we've been living like gypsies for five years, and as my daughter has been enthusiastically declaring to everyone she knows that in a few short months she'll have lived in 10 houses in her 9 years, i'm feeling the "are you people crazy?!" vibes starting to surround us.
this journey has been so erratic in part because of it's intangible destination. we've been searching for home, but for us, home is so much bigger. home is a way of life that we seek from the deepest parts of ourselves.
from the time i was a little girl, i've craved a tribe. when i first heard stories of native americans, a place deep inside me opened: a knowing of a different way that life could be; a knowing of a different definition of family, community and work; and a knowing of what home means to me. part of what brought my husband and i together was that we shared this sense of home.
our odyssey has gotten so confused as we swing back and forth between the practical considerations of a place and what it offers to the less concrete sense of home as a feeling. these steps on the journey have been a surrender to the fact that the home we seek does not exist now, precisely because we haven't created it yet.
the seeking is not so much about here or there, this job or that one - it's something so much bigger. it's a path, a journey, a portal that we hope to pass through in order to live in a way that resonates with the core of who we really are. it's a reinvention of that sense of home within us, here and now. even though at times our lives feel so mundane and far from the dream, we are, however slowly, moving towards it.
we aren't looking for a place that's perfect, although we've gotten side-tracked into that vision at times. and although the passage through so many different homes and work situations has been an incredible source of experiences, we're nearing the moment when what we really need is to slow down. i'm reminded of that feeling right before the birth of my daughter, when the labor progressed to the point when i knew it was almost time, when i knew it was time to get to the place to give birth.
i'm finding myself less and less concerned with the means to get there. things will come and go at the speed that they do, but the calling i really feel right now is one to something inside, ready for expression in the world.
i feel reminded of the quote, "if you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change" by wayne dyer. as my perspective shifts, i realize that we are finding our way back home, but home was so much closer than we thought.
I think we lost the sense of home when families starting living so far apart. I know especially women are missing the old kind of support from other women as they raise their children and deal with the contingencies of life. But you are also taking about another sense of home, a place where you cn "live in a way that resonates with the core of who you really are." I can certainly empathize with that. I often feel the same way. Sometimes I feel that sense of home in a group I join, but it's frustrating that it isn't an all encompassing feeling of home. Good luck on the journey.
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