Orphaned. Full of angst. He didnāt belong anywhereā¦ until he did. And suddenly he had brothers. A cause. A home.
I listened to All for One and All for Love on cassette over and over, flipping the tape, starting again, yearning for that kind of love. All for one. All for love. I didnāt have the words then, but I know now what I was longing for was that sense of belonging.
Quantum Leap broke my heart in a different way.
Every Tuesday night at 9pm, Sam Beckett was lost in time, saving people, never able to go home. And the only constant was Al, his best friend, a hologram, always there but never fully there. And that ending š after watching for years, the ending ripped my wee heart apart.
Then I turned 16.
And I started drinking.
And for a long time after that, I donāt remember feeling like that again.
Drinking numbed it. A bad relationship followed. Drugs followed the drinking. Life kept happening. Big things. Hard things. Losing both my parents. Nearly losing David. I stayed upright. I functioned. Everything lived at the surface.
Then Lena came.
My dog. My heart-opener. Something outside myself to love and care for. And because of her, I finally stopped drinking. Five and a half years later, Iām still doing the work. Still healing.
Everest Base Camp was never just a physical challenge for me. I knew that. I was fit enough. What I didnāt fully realise was that it would be the first time in my adult life that my days werenāt filled with constant noise. No work. No TV. No music in my ears. Just walking. Breath in cold air. Feet moving. Long stretches of quiet.
I talked with friends. I watched people. Animals. Life. And for hours each day, I thought.
When I reached base camp, my heart cracked open. Standing there, breathless and small, I felt part of the world again.
When I came home, something else opened too. A romance story I enjoyed became a TV show. I can't stop watching it. I watch episodes back to back. Then again. I reread the books. I listen to the music. And for the first time in years, I feel that teenage excitement return. Counting down days till the next episode. Waiting. Buzzing. Crying along.
And then it hit me.
This is little Lyndsay again.
Watching The Mighty Ducks.
Watching The Three Musketeers.
Deeply feeling for the angry boy who doesnāt belong until he does.
Thereās a trope in romance books called found family. Itās not really about romance at all. Itās about belonging. About people who donāt quite fit anywhere, finding their people. Being chosen. Being allowed to stay.
And yes, even in the dark romance I read, itās still the belonging that gets me most. Sometimes they justā¦ find their family a little too well. If you know, you know š š
Thatās why teams and fellowships always pulled me in. Thatās why these stories still undo me. But this time, itās different.
This time, Iām safe.
This time, I know Iām loved.
This time, I can feel without drowning.
I can sit with little Lyndsay and say, itās okay. Youāre okay. You donāt need to numb this anymore. You can cry. You can hope. You can be carried by a beautiful story.
And the funny thing isā¦ the yearning didnāt disappear. It just found somewhere real to land.
I found it in Lena.
I found it in David.
I found it in friends whoāve known me since primary school, and friends Iāve met through work, and people whoāve become family because we chose each other.
I found it in me.
And David, who never liked All for One and All for Love, sings The Power of Love to me.
āIāll protect you from the hooded claw
Keep the vampires from your door
When the chips are down
Iāll be around
With my undying death defying love for you...."
If thatās not a warrior, a musketeer, a vampire slayer, and found family all rolled into one perfectly unperfect human, I donāt know what is.
So Iām letting myself cry.
Iām letting myself heal.
Iām letting myself feel the magic again.
Not because Iām missing something.
But because Iām finally safe enough to feel it.
We rise soul stars, even when we're greetin at stories š«
