Building Home(s)

If the life you are building looked like a house, what would it look like? What would it feel like?

How did you build it? From love? Necessity? Both? Neither?

Did you make it a home? Does it feel like it is your own? Does it feel strong and vibrant and changing and fulfilling? Does it feel suffocating? Airy? Expansive? Exposed shiplap? Does it feel like a place we can welcome others in? Does it feel safe? Do you?

I want to build a home out of my life that is beautiful at its core. It is warm. It is inviting. Solace and peace whisper in the paint color. It is vibrant and steady. The beams are strong and radiant. The ocean is nearby. Salt speaks to the foundation, teaches it how to cleanse; how to endure. The patio has fireflies and crystal lights. Everything, illuminated. It is my own. It is awe-inspiring.

We can’t build homes out of human beings.

Maybe we can build them out of our souls.

 

“I long, as does every human being, to be at home wherever I find myself.” – Dr. Maya Angelou

Taking Stock

I had a great conversation with Marie-Eve a few weeks back. I am so grateful for the friendship we have cultivated. She is a best friend and family in so many ways. As we were talking she offhandedly praised me for really making the best of my time at home. For doing all the things I said I wanted to do: eating better, yoga, making a blog, my video journal, and going natural. It made my heart smile with gratitude. She said I was doing so much better and I looked happy.

That moment was unexpected but so deeply needed.

Truthfully, I’m working my way to happy, but I’m not there yet. I want to be joyful not in spite of anyone or anything, but simply because I am.

I cut my hair off because I needed to feel like I was walking towards change instead of being dragged, for once.

I started yoga because it touches a part of me that needs healing and strength.

I started a video journal because my spirit needs to remember the sweet moments and days as much as my tear ducts remember the hard ones.

I write because the writings of others have literally carried me to salvation.

I want to be a fuller version of myself. For too long I lay broken and shattered across the eastern seaboard, and from the Atlantic to the Pacific, and from monuments to sand dollars. I left shards everywhere I went and I picked up new splinters along the way. Now I’m back in harbour, picking up the pieces, molding a new figure, and breathing life and light to that being. I want to love the person I will become. I want to love her fiercely. I want her to forgive me. And I want to forgive. I want her to set boundaries, healthy ones, and live true. I want her to feel powerful and worthy of all the sweetness this world has to offer. I want her to be imbued with strength, vulnerability, and most importantly, wholeness.

And I want the same for you, whoever you are reading this.

“Don’t let anyone take your magic away. Not even you.” – M