Home.  Our first home is our body, our forming cells.  Our second is our mothers.  From there we have so many.  Our family becomes our home, then our community, lovers, husbands, and wives.  Finally we become home for our children.   Home is satisfied in some and remains a longing for others.  What makes home for you?

I have had the chance to visit Maine this summer.  It was a longer visit than I have allowed myself since I lived here decades ago, years before my practice was strong, and children were born.  There is something wholesome here.  It’s a combination of elements.  It engages all of the senses.  For some folks this experience happens in the mighty mountains, or wide open desert.  For me it is the sea.  It’s the tiffany air, the thickness which rests on your skin and brings renewed youth to the lines etched from experience.  It’s the filament of ocean breeze that moves the crowded air so you feel enraptured rather than captured.  It is the effortless sound made by the long, small waves as they reach persistently for the shore.   Do you know the sound of tinkling crystal at weddings just before someone stands to toast the bride and groom?  The time-worn practice is an invitation to the audience to pay attention.  A feeling of anticipation always lands in my chest and promises something good.  It is a call I heed and the sea is utterly similar for me.   What calls your attention when you’ve drifted from your true home?

The luxury of time off coupled with a location that knows the song in your heart and bangs it out like Mick Jagger, is an endowment in favor.  Do you know what I mean?  While on vacation you have this profound experience of opening yourself up because you don’t have to deal with the day to day.  You needn’t do the dishes, or laundry, or even apply make-up for that matter.  You’re in and out of the sea day and night and that is your daily shower.  Your hair thickens from the salt water, and sea level tempers your skin so lotion is an afterthought.  Your body feels fluid, having rested in the sun, and been fed by the gauzy night and the evening’s clambake on shore.  You breath in rich air, clean in this small town, and you deepen an awareness of yourself.  And before you know it, you feel at home.   I don’t know about you but I forget, time and again, that home is both your preferred four walls and more importantly, yourself.

As I leave Maine I am reminded that I am also leaving summer.  Fall, my favorite time of year, is on the horizon.  Though a time of letting go, it remains a season of beginnings, too.  I urge you in this time of transition to leave behind the practices that limit your sense of bearing and grace.  Whether your particular restraints are too much chocolate cake, too much work, too much worry or wine.  You can always come back to them if need be.  Remember there is great power in a self composed woman.  I suspect as you reach within, much like the tide has done for eons to its own furtherest shore, you will find a deeper feeling within yourself that just might be called home.  Find your practice, find your peace, feel at home.

Join us for our October 13, 2018, Mercy & Me Foundations workshop and the subsequent four-week Collective Group Program.  Click here for more information. Or call us at 303-940-0445.