Coming Home

Janice Kyd's photo of a Rhododendron flower

Your body is your clay home; your body is the only home that you have in this universe.

It is in and through your body that your soul becomes visible and real for you.

Your body is the home of your soul on earth.

                                                                                    —John O’Donohue

 

I’ve spent most of my life searching for a place where I feel at home.

To me, the word “home” evokes feelings of warmth and peace. It is a place of beauty and creativity where I feel safe and supported, where my needs are met, and where I can rest and relax. From this home base I can go out into the world and joyfully interact with others, knowing that there is always a nurturing, peaceful, light-filled sanctuary to return to.

This need for home led me to journey from Montana, where I grew up, to Seattle, and then to Rome, Italy. I came the closest to feeling at home in Rome—almost, but not quite. This is why I stayed there for 26 years and why it was so difficult to leave.

But my deep longing for home continued calling to me.

I think that this is true for many of us. We spend much of our lives searching for “home,” for a place where we feel happy, appreciated, safe and loved. We constantly seek outside of ourselves trying to fulfill these needs, thinking that if only we can find our soul mates, get the perfect job, make enough money, or buy our dream house we will finally be content. But when our lovers, careers and lives don’t measure up to the expectations and demands we place upon them, we are plunged into frustration and despair.

This was certainly true for me. My need to feel at home led me to search continuously OUTSIDE of myself. I always thought that I would find my home in a physical location somewhere in the world, and that this would lead me to the perfect relationship and I would finally be happy.

Home is where the heart is

Now that I’ve returned to the US, to Portland, Oregon, do I feel at home? No, not really.

But I’ve begun to realize it doesn’t matter.

I am learning to feel at home wherever I go because I now understand I have a portable home that travels lightly with me: my body. Delicate yet infinitely strong, it contains all of the essentials I need to survive and thrive.

I have learned that the exquisite, subtle energies that course through my body are in essence pure spirit, which is constructed of light, love, joy and happiness. I have also learned that I can connect with the Divine in the innermost sanctuary of my home: my heart.

Like Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz, I always had the power to go home, I just didn’t know it.

I’ve discovered that when I turn within and breathe deeply into my heart, my energies begin to open, soften and expand. I don’t always manage to find this sanctuary: in fact I often forget and lose my way. When I do, I feel unhappy and discontented. But now at least I know this place exists. To find it again, I simply have to come home.

 

 

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