Coming "home"

"I'm going home. she said.

"Where's home to you?" he asked.

"My house?" she said confused and laughed a little.

"Home isn't a place," he paused, "It's a color, a song, a scent, a feeling, a person, but it's not a place."   

~excert from a book I'll never write #6 (via@pixelateprincess-WHI)

We met someone studying at Polytech University in Hong Kong.  He is exploring the idea of “home” for his thesis, and we had many lengthy conversations about that topic.  He is American, but has lived outside of the US for manyyears.  So, in returning to Michigan, I have been exploring what home is. Is home what is familiar? Is home where I grew up?  Is it the house I lived in for 17 years, although I haven’t lived there for 19 years now? Is it St. Clair Shores, Detroit, Ann Arbor, Michigan, is it the US? Is it where family and friends are? Although I now have friends all over the world.   I know it can be anywhere. Some say home is where the heart is, so wherever you are can be home. Or is home where we return to when we die?

I have had difficulty being “home”.   First of all, I feel 
like I landed like an albatross!  Almost 2 weeks of jet lag walking around zombie like, wondering if I put my toilet paper in the bin or the bowl, can I drink the water, getting used to the new weather,  the new, yet not new, food.... re-remembering all of the things i forgot that i forgot about!  It's all so familiar, yet 5 months is enough time to forget things exist and you have to get used to them again.




Then there was the sloth stage...still tired,
wondering where I was and what I was doing with my life.  Then I remembered reverse culture shock, in many ways the same as culture shock when you go somewhere else.  No one wants to hear you talk about your experience all the time, you might feel bored, have mood swings, unrest, frustration, anger, depression, alienation, you have homesickness for the place and people you left, your relationships have changed, you have changed, you are feeling alientated and hyper-critical about your home culture, you feel like your experience is slipping away from you...

I did a sound and movement workshop, specifically Authentic movement and I moved through being a worm underground into a caterpillar who went into a cocoon and then came out as a butterfly which was the beginning of moving from slothdom into movement in my life.  I also did a family constellation the next day, which was very opening. (ask me about it if you don't know what it is, it is a beautiful process)... so now I feel that almost 4 weeks after physically arriving, I am actually beginning to arrive, so please pardon my slowness and tentativeness with plans, etc..it is all just part of the process of coming "home".