This post is part of a collaborative skein of thought and love woven with Susan Piver, Mahala Mazerov, and Hiro Boga. Please visit their blogs to read their take on home, and let our words and thoughts kindle your own home soul.
Much of my life, I have been obsessed with a longing for home. Literally. I have bought, swapped, remodeled, and left so many houses, apartments, attics, cottages, and even a half-remodeled haunted Victorian, that I find myself unable to remember them all.
My late teens through my late thirties are striated with couches, pedestal sinks, paint cans, a jack hammer, a neighbor who blasted rap music every Sunday, a neighbor named Halcyon, a neighbor who gave me a Van Briggle pitcher, a spontaneous courtyard party after an earthquake, two picket fences, neighborhood watch meetings, weekend graffiti paint-outs, Montecito garden parties, Easter egg hunts (one before I had Lilly), four gardens, four cats, three dogs, rats skittering (Gainesville and Montecito), seals barking (Bainbridge), garage doors opening, Dad’s voice calling “Jenny, are you home?”
And through it all, there I stood, echoing with longing.
For near 30 years, this terribly fierce longing baffled me. Why did I last only one night in the college dorm, renting a tiny furnished apartment the next day, then arranging and rearranging the furniture? Why did I acquire a Rhodesian Ridgeback at 23 and walk that dog past the mansions of Hancock Park before work every morning and evening, not because I dreamed of being rich or married, but because I ached for what those houses represented to me?
Safety. Dependableness. Belonging.
Looking back at my younger me, I feel such tenderness for her appetite. But, at the time, I just felt weird.
I made myself wrong for my longing to belong; I wanted so much to feel at home, with myself and with others, that I didn’t realize how nearly universal the longing for home is.
I didn’t realize I exiled myself from belonging my making my longing for home wrong.
This morning, taking a break from struggling to write this – my writing skills are not equal to the force of feeling roiling in me – I realized I have lived here, on this island, in this house, the longest of any – 9 years.
I have lived here not because it is my dream house or because I love it but because I, slowly, became determined to stay put.
By staying put, imperfectly and with resistance, I have, of course, partially met a part of my longing. I have used staying put as a way to come to myself.
Yet another part of my longing still burbles with hankering: the part of me that is ready to invite myself to belong. To open my home (metaphorically) to others, and to the Other.
Because, doh, the gravel bottom of my longing is for that which can never be known.
Or as the great Rumi said,
I didn’t come here of my own accord, and I can’t leave that way.
Whoever brought me here, will have to take me home.
I’ll stop now and go listen to the echo, but instead of looping back on itself and losing me in the process, I follow it… maybe, for one breath, all the way home.
17 responses so far ↓
1 Tweets that mention Whoever Brought me Here Will Have to Take me Home » Comfort Queen -- Topsy.com Jul 16, 2010
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Jennifer Louden, melaniward. melaniward said: @characterinc You will LOVE this post by @jenlouden http://bit.ly/bC4PRM – I thought of you the moment I started reading:) [...]
2 Mahala Mazerov Jul 16, 2010
Publishing my attendant post (with all it’s emotions) and coming to read here…
I may have to give myself a few unfettered hours of fresh sobbing.
Thank you — I think
— for expressing the longing so beautifully. And for reminding me I’m not the only with “the gravel bottom” of longing for something that can never be know.
Love you. Mahala
3 Jennifer Jul 16, 2010
Thank you Mahala! – and you are not the only one with a gravel bottom of longing~
4 Susan Piver Jul 16, 2010
Jen, you have no idea how much I related with the longing you describe–and with the value of the path of staying. For me, it has also been the toughest and most rewarding.
Here’s to feeling at home, in your skin and in your house…
I love doing this writing thing together.
xo S
5 The Other Laura Jul 16, 2010
I am (slowly) learning a lot about staying put after a lifetime of travels and moving. Thanks for describing that longing for place, for home so beautifully.
6 Sarah Jul 16, 2010
I’ve been working with the idea of home for almost a year now — a year during which I moved twice (I know!) and didn’t buy a house. I am so, so lucky to have these deep emotional places that are home to my heart and spirit, and yet I’m really noticing how my down-to-earth, garden-growing, food-cooking self is seeking the practical aspects of a home that I can stay in — barring acts of God, of course — for as long as I choose.
7 Carrie Tallman Jul 16, 2010
Hi Jen,
It’s funny, b/c your post helped me realize that I’ve had the opposite “problem”, if we want to call it that. I’m 34 and have never really had a home – since having a home as a kid. I’ve lived in non-descript apartment after apartment, always moving, searching, traveling, but never feeling at home. I know this is important, just not sure how yet. I have a sense it’s the opposite side of the same coin.
In any case, thanks for sharing, and helping me see something I need to see.
Carrie
8 Atmara Jul 16, 2010
I was just feeling this intense longing for home yesterday. At the heart, I don’t think it really has anything to do with where I am physically. What that longing points to in me is the desire to truly know myself as the Source that lives this life.
I have had many experiences of myself as Love, at one with all. And I crave more of that, deeper, wider, just more.
And when I find that home at the core of who I am, everything around me physically seems like home, too.
9 Kate Courageous Jul 16, 2010
Oh god, do I get this. Get it, get it, get it–even the college part. I had the nicest and most color coordinated college dorm room of anyone–because I wanted it to feel cozy, like a home. When I move into a new place (we’re renters), my first considerations is whether or not I’d want to buy it. I start imagining and envisioning possibilities. The place we’re in now is the first place I’ve thought I’d be happy staying in for more than a year, and I’m a little anxious that she’s planning to raise rent. Cross my fingers…
10 Sarah Tieck Jul 16, 2010
Wow, Jen … such a beautiful post. And your house is so so beautiful. Seeing the yard and your lovely, voluptuous garden. Takes me back to our last visit to the part of the world you live in… I loved the styles of homes there. And, those stunning gardens that you can lose yourself in. What is that called??? Is there a name for that style? We don’t have much of that in the Midwest … but, I find myself loving spaces that envelope me in that way. And love your home and all it means to you. Love the idea of writing about home, especially as we’re starting to think about moving … while making some very intentional changes to our current, cozy, much-loved home.
11 cathy Jul 16, 2010
I relate to this. I think there is value in forcing oneself to “stay put” for awhile, just as we ask ourselves to stay put on the meditation cushion.
We may have to move from our Curious Farm in the next few years for financial reasons, but — finally — after living here these years and shaping the garden and remodeling the house, I know that I can turn any space into a real home for my family.
I’m not worried anymore.
12 Jennifer Jul 17, 2010
Thank you everyone for this out pouring of home love!
I’m not sure what style of garden I have except overgrown, untended and without a lawn. I used to be obsessed with gardening but then discovered art mess making and sort of forsake gardening but painting the house has made me want to start again.
Cathy, I hope you don’t lose Curious Farm although it doesn’t sound like it could ever leave your heart.
Sarah, it’s a Craftsman house and it’s actually newish – I bought it under construction 9 years ago. Our whole little neighbhorhood is this style of house, we call is Pleasantville.
May we all know ourselves, as Atmara said, as the Source that lives this life. I do believe that is what our quest for home is leading us to know. That or an obsession with decorating.
13 Sally Stanton Jul 17, 2010
Jen, along comes your post about home (I really love that Rumi quote), and minutes later while logging into my Yahoo mail, I was captivated by a story on Jay Shafer, the man who lives in (and builds) tiny houses – the smallest is 89 square feet! (www.tumbleweedhouses.com) That small house is a beautiful wooden cottage on wheels, so he can just hook it up and tow it anywhere he wants. I was thinking RV (as opposed to yurt – referring to previous posts about farms and escapes), but these are real houses! I can’t decide whether it would be cozy or claustrophobic, but the idea of a movable but homey home really appeals to me. Maybe I am ready for home to be wherever I am, instead of somewhere out there, somewhere else. As usual, when I visit CQ, I always find what I need. Love you, Jen.
14 Moving, Attachment, Loss, Gain « Off Trajectory Jul 18, 2010
[...] her home and start moving. This morning I read this lovely poem by Hiro Boga: Going Away and about Jen Louden’s determination to just stay put. The rupture that is moving is on my [...]
15 amarja Jul 19, 2010
dear jenn, I love the honesty with which you write. I love living in amsterdam and have been staying in the same house for 15 years, so that is not my problem… I do recognize the feeling of looking for a place to call home as there always was this sense of: THIS IS NOT REALLY MY HOME! what am I doing on this planet? I just wanna go back!!!! I think they call it spiritual homesickness…. There was a place once….of love and light and a deep sense of belonging… And my journey is to get that sense of belonging more and more, here and now, right here in this life.
Since I practise gratitude I do feel more and more at home here, and that is a real blessing.
There is a book about home which people may enjoy, it has lots of beautiful poetry quotes in it too,
All sickness is homesickness, dianne m. connelly 1986 isbn 0-912379-02-2.
I might be out of print, but I adore it.
let’s all try to meet our longing for home, with love and find some people to be at home with, amarja
16 Susan Gallacher-Turner Jul 19, 2010
Isn’t that the essence of home…really…that belonging, the unconditional embrace of your heart?
17 Jennifer Jul 19, 2010
I think so Susan, i think so.