What is home?

Is it an illusion? Is it real? Do I create it? Does the environment create it?

It’s something cultivated, something that can’t be rushed. Something that’s deeply affected by the energies that inhabit it, and so is it a thing or is it the people in the thing? 

Is it belongings that you cherish? Because my room feels like home, but my home doesn’t necessarily feel like home right now.

And then, how much does it affect you? Hurt you or help nourish you? When you walk through the gateway of your front door, are you disarmed? Do you need that from your day? To truly let go and be yourself? Or do you still feel a shift and with it a sense of trepidation for not wanting to disturb others with whom you live? 

So many questions, so few answers today. But all of this inquiry has brought me back to a thought I had months ago when I didn’t think I needed a physical home. My answer was that “home” as we know it is an illusion, and that feeling of groundedness and safety can be found internally no matter what. And I am strong enough and I know enough about myself to be able to create that. Looking at the big picture, I was wrong. BUT I tapped into a force that has given me a lot of strength and support in my present situation of feeling lost at home. Even though I haven’t fully landed, I have been able to tap into different meditations and practices that have pulled me down into that feeling, or at least the closest thing to it. While I haven’t been able to create an external home, lately I’ve been able to create the most powerful internal home I think I’ve ever felt.

A large part of me believes this has to do with the current astrology forecast. Saturn is about to move into Aquarius for a couple of years as the new astrological year starts on the Spring Equinox in the sign of Aries. For me, the conclusion of this fertile void (otherwise known as Winter/quiet time/hibernation/brainstorm time) signifies a chance to begin anew. More specifically, to make the choice to be new. My karmic work through Saturn’s placement these last two and a half years has actually made its way full circle. I’ve completed this journey and I truly am starting a new one in the way I’m guiding my life. And it’s all landing at this pivotal time when the Sun moves into a sign all about fiery initiative, potential and excitement. I am soon to be guided by this light, and my body and soul know it. I’m excited about being excited, and so THAT’S giving me a sense of home. 

While my world on the outside could use some shifts, feeling misaligned with my current location and incoherent with my environment, my inner world is flourishing and has much space in which to do so. Maybe my feeling stuck externally is a chance, a pause so that I can focus internally. 

So I don’t have the clearest of answers this time. I don’t know what will happen or if I ever will truly be able to “define” the term home for myself. Perhaps that’s the nature of it. Not something to intellectualize, but something to feel your way through.

I wrote the following poem on the frozen pond in Mount Auburn Cemetery, thinking about all this, excited for the coming shift. 

The spring season marks the alchemy of the leaves

A time when the growth of the sun and the thawing of our planet coincides with the energy of the fiery ram

A creature that knows only forward action. 

As Pisces season now marks the conclusion of the fertile void of winter and the last alignment of the planets

In a state of flow

It gives us a hint at the promise of movement, change

That same alchemy by which all things evolve into something else entirely... over time. 

And so it is.

Soon, things will be green, ideas will sprout and buds will flower while we wonder...

How do I feel?

Do I feel new and alive once more?

Do I feel my old promises coming to fruition or making way for change instead?

Do I have the clarity and capacity to hold this space for my evolution and that of the world around me?

It will soon be the time to release the past down river and turn toward the sun

A new day, a new year, a new potential.

Aho. And so it is.