There is no escaping the passage of time when you’re writing a weekly blog. With this installment I am poised at exactly halfway through my yearlong journey. That in itself is kind of staggering, and I wonder if the rest of the year will seem to move more quickly, like a car ride often does when we’re on the way home?

The whole notion of home is one I’ve been reflecting on lately, due in part to this 7-minute podcast with Elizabeth Gilbert. (If you listen, start at three minutes to skip the intro.) She describes a surprising corollary between the feelings she experienced as a younger woman who repeatedly failed at getting published, with the feelings that arose with the overwhelming success of her book Eat, Pray Love.

The net result, Elizabeth explains, is that she was flung from herself, away from the everyday state where everything was normal, reassuring and regular. Although she is referring to the extreme states of overwhelming disappointment with failure and the blinding glare of success, any great personal event can result in the same consequence. And when we are flung from ourselves there is danger in getting lost out there, in the hinterland of the psyche.

The remedy she discovered was the same for both:

You’ve got to find your way back home again as swiftly and smoothly as you can. If you are wondering what your home is, here is a hint. Your home is whatever in this world you love more than you love yourself. That might be creativity, family, invention, adventure, faith, service, raising corgis… Your home is that thing to which you can dedicate your energies with such singular devotion that the ultimate results become inconsequential. For me, that thing has always been writing.

I don’t know what flung me into the hinterland of my own psyche initially, but I’m no stranger to the dynamic. I do know that finding my way home again, in this figurative sense, has been my sole, dedicated focus for decades. I’ve called it ‘my quest to find what I love’ but calling it ‘home’ makes perfect sense to me now. 

The physical manifestation of home is also important to note as it is such a deep part of who I am, what I love, and what I dedicate so much of my time to creating. Home is key to how we function in the world, and the many aspects of that are never far from my mind. Where these two loves intersect are part of my ongoing exploration, but ultimately the home I seek is an embodied one, that doesn’t require four walls to keep me safe.  

I’m not sure if writing will become part of my core ‘home’ or not (I can get far away from myself when I’m trying to craft things ‘just so’!) but there is no doubt I feel met by writing in a way that is entirely new to me. Writing is supporting me to dig deeper into subjects that are meaningful to me and then share what I discover with others. It’s a miracle really. With each weekly post I find something inside me is settling just a little bit more. There is consolidation happening internally. But perhaps most surprisingly I’m discovering that the life experiences I’ve been reluctant to revisit for so long, actually have much more value than I could ever have imagined.  

Now, with only six months remaining, I’m beginning to look to the rest of the year. Part of me is afraid I won’t have time to say everything I want to before the year is out. And of course I won’t. But I suspect I will create other opportunities to keep sharing my discoveries, as I continue to craft the kind of world I feel at home in. 

Do you know what home is for you? What you love more than you love yourself? Let me know, I’d love to hear!