The Latitude & Longitude of Home

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I'm not sure when it happened that "Home" stopped being a place for me and shifted to people that I've sunk my roots into, but that is certainly how I view it now. I still vividly remember being a young Air Force wife so homesick for the comforts and familiarity of home that I was nearly desperate, at times, to get back there so my world would make sense again. I became far too familiar with the symptoms of homesickness and nearly lost the ability to appreciate and find joy in the now. When my daughters were born I realized I had to snap out of my idea that home is elsewhere (i.e. back in North Carolina, where I grew up) and make home wherever we happened to be. We couldn't enjoy Christmases, birthdays, etc., if we spent them wishing we were back East at this family gathering or local event. We had to create our own traditions, make memories that had nothing to do with anywhere but where we were.

Somewhere along the way, while teaching my bright-eyed little girls how to bloom where you are, I learned to do the same. While I love my home state of North Carolina for many reasons (i.e. her sensuous, gentle mountains, rich, fertile soil, deep heritage and wild coastline) it has merely become the place where I was born and raised. Home is the people who are active members of my Tribe. Home is "work" that feeds my soul and spirit. Home is any Safe Harbour where I am free to be all of who I am, real and raw, without fear or limitations. Home is the night sky, where I frequently whisper secrets to Bella Luna and she tucks them in with the stars. Home is sometimes a place I get to touch in my dreams...that's out "there", so very far away and yet here, close, tucked inside of me. It is comforting to know that wherever I am, "Home" comes with me and while I may get wildly turned around, directionally speaking, I am never really lost.