HOME.

2021 will be colored in pink, but what about 2020? My theme for the year was home; coming back to it, strengthening it, redefining it, expanding it, getting comfortable in it. Little did I know that comfortable and 2020 won’t go together!

I put as much emphasis on the physical locale as I did on the spiritual. Where is home, the one that provides a roof over our heads and physical security? And where is home within the body, the one that provides spiritual and mental health, a feeling of connectedness, warmth, of being “whole?” Let’s face it. Coming home can be just as difficult as it can be soothing. Add a pandemic on top of it and sometimes I was asking myself, do I even have a home?

2020 put my balance to the test. It wrecked my professional home and put many of my colleagues, then family out of work. It made the city I lived in for 16 years go from the city that never sleeps to the city that no one wants to sleep in because they feared they’d catch a deadly disease. It gave me a roof leak, a broken stove and fridge, all at the same time, all during a pandemic. It gave me a greedy landlord, neurotic neighbors, careless airport workers, ethically questionable insurance brokers, incompetent renovation contractors, flood and power outage threats and of course the unforeseen bills and hysterical situations that come with that. I’m sure I’m forgetting to include something incredibly illustrious in this long list of what may seem like circumstances of terrible luck mostly because I’m trying to put it all out of my head and focus on the good, as I usually do, because there was good in all of that.

I somehow managed to hold on to the through line; home, home, home. Home? I kept searching, redefining, scratching out, questioning, observing, rethinking, reworking, rebuilding...Sometime in the middle of the year I began feeling as though I’m surfing. Not literally but figuratively speaking. I didn’t know when and where the next wave that wants to knock me down would come from. I just knew that in order to survive it, I had to keep my balance and so for the rest of the year, I just surfed. There were moments when I’d get slapped so hard by the water, I could hardly breathe, but I kept my focus on getting to that shore even if I lost sight of it. I flexed muscles I didn’t know I have and went with the flow, the waves. They made me more resilient and eventually, they brought me back home. They allowed me to make a home for someone else. They allowed me to get invited to other people’s homes, be a better neighbor. Today, I’m sharing a little glimpse of what that looks and feels like, and I’m wishing a happy homecoming and 2021 to you!

Home. The journey continues…in pink.