Lately coming home to my tree house has been as soothing as taking an exhhhaaaleee at the end of a challenging yoga class.  I have found over the years that the Universe has provided opportunities for me to reflect on how grateful I am that I am able to live in a home that feels safe in a city that I love.  It has been the shelter from the storm of life that feels like a warm blanket on a cold day.  Lately the storms that life is providing are more like the first snow storm of the season than the tenth.  If you are lucky to live in a climate where the weather is more temperate, let me fill you in.  The first snow storm in Boston always feels like a Norman Rockwell painting.  The tenth feels like nails on a chalk board…literally.  So needless to say life is beautiful these days but it is a storm at the same time.  I am busier than I have ever been which I am very grateful for and at the same time the way I do busy often wears me down.  I vacillate between exhilaration and scratchy throat/stuffy nose/tight muscles.  You get the picture.  This has all had me reflecting more on the deeper meaning of the feeling of coming home and the different types of homes that we create along the way.  Mostly I have been reflecting on the concept of coming home because I feel like in some ways I am coming full circle.  I am arriving back at the beginning of my career and going back in time to do the work I set out to do but in a very different way.  I have the passion I had back there and have recaptured my initial intention but I feel completely different than my late 20’s self.

What is a home?  It is so much more that the actual dwelling that you live in. The structure of the facility does not make a home; a home is so much more, right?  This summer I got addicted to House Hunters on HGTV; especially House Hunters International for obvious reasons to those that know me.  People on the show go through seeing many different houses.  They have three choices kind of like the three little pigs.  They end up settling on the one that is “juuuuusttttt righttttt.”  It’s that je ne sais quoi that makes a house a home.  Coming home is much more than the obvious  Coming home means turning inward.  Feeling safe and secure.  Allowing one to let their guard down and be real.  It is being with what is in a way that connotes security.  But the dilemma comes with the fact that nothing in life is safe or secure.  Everything in life is ever changing and evolving.  Nothing is the same for ever and ever.  I have a beautiful apartment which is fairly rent controlled in a city I love but that will not be forever.  At some point my elderly landlords will need to make different decisions for themselves.  What I knew to be safe and secure in the past was also an illusion because there were many ways that I didn’t feel safe and it wasn’t secure.  How do we create safety within an impermanent world?  If nothing is ever truly the same, how do we find safety and security within that uncertainty?