If you look closely, the picture in the golden frame on the left hand side of the photo is me and my sister when we were quite young!
Having moved around so much in the past few years, “home” has a different meaning for me these days.
In fact, I’ve found myself feeling like I don’t really have a home.
For the longest time, I considered Avon Lake, OH, home, even when I was away at school in Boulder. After I graduated and resisted moving back “home” to live with my parents, Boulder became more and more my “home away from home.” It had and always will have a very special place in my heart because it was the first time in my life where I felt like I really belonged somewhere.
And then I moved to Wichita Falls.
In Wichita Falls I felt terribly out of place. I knew I was going to be their temporarily, which made it hard to feel like home; yet, my involvement with the yoga community made it far more tougher to leave than I ever could have imagined on the day our rented moving truck rolled into town on a May day in 2012.
My home went from a physical place with people who I really cared about and shifted to a community that lifted my spirits each and every day.
In Tucson, even though I’ve only been here for a month and I’m fortunate to live in the most beautiful physical home I’ve ever lived in, it’s the yoga studio once again that finally helped me feel at home.
The Weary Traveler Always Has a Home
There’s something about a universal communal space that can pull at your heartstrings and make you feel completely comfortable twisting yourself into a pretzel while sweat is puddling on your mat.
Or maybe for you, it’s your church that makes you feel at home sans the handstands and pretzel body twisting. Who knows, maybe you do yoga at church.
Going home for the holidays may mean going back to the place you grew up. But when you stop to think about it, home is really the people, not the place.
I complain far too often than I should, especially about my frequent moves and how hard it is for me to make a mark on the world when I can’t put my roots down. Thing is, the opportunity to feel at home in yoga studios all over the world is the coolest opportunity one could ever get.
Where Home Lives
I happen to be going “home” for the holidays. All of them, for six weeks straight. I made the decision back when I still lived in Texas and the Texasness of Texas was starting to get to me. When I didn’t feel at home because I stopped going to the yoga studio. When I felt disconnected because I never would fit in.
A part of me is sad to be leaving my new home for so long when I just got here, but the other part of me is excited to explore what kind of connections I can make at “home” in an adopted yoga community. There’s a studio there I particularly adore and I’m excited to go back and smell the incense again.
Home may well be where the heart is, but the opposite must be true as well. The heart is where home is. When you can feel with heart, then your soul will be fulfilled. When you can’t, you’ll always feel slightly disconnected.
Open up your heart this holiday season, and you’ll surely find your home, wherever it is you may be.
