Great loss can catapult us into positive change, an emptiness that lays like a blank canvas or a freshly dug hole in the earth. After many personal upheavals in 2017, I became ruthless with my space; clearing away anything that didn’t resonate. At the time, I even let go of the best job, housing, and community I had in my decade in Boulder, CO. It was difficult to walk away from those people and that glorious radius I’d found, but a deeper sense of living was urging me forward (and it’s taken many years of twists and turns to feel a baseline of being again).
I’m sure many of us can relate to the ease of collecting and the difficulty with letting go. Whether it’s kitchen tools, arts and crafts supplies, interesting trinkets, or opinions and reactionary emotions, we are the dragon in the cave who treasures anything that glitters and glimmers. Maybe we hope these things mirror something of us, who we want to be to the world, or perhaps showcase how we came to be the way we are. Whether it’s victimhood, righteous personhood, or a glorious overcoming of obstacles, we collect beautiful and interesting qualities that we wish to be recognized for, or feel we have no choice but to be. We get wired, rewired, and react. We grasp, hold, collect. Do you believe your worth is a reflection of your home or your strong viewpoints or your ‘higher’ education? Is your ego attached to your bed-sheets and the stories in the books on your shelf? Are you afraid of who you will become without that pair of shoes or your potted plants or your political concerns? How much thought goes into the space that fills your home? What IS home to you?
Home is an interesting concept. It’s definition is entirely personal. Home has felt like different things in the past, for me. Certain people, specific geography, even just a sense of connection and peace in my own body. At every age it can be varied and change. When my parents split up, I was 15 and that idea of a childhood home to return to dissipated. My father stayed in the house, but he didn’t maintain a home. Whenever I went back to visit, I’d be lucky if there was a clean bed or couch to sleep on. My things, whatever left, had been packed up or tossed out over time. It wasn’t that he wasn’t welcoming, he just wasn’t designed that way. Or rather, his life had been a series of unfortunate events as far as family and home were concerned. His baggage affected everyone. My mom was on the move, reclaiming her own sense of home. Redefining herself in the world after dedicating decades to their partnership and our family. I decided to move out as soon as the right opportunity arose. I feel like I was always in search of home and belonging. My 20s and 30s had been about reclaiming my body and my place in the world. Now, home is wherever I’m sitting. It’s when I’m with loved ones. It’s being outdoors. It’s moving creatively and freely in this body.
Sometimes, home hurts in other ways. Ecological grief is a generally new term; following an understanding of climate crisis and ecopsychology, we can uncover the depth and breadth that the devastation of Earth is a wrecking of ourselves. It can be difficult to pinpoint in words and even more cavernous to explore. Personally, I have cried for hours in fetal position with a grief and pain I couldn’t explain. This went on in bursts over many years. Later, I realized it was a sorrow for our world, our culture, the places I couldn’t see but feel, a perceived disconnection, a deep longing. The deepest desire to hold and embody that birthright we all have: to be in right relationship with the land and each other. To know and practice our land-based skills, to build our homes, gather around the fire, tend a garden and a smattering of animals, weave, mend, cook, gather. The basic building blocks of being human on Earth have been conveniently siphoned out of most of our daily lives, handed out as “jobs” and “materials” so far removed from the essence of vitality and this has created catastrophe. Of course, there are cultures, communities, and individuals still living in tune with their surroundings and each other; on a mass scale in the “modern” world, we are not.
We have created catastrophe with our convenience. And the convenience is so nice, so easy, so quick with so many options. Capitalism is blindingly shiny; it’s dulled our own effervescence. Why is everyone stressed, tired, and sick? The answer seems incredibly clear, and yet, the solution is convoluted. How could we ever address every ill, every issue, every injustice? How do we remove ourself from a non-stop spinning top? One at a time and one after the other.
That’s the power in numbers. Find your superpower, follow the magnetism of your individual call, and bring yourself to it. Listen to others, be curious and malleable. Many of us struggle with “imposter syndrome” and a vague smattering of other natural, human reactions to injustice, pain, stress and these have been labeled as disorders and greatly overused on social media. Having studied the DSM (the psychological disorder manual that therapists and psychologists use to diagnose) I understand both the benefit and detriment of labeling on this level. It can be incredibly helpful for understanding the self. Much like a natal chart in astrology, it’s a self-reflective tool and it can help build a map to betterment and healing. Honestly, if you don’t relate to any of the “disorders” you probably aren’t human and you definitely aren’t self-aware. It can also create an over-dependence on those qualities and lock us into reactionary habits that no longer serve us. Maybe it makes us forget we can change.
You can change, if you want to. It can take a lot of time and plenty of fallbacks. Be gentle with yourself and others. We are all a work in progress and healing is never truly over. It’s cyclical. We will come back to the same wounds time and again with new understanding about the situation, other people, and our selves. Change is, of course, inevitable and can be good. The least we can do is try to change in alignment with our authenticity; sometimes that means letting go of “good things” for better being. To heed the call of connection, to understand we are not alone and more wildly connected to nature and each other than we could ever fully comprehend. Maybe it helps to consider how home is more expansive than we think. Maybe home is loving as much as we can all the small and precious moments; plenty of forgiveness, patience, compassion, and awe. Lots and lots of awe. In the end, our homes overlap in geography, in social cultures, in shared events and universal emotions. May we remember this interconnectedness in our daily lives and honor how the smallest movements made in the right direction can spread like wildfires of goodness. Sometimes all it takes is stepping outside, looking around, and being human in the present place.
Ephemeral Movement 