Coming home (part 1)

a restful musing

*I want to thank everyone who showed support for my latest essay. I was surprised by the sheer resonance that these words had with people. I could never have known when I was stumbling to describe my dreams that so many others would share similar desires. All week, I have watched this piece become single-handedly the most popular thing I have ever written. Thank you. And to all those new folks who have subscribed recently, come on in and have a seat. I write at least one post a week that is free and in it I try to write something that can be a balm and a place to refresh yourself as one week closes and another one begins. Welcome to this restful musing.

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My grandmother once told me, in the midst of anguish and heartache, “Rob, sometimes people don’t know how to come home.”¹ These words hurt me. She was giving me an anchor. Passing down a hard-fought truth that no matter how much we love someone, we cannot make them love us back. We can’t make their feet stay at home with us. (Unless you are Wanda from the MCU ;) I knew she was right, but that didn’t take the pain away. I had wondered my whole life why I wasn’t worth loving. I wondered why I wasn’t good enough to come home to, to be parented, to be proud of. I’ve lived a good portion of my life in the space between home and outside. Between being loved and unloved. It’s been well over a decade but I’m still sitting with my grandmother’s words. I know that people can’t love you if they don’t love themselves. People can’t come home to others if they don’t know how to come home to themselves.

“I invite you to place your hands over your heart or abdomen and advise your soul to tell your heart, mind, body, and spirit, ‘Welcome home.’” Dr. Thema Bryant

I have been intrigued with the construct of home for quite some time. At first it was an academic interest that lingered at the back of my mind. Then I became hyper intrigued about those who have been displaced and must construct new messages and new places of refuge. What we call home. How we instruct our children about the differences between what is acceptable at home and what is not. The messages that inform who is safe and who is a “stranger.”² Home is a loaded thing that can be beautiful or terrifying depending on what has been constructed for vulnerable souls looking for refuge. I have experienced more terror at “home” than any other place if I’m honest. I have been a victim of housing insecurity, poverty, and chaos at different points of my life that have ultimately led me to be ungrounded and unwell. And because of this, I have had to learn how to create home within myself.

“Homecoming is a return to authentic living that is based on truth, self-acceptance, and an aligning of action with values and purpose. Home is more than a physical location; it is an emotional and spiritual space of belonging, appreciation, and love.” Dr. Thema Bryant

Dr. Thema Bryant, a womanist clinical psychologist often talks about the notion of “coming home to yourself.” In her podcast and in her book Homecoming, she talks about the self-inflicted actions, or societal harms that force us to leave ourselves behind in pursuit of money, success, love, and fame. Stress and trauma are part of those things that cause me to conform to the needs and desires of others and I find myself often needing to journey back to myself. Lest that sound completely ambiguous, I can give you a concrete example. I like to be unhurried. Maybe it is the contemplative in me. Maybe it is the fact that I suffer from intense anxiety, but I take my mornings (and my whole day) at a slow pace. I like to wake up in the morning and sit for hours contemplating, writing poetry, listening to piano melodies…and drinking my tea/coffee. When I am at my worst, I allow my preferred pace to be compromised. Every text message or email that I receive becomes urgent in my mind and I attempt to show people that I am competent and attentive. As I contort myself to fit the pace of others, I move incrementally towards being overextended and burned out. And when I reach that burn out space…I realize that I have left home. I am adrift in the sea of others’ expectations. I have to journey home to myself for myself. Dr. Maya Angelou did not lie one bit when she wrote “I long, as does every human being, to be at home wherever I find myself. The ache for home lives in all of us.”

Today I sit in my quiet little apartment and consider home. I know that I won’t live here forever. Part of me is saddened by this thought because I have a settled, beautiful routine here. I have been many places and settled in many spaces. I’m proud of this little apartment of mine, with the overloaded bookshelves, and the plants everywhere. I am proud to look over at my keyboard and guitar that call to me every day. And. I’m proud of the work that I have done to create home within myself. The journey towards self-recovery (which I’ll talk about more next week).³ The journey to love myself wholly. I look in the mirror and love the man I see there. A few more lines than 10 years ago. A few bumps. A lot of grey hairs. If I am not at home out in the world, maybe I can make a small spot for myself. I have learned to create home wherever I go.

Just two parts of my library :)

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1. I also must note how shame breaks the bonds of love often. People don’t know how to come home, prodigal son style, when shame takes root in the heart. “How can I go home again?”

2. One of the nonnegotiable in my home of origin was that children didn’t fight one another. My father used to resist any amount of bickering between children. “You can fight anybody else in the streets but you NEVER FIGHT YOUR FAMILY!” The irony of being yelled at with this particular message…At any rate, he was right. In his broken way, he was trying to establish a line in the sand. Home is for the people that you love and protect.

3. If you’re the type that wants to do homework ahead of time, I will be drawing on the beautiful wisdom of bell hooks and her book Sisters of the Yam: Black Women and Self-Recovery.