Turns out... You can go home

Turns out . . . 

You can go home ❤

There’s a specialness to waking up in my childhood home as an adult. It feels safe in a way nowhere else does, or probably ever will. It’s not that I feel “unsafe” at my own home or even other places, but there’s a nostalgic, heart-warming, glowy feeling that goes beyond physical safety into a deeper place. A place where my heart feels safe. Where I know that I know that I know I am loved, deeply and without reservation or conditions, because I was loved here in that way as a child. Where the connections were made at an early age that I can mess up and still be loved. That I am safe to be myself, while at the same time always encouraged to be the best version of myself. Where I was told “I’m proud of you” over and over, as recently as last night... And where I saw this behavior modeled day after day in the very people creating this safe space for me. I don’t doubt that I would still feel this way with the same people, but in a new or different home, but I have to admit there is another level of coziness added by being in the same home as my childhood. I know this is a luxury most people don’t get. I can’t even offer it to my own son. Which makes my heart hurt a little, knowing how much it means to me and likely would to him. But life is what it is, and reality doesn’t always match up to our idealistic views… But, as I wake up here, in this house, with these people…sometimes it does. And I don’t want to take one minute, one second, of that for granted.


So I lay here this morning, Christmas morning, in my childhood home, not even out of bed or having said “Merry Christmas” to a single person yet, but with a full heart. A gratefulness that can never be taken from me, even if I never get another single morning like this again. My heart breaks for anyone who can’t relate. Who didn’t have a childhood that produces these sorts of feelings. Or worse, one that produces the exact opposite sorts of feelings. If your ideal place to be on Christmas (and every day) is as far away from your childhood, both physically and figuratively, due to abuse or neglect or any type of overwhelming sadness or heartache, I am so very sorry. This time of year is particularly difficult, I am sure. And honestly, having had a solid foundation affects so many other areas of your life, that I am willing to bet you faced many, many hurdles to inner stability and security that I never had to. It’s unfair and sucks and there’s no way around that. I hope you have found ways to break that cycle with your own life and your own family. Maybe you could redeem parts of your own childhood (and hopefully heal some in the process) by creating a childhood for your own kids that will one day make them feel the kind of “safeness” of waking up in their childhood home.


Merry Christmas, friends. There are many things we can worry about, be angry about, and feel overwhelmingly sad about in this world we live in today. But I encourage all of us (myself included because I need the reminder daily) to choose, as often as we can, to focus on gratitude and kindness and love, to create joy and safe spaces for others where they can do and feel the same. Love to all of you.