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Photo of the Week: Feb 5

February 5, 2022Posted in Photo of the weekTagged home, life, photograph, play11 Comments

Sometimes it’s hard to find a matching pair of shoes in this house. When diving deep into the shoe basket, it’s best to use the buddy system. 🙂

February 4, 2022Posted in meditationTagged comfort, family, home, inspiration, joy, relationships25 Comments

“Stay close to those who make you feel alive.” – unknown

In the recent parent-teacher conferences I’ve had for each of my kids, I’ve gotten a feel for how my kids behave when they aren’t with me. It seems they are “go along to get along” people. Generally speaking, they follow the rules, don’t make a fuss, they don’t cry and they don’t get in trouble. My 6-year-old might talk a little too much sometimes but she gets her work done.

That’s not a big revelation since that matches my general approach to life. Although I am surprised that my two-year-old can do it at such a young age, especially because he’s never been told to. But hearing this is reshaping how I think of what my home is.

I used to think home was where our best-selves would shine through because of the love and nurturing there. I still think that – except that I’m realizing our best-selves are NOT our best-behaved selves, they are our most authentic, intimate selves.

Home is where we can take off our armor and practice speaking our truth. It is a place where it’s okay to have a soft underbelly and to let it all hang out. It’s where we can cry, have fits and let it fly (respectfully) when at home. Because, I figure, it’s the only way to get salve onto the sore spots and to receive sympathy for all the growing pains. It’s our place for practicing being leaders and followers and doing neither very well and learning.

Home is where we learn grace. We can cry when it hurts, express disappointment, find out what truly refreshes us, practice imaginative play, be bored and unscripted. Home is where we light our candles, pray for peace and then figure out how to find that in ourselves. It is where we can be held through it all.

While it seems that I’m writing this for my kids, the truth is, I’m finding great comfort in defining this for myself. Somehow typing out a list of place of where and how we will be received and held is making my slippers feel a little more comfortable. In the years of the pandemic where home became where we do everything, it seems I got a little disoriented about my purpose in this structure.

So, I’m setting this down for all of us. Home is not just where the heart is – it is where the heart feels safest to be open, glow and grow in all directions.

Going Home

November 16, 2021Posted in meditationTagged faith, home, love, meditation, nostalgia13 Comments

“Just trust yourself, and then you will know how to live.” – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

My mom’s 97-year-old friend is moving back to Utah. She’s lived in Seattle for more than15 years, has a daughter, granddaughter and great-grandson here as well as many friends and admirers. But she told my mom that she’s moving back because she looked up how expensive it was to transport a body after death. Apparently it’s costly so she decided to move now so she’s near the cemetery where her husband is buried when she passes.

Let me just admit that I don’t know how much it costs to transport a body 1,000 miles. But I can’t imagine it is more costly than packing all your stuff up and transporting it ALL 1,000 miles. While this invokes silly images from the 1983 movie, Vacation with Chevy Chase and Beverly D’Angelo, it also makes me think of a word that I saw on social media last week:

Hiraeth (n.) a homesickness for a home to which you cannot return, a home which maybe never was; the nostalgia, the yearning, the grief for lost places of your past

For me this Welsh word brings up a sense of the home I’m creating with my two kids as one that changes every minute. With each memory we build a new home and feeling of who we are together and as it evolves, it makes going back only possible in our hearts.

And hiraeth also invokes for me the final calling home that comes with death. For my mom’s friend who believes deeply, it must be a sense of getting ready to go not only to Utah but to her Creator.

Someone shared with me recently that the last word that he and his mom said before she passed was “Later.” That story filled me with such a sense of promise that I can only hope is the same promise that is with my mom’s friend as she moves.

(featured image from Pexels)