Searching...

There's no place like home. 

There's no place like home. 

There's no place like home.

The past week I have struggled at my home with the feeling of being Home.  The disorder and missing pieces in my Wisconsin home are at times very off putting.  I would often like to click my heals together three times and be transported to a safe haven.  I know Home is much more than the walls that surround me and while I have lost a bit of balance in some ways, I have gained it in others.  Before I left for Phoenix and was in the tumultuous waves of my ending relationship two of my best friends each gave me some advice that I took to heart.

My Freshman Year of College - University of CO - Boulder

Immediately after our break-up I stayed at my good friend's house and I was struggling with being physically ill, emotionally spent and being in someone else's home.  My fabulous nurse Betty brought me everything I needed, but most of all advice.   She said, "remember when you first went away to college and you thought how am I going to do this...and everything was different, well that's where you are right now and it's just going to takes awhile to feel safe again."

Nice, France

My other friend spoke her her advice a bit more forcefully or perhaps it was more like an order..."it's time you find home within yourself again, whether you are sick or not."  And she was right, I couldn't remember the last time I felt at ease within myself no matter where I was, when I get ill I just want to get "home."  I want to travel again and find those far away places that when you arrive you swear you have been there before.  Those spots that the second you land you get a chill of familiarity.  The American actress Olivia de Havilland echoed my feeling when speaking of Paris, "you feel it belongs to you, that's what is so magical, that it's yours..."  That was exactly how I felt every time I landed in France, especially Nice.  The second I breathed in that salt air an instant calmness washed over me, it belonged to me.  I crave to live that type of adventurous life again, bringing home with me wherever I go and stumbling upon places that resonate a sense of belonging.

Searching for a safe haven, our home, is a universal quest.  There are times when you feel at home anywhere in the world and times when you are in your own home and couldn't feel more lost.  There may be no road map to guide you but when you find it you know and when you do grab ahold of it tightly and never ever let it go.  There truly is no place like home, sometimes its just takes getting off your current path to find it.

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood
And sorry I could not take them both...
Two roads diverged in a wood and I,
I took the one less traveled by
And that has made all the difference
Robert Frost