They’re hanging garland up against old brick buildings. Stores, wallets, and hearts are opening. Trees are being chopped down – lights are going up.
It seems like as soon as the decorations come out, everyone starts talking about home. Home for the holidays is supposed to elicit warm colors, warm indoor temperatures, warm feelings and a happy, joy filled heart. I think though, for some of us, at least, home for the holidays, this year, feels weird, and not quite like home at all.
This year, I’ve been wondering what it means exactly to be “home for the holidays”. In fact, I have been lost on a journey to try to uncover what “home” actually is for the past few years of my life.
I’ve debated – about when and how and whether it’s a terrible idea to let you in on all of this, but I think it’s time. I want to share and I hope it will, in turn, help some of you not feel so alone in whatever confusion you’re experiencing as you try to wade your way through this holiday season.
I consider myself a flawed helper. I’m here to hear you – to guide you – but mostly – I’m just here to hold your hand as we walk through the craziness together. I see too many bloggers and “coaches” acting like their life is all wrapped up with ribbons and bows (holiday reference intentional) and the truth is: they’re still mucking through the mess like the rest of us, at least part of the time.
Home broke for me this past year. If I’m real honest – it broke years before, but I finally worked up the strength to ask my husband to leave in March. I won’t be sharing any details. I hope that’s OK. I hope you can understand. I have the privacy of my ex and my children to respect. This is my story and I will only share what is mine to share.
What I can say, is, home became a place I struggled to find comfort. I’m not even sure I had a home except for the very small bit I held inside of myself, and so I knew I needed to do something about it, and I did, and then what already felt broken, shattered and I have been doing my best to create that place of safety and comfort and love for my kids, but I’ve felt panic rising in my throat and found myself crying on multiple occasions throughout the past month as I repeat this simple word to myself: “home”.
Home.
Home.
What is it? Where did it go? Had I ever truly known it? Considering it had never actually been mine, brought me to a brand new place of grieving.
What I’ve realized, in the past couple weeks of brooding and crying and digging into recesses of past hurts, is that the cliche of home not being a place, but a person, isn’t even true. Home is not a person. It can be how they feel – what they say – and how they love, but our entire home is not within another person.
So, home is not a place, and it’s not a person. At least not for me. So, what is home? What is this place everyone wants to go and be where the love light gleams?
I’ve found home is not actually something you find. It’s something you are and something you feel and something that cannot be taken or given. It’s small moments of good. It’s knowing love and being it.
Home is the blanket you fall into. It’s the embrace that accepts every fault.
It’s the hand on the small of your back as you walk into a new room. It’s the quiet voice that tells you everything will be OK even when you quickly respond with all the doubts your damaged heart has taught you to say and believe.
Home is the warm spot in bed and the thumb that brushes the tears away.
Home is a text from a friend telling you to finish your book because your story needs to be heard.
Home is a hand in yours as you walk through the woods.
Home is your son on your left, your daughter on your right, and your other daughter suffocating you with her weight on your chest and her chubby hands on your throat.
Home is the purr of your cat, warming your lap while you eat ice-cream and watch movies that make you cry.
Home is the feeling you get when the right words spill out.
Home is that place by the fire in the house you grew up in. It’s the sip of the hot drink as you drift into the laughter you’ve heard since you were a child.
Home is spaghetti and meatballs.
Home is the breeze against your cheeks. It’s the pink sunset and the sand between your toes after a long cold winter.
My divorce, and all the pain that comes with a relationship ending and all the relationships that end with it and all the changes that come with separating households and finances and every detail of my life, threatened to make me believe I was no longer capable of having a home.
That it was something I didn’t deserve and couldn’t trust. But home is not something that can be left or lost.
We can never come home.
We can never leave it.
Because it’s always there, in us, and in the eyes of those who love us.
It’s going to take me some time. I’m going to extend grace to myself that even as I feel home, I will have moments I distrust it. There will be times, when putting ornaments up, and tucking some away, that I grieve. I will have to rebuild the traditions and I will have to change in ways I wasn’t sure – and am still not sure – I could.
But, if I’ve learned anything this past year, it’s that things can break, but home remains in ways we had not suspected. In cuddled conversations by the fire. In giggles under covers. In the familiar silence of a snow fall. In the song of a bird we’ve known all our lives.
Home is there, friend.
If you can’t find it anywhere else, I hope you know you can find it here. Message me. Reach out. Because, remember, you aren’t alone on this crazy journey. I started this blog and podcast to make strangers into friends – to make a home for anyone who felt isolated by illness. I hope that you find it here, and more than that, I hope you can find it in yourself.