Mitten to Mountains: Reflection of Home

Hey all,

being back has been a little bit of everything. I would have been writing about it, but then I wouldn’t have been doing it.

And honestly, there are not any extreme outlandish adventures to report (although I did see some amazing belly dancers with Lori, jump on some funky inflatables with Thomas and ride a life-threatening thrill-slide at Belle Isle with George) because being home has been about being home. And home is such an inward and intimate experience. Both the best things and the worst things that have happened since being in Ann Arbor have been wrapped in packages of feelings and words (and a few pictures).

My best friend and I reverted to high school (with some added refreshments now), gossiping late into the night and combining our lives in overnights and routine every other day. Newer friends and I have gotten closer, as I find new ways to befriend my integrity even more with age. Acquaintances from the past have become friends in the present.

Family continues to be a living, growing practice of fascination and I’m hesitant to proclaim that our function:dysfunction ratio has moved stably into our favor.

My sensitivity to my body feeds the bad days (there have been many crying bouts of envy, unfairness and restricted plans since being home), but on the good days, it is my connection to a greater sensitivity in all I am doing and a gigantic reservoir for gratitude.

The recent anniversary of a friend’s death was a surprising catalyst for a new level of my inner home, my inner growth, enriching many of the questions I carry for myself. You can read a peek into the start of that cycle here.

Home has all of the furnishings: past, future, relationship, self-reflection, vulnerability, expression, need, longing, love, hurt…and it is beautiful to be here, sometimes in an overwhelming way.

But the greatest thing about this home is that it moves and travels. And it welcomes. Friends, you don’t have to be here to be here with me.

As the journey goes on and as I get ready to move back to Washington, I have enjoyed all of the beautiful connections I have had. As we all grow into our own homes, may we feel more welcome in one another’s.

Pouring in, like sunlight and rain and something that doesn’t have a name. I feel blessed and cursed and purely here. When emotions come, in a presence that is more than happy or sad or anything teathered in boxes. When emotions come in all-encompassing force, charged with that very real realness, that you are here. That you are loving, loved, hurting, human, marred and raw. But that you are undeniably connected, in these states, to some beautiful, beautiful souls. When they are trivial and simultaneously sweeping, picking up dust of long forgotten memories that seem like someone else's footprints. When these footprints seem like molds that had been waiting for feet to find them again, to carry them someplace they were going…