Welcome Home: To Yourself

"Don't question it..." he said as I lay next to him my eyes scanning his entire being for some type of certainty, guarantee, or confirmation of belonging.

I have done that a lot - looked for belonging in my external world.  Growing up with no cousins, grandparents, aunts or uncles closer than a 12-hour road trip, my home roots always felt like they ran shallow.

I thought that home was something external.  Yet, I never quite found that "place" that I could go to where the weight of the world seemed to melt away because I was "home".   No nest to return to. Believe me I have searched.  I searched, I tried to create, I built falsehoods around me, I filled those voids with everything material or relationships that required a lot of effort to make them fit the mold I was searching for.

Holidays have always felt a little bittersweet without the dozens of houses to run around too, or the large parties where everyone gathered.  The family vacations and parties, the noise, the chaos, the drama - I missed all of that.

It made me feel lost. It made me feel lonely.

On a trip in the budding of a new, divine connection, I went out onto the balcony wrapped in my towel, hair still dripping wet from the shower, cheeks streaked with tears.  I stood in front of him telling him I had nothing to offer.  I had no roots.  There wouldn't be any big holidays or dozens of family parties.  No gatherings or get togethers. None of that. It was just me.  Just me and my children. I didn't have it. It wasn't my life.  Slowly I began pushing him away in that very instance because I felt inferior to what I thought he wanted.

In that moment it wasn't about him, it was about me.  He never asked me for a thing - I was staring in the mirror of my own reflection of perceived lack.

The truth is, I have had moments where I tasted "home."  Often like a flash, so fast like the feeling of pop rocks on your tongue that fizzle for a moment and then disappear.  Leaving you clinging to that sensation, searching for it once again even though it has passed. 

It was a sense of home though, just not external. I have felt home in the core of my heart.

I have felt home in different states,  in different countries, embraced by loved ones, and with the sensation of my babies snuggled in my arms.  I have felt belonging on the edge of the ocean in silence as the sun lights up the night sky, and in a crowded concert venue with my favorite girls.

For a long time I underestimated that feeling.  I made the sense of belonging in myself less important than the sense of belonging in a physical structure or crowd of people - blood or not.

It has taken life shattering over and over again.  It has taken my heart breaking over and over again.  It has taken standing up, slowly, over and over again to make me realize that I was never meant for the "home" and "family" I thought I needed.

The definition of home by the Oxford Dictionary begins with "the place one lives permanently...." the flaw in that definition is that nothing external is ever permanent.   

So maybe I wasn't lost, maybe I was "ahead of the curve."  

My home has become my inner being.  My soul's sense of belonging.  That is not defined by a structure, a tribe, or even a zip code.  It exists solely, squarely, in my own internal ability to find belonging wherever I go, with whomever I go with, and whatever I bring (or don't bring) along my journey.

I have become my own soft space to land - and now, I no longer question it.

My goal is no longer to reconstruct a Norman Rockwell painting of home, family, traditions and love. It is to create an internal essence that makes everyone around me feel at home when I am in their presence.

Maybe someday that will include a large blended family of chaos.  Or maybe it will include the arms of a singular love on a remote island in the tropics.  Or maybe it will include solo-adventures around this big, beautiful world.

Regardless, I have come to realize it doesn't much matter where I find myself planted or floating around in 1 year from now, or 10. 

​I have found my home in me.

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