I hid behind my mom’s skirts because even though it was unspoken, scarcity cloaked each room in our home with cigarette smoke. I dared not make too much mess, noise, or art for fear that I would be found out. I came to create, discover, and ask questions. I was born curious, feeling like I catapulted out of the womb exclaiming, “WOW. Did you guys see how I just popped out of there like that? HELLO WORLD!”
But I would really be the only one present at that moment because even childbirth was taken away from mothers, many of whom were sedated, like mine. Was this to make the labor more seamless for the medical staff, or to control the woman whose body knows exactly what to do?
This quest for belonging would play out in my own life in numerous variations. I couldn’t ask my mom about it because she was busy making pot roast and oiling the kitchen cabinets. Like a pioneer, I embarked to find these answers of belonging on my own. I ate entire bags of Doritos thinking maybe it would fill the emptiness. Instead, I just got orange fingertips. Maybe peanut m and m’s eaten after dark would do the trick. It did not. Feeling more empty, completely ashamed, and entirely too full, perhaps getting rid of this chocolatey goodness would provide relief. Not a bit. What a cruel joke this was.
But I’m no quitter, so I tried to find belonging in becoming promiscuous. Certainly I would feel loved laying next to a stranger. Nope.
What happened to the sweet bean who came to this world as a curious, question asking, creative? One hell of a road trip later, she’s here. She’s back.
Turns out, marrying a loving partner, who accepts all of her crazy, is helpful in the quest of belonging. The birthing and raising up of her own daughters, saved her in ways she could have never imagined. And doing the difficult but necessary heart work leads her baby step by baby step back to her innate divinity.
Now, she belongs to herself. She resides in things like smiling at stranger’s babies, rubbing her lab’s ears until he groans with joy, and sometimes even falling up into this vast expanse of Grace. She is good. She is broken. She is wholly holy.
She is Home.
