Where is Home? What is Home?
The subject of home – what defines home, what feels like home, where is my home – is a recurring theme in my life.
With the images of devastation of people’s homes by fire in Los Angeles, by floods in North Carolina just a few months ago, and the many other natural and man-made disasters that render people homeless while we watch on our screens in seemingly endless stream – we are continuously reminded about the impermanent nature of symbols in which we place our sense of safety and stability.
To me, the reason why any loss – and loss of home specifically – causes such strong feelings in each of us is because it interrogates our sense of identity, and with it the issues of attachment, habit, safety, belonging, and worthiness.
Having chosen a year ago to lead a somewhat nomadic life, I have given up associating home with any feeling of permanence.
I have a unique opportunity to explore in depth what it is that I need to feel at home – anywhere.
Another way I look at it: What symbols and beliefs create in me a feeling of relaxation, safety, comfort and contentment that one usually associates with Home.
My first loss of home, which included possessions, habits, people, identity happened when I was 14 and my family emigrated from the Soviet Union to the USA.
We were a family of four, who came to build a new life in a country and culture we did not know. We arrived with two suitcases worth of possessions and $500. This seems impossible, and yet we survived and we succeeded, each in our own way.
It is obviously not the two meager suitcases of stuff we brought with us, which ended up being useless in the new world, nor the $500 for the four of us that we were allowed to take from the Soviet Union, that created the foundation for a new Home in the complete unknown.
The home I am talking about was not built from brick and mortar.
The new Home was built from people we have encountered on our way, who saw, understood, empathized, and helped. There was also the universal intelligence that guided my parents to dare to pivot our destinies, which caught us in safety on the other side and continued to guide us on this journey. And it was the powerful survival instinct and the resilience we each carried in our bones, inherited from generations of our ancestors – survivors of wars, loss and displacement – that helped us build a Home in the new world.
I realize as I write this that it is these same ingredients that have supplied the courage and the wisdom to let go of all of possessions and embark on this stage of my journey a year ago.
Except, immigration was traumatizing. Together with resilience I inherited many fears of the unknown, feelings of victimhood, fears of not surviving. So the accumulation of possessions over the years gave the illusion of stability and felt like the path to healing.
Looking back at the way I used to experience home as a young adult, it had a lot to do with the need to feel successful, so it was all about identity and issues of worth.
If I liked how it felt to be me – in that house, with that person – then I felt full and at ease, and also powerful and optimistic. If I did not like how I felt – in a house, with a person – then I felt small and disempowered, and unworthy.
In the last ten years of death and rebirth, I had to give up people, houses, possessions, and that caused unbearable suffering. It felt as if I were ripping away parts of my being and could not imagine that a happy life was still possible without all that was lost.
What hurt about losing the houses and possessions (addresses and status symbols) is the loss of identity of who I was when I lived there.
Those were my ego’s props. They were part of an elaborate strategy to become what the new world deemed a success.
I was unconsciously using relationships and things as ways to buttress my own fragile ego and a wobbly sense of self.
Like many of us, I derived my sense of value from some societally and family-approved achievements, which also included having a husband and children, a house, and lots of stuff.
The universal intelligence had other plans for me.
In the last ten years life has stripped me of all masks, pretense, and protective walls. It was at first excruciatingly painful and humbling, but eventually hugely liberating.
Life was giving me an opportunity to discover who I was underneath the thick layers of possessions and identities.
The last ten years have become a portal, passing through which gave me access to the real treasure: access to Truth about reality and that true safety is sourced within.
Ten years later and I built a present, safe and non-judgmental Home to myself.
My Home is always within. And in this nomadic chapter of my life, I took my home on the road to answer a call for more diversity, to satisfy my curiosity, and to apply my hard-won insights to practice.
After a month in Puerto Escondido, on the coast of Oaxaca region, we have come to Oaxaca city, the city that has been calling me ever since I first heard its exotic name.
We arrived here last week, and moved into the third dwelling since we left our familiar place in Playa del Carmen in December.
I am again in the unknown.
With each move, however, it is getting simpler and simpler to adjust and to settle in. There is less stress and more capacity, because – as I realized this weekend – my identity, my sense of self, and especially my sense of worth is no longer formed from my surroundings or my relationships.
I no longer rely on anything on outside of me to make me feel a certain way.
Rather, I actively create situations that answer my needs for nurturance, for comfort, for wellbeing, for pleasure.
I always start with finding food markets. This way I have what I need for nourishing my body in the way that supports its optimal functioning and builds my capacity to attend to life.
Then I make sure I find comfortable spaces for relaxation and work – both at home and outside. At times this may mean I change or replace a few things or ask the property owner for what I need (that was a learning curve!)
Basically, feeling at home is about meeting my needs.
And what I am discovering is that I can feel at home wherever I am, because what anchors me, where I find safety, inspiration, stability and love is in my Home within.
This is what I bring with me everywhere I go.
The landscape and surroundings may change, people may come and go, but I am forever the one I have to live with.
I am not traveling as a tourist.
The place where I am is not transient, while a real home is waiting for me somewhere else.
I actually live in places where I go. I walk the streets, use local services, buy local produce, get to really know what it feels like to live in this place.
I do not rush, I take my time to explore, to experience, to get to know, to talk to people.
And everywhere I go I find that I belong. That I am another you. That themes that concern each of us are universal and affect all of us. No matter the nationality, we are one human family.
What I bring to myself, to my relationships, to places where I travel is what I contain within.
When my inside was unstable and I felt a victim of circumstances, crushed and in pain, nothing on the outside could help me out of that state, not sustainably.
Now I try to focus not on what may be missing here, but on what I gain by being here.
I am creative and pro-active in meeting my needs. I observe that when my basic needs are satisfied, my body can relax into comfort and safety, wherever I am.
The city of Oaxaca, for example, is a stunningly exciting visually place, so when I come to the light-filled and spacious, but simple house away from the bustle of the center, where we are staying for the next few weeks, I am fully satisfied, because I can relax and process the dose of excitement in peace. The internet is working well and I can work from home. In the previous place on the beach the internet was very spotty and I had to go to a co-working space to hold my zoom calls, but we were a 4-minute walk away from the beach, which filled me to the brim with pleasure in the hours between work and other duties.
What contributes to my safety this year is the fact that the more I meet the locals – wherever I go, the more I love people and trust their goodness.
I see how humans everywhere are much more like me than some voices in positions of power would have me believe.
Every time I send photos from my travels to my sister, who lives in the USA, she is always surprised at the beauty and normal functioning of my life and asks me if I feel safe. It really reveals the difference between getting your stories about the world and people from the official media channels or going on your own adventure to find out.
Much more to come!
PS: This year, one of my most desired intentions is to start offering in-person retreats.
I have a private retreat coming up in May in Castle Valley, Utah for one of my Safe to Be Me groups, preparing for which fills me with excitement and joy.
I am also currently working on something super special for the second half of October on the Caribbean coast of Mexico. The location is unique. I’ve met with them in December and it felt like a green light.
I’m working out the logistics right now and will announce the specifics soon!
Does going on a retreat with me sound exciting to you? Do you want to make sure to receive the details as they become available?
Then make your interest known HERE.