Beyond the Binary, Returning to Aliveness: Reflections from Session Two of the “Reimagining Wellbeing in the Refugee and Migration Sector” Series

In our first session, we opened gently with the idea that in the beginning, there is space, a soft, welcoming expanse where we could breathe again, settle, and root. This second gathering invited us deeper.
Into the wild, vibrant terrain of nuance. Into the sacred middle ground where binaries blur, and our full selves are finally allowed to stretch.

This wasn’t your typical wellbeing session.
No PowerPoints. No prescriptions. Instead, we moved. We imagined. We embodied.
We told stories. We danced between laughter and reflection, between stillness and play.
We stepped into the energy of animals, plants, and the natural world, not as an escape, but as a remembering. A return.

Because nature, our oldest teacher, knows no binaries.
The fox is not either stealthy or soft. The tree is not either grounded or growing.
The river is not either still or chaotic. They are both. They are all. So are we.

In Reimagining Wellbeing in the Refugee and Migration Sector, we’re not here to hand out self-care tips.
We’re here to unlearn the systems that fracture our wholeness.
Systems that tell us: you are either resilient or broken, professional or personal, in control or chaotic.
These binaries are tools of reduction. They make us easier to manage, measure, and contain.
But they do not make us well.

Wellbeing, we believe, lives in multiplicity.
It breathes in the space between either/or and stretches out into and… also… neither.
It thrives when we stop performing and start belonging to ourselves, to each other, to a world where fluidity is welcomed, not feared.

So, we asked:

• What binaries have tried to name you? 
• If you’re neither this nor that, who are you outside the binary? 
• If you are the fog at the edge of the day, if you are the comma, not the full stop, what becomes possible in the liminal space?
  
  

Together, we let go of the armour of performance.
We told stories that didn’t tidy themselves into neat conclusions.
We moved like wind, like ivy, like creatures who remember the wisdom of the wild.
We allowed imagination, so often dismissed as a luxury, to become the gateway to healing.
Because what is healing, if not the reclamation of possibility?

And in that space, something softened. Something opened.

We remembered we can be:

Exhausted and Radiant.

Angry and Deeply Loving.

Grieving and Joyful. 

Undefined. Unnamed. Unboxed.

To reimagine wellbeing is to say: we refuse to be reduced.
We are more than our roles, our outputs, and our survival.
We are ecosystems. We are seasons. We are stories still unfolding.

And in the space beyond the binary, we are finally, gloriously alive.

As one of our luminous journey companions, Dadirai, reflected: 

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Beyond Either / Or…

I am childlike, free, spontaneous and lively

The wind which goes everywhere

Emotional, excited at times, tearful at others

Unpredictable, I do not confirm

I am the stillness of the night

The earthy smell of the forest floor

The unforgettable breeze and smell of the sea

I am kind, sensible, irrational at times

Logical sometimes

I am never one or the other

I am always many things, all at once

I forgive myself and others too

I'm neither wild nor tame

how can I be one and not the other?

and that's all right

I am a square peg in a round hole

and what's wrong with that?

The liminal space may be scary

but oftentimes it offers comfort

a different kind of comfort

to decompress, to reboot, to think

to let go, to understand

to reconcile, to empty

to float above and beyond

to fly…  

It is here you will find

the real person that is me

not fitting into a box

no box can contain me!!

but rather

I am found in many boxes

and outside of them too!

I am a generous African song

16 minutes long

I'm not just free

I am freedom itself

I am the verdant lush green view

of some beautiful rolling hills

I am the sound of trickling water

the brooks of life

feeding the earth

and quenching thirst

I am the view from my window

of snowcapped mountains

and mighty forests

covered in carpets of

blue bells and snowdrops

I am also the view of

the sun-drenched Savanah grasslands

where lions, elephants, rhinos and giraffes and more

roam wild and free

where fertile soils allow

mango and baobab trees to grow

and mighty rivers flow

majestically

in a land afar

I am the fresh and crisp smell

The dew laden grass

of an early spring morning

the break of dawn

the golden streaks

of the sun as it rises

the sounds of birds

the promise of a new day

I am also the sound

of the hustle and bustle

of a busy cityscape

or a quiet village

that is me

in the liminal space

I am alone

but sometimes in a crowd

I live in this space

this wonderful space

in my own way

without conforming

unforgettable

just being me!!

© Dadirai Tsopo 2025

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Photo by Sagar Kulkarni on unsplash.com