There is a magic in that little world, home; it is a mystic circle that surrounds comforts and virtues never known beyond its hallowed limits.
Robert Southey
(1774-1843)
Our homes are a reflection of who we are, the place where our story begins and our heart lives. We decorate these physical structures with the things that define us, that we have placed value in, and that we love. Home is where we seek refuge from life's storms. It is where rest, replenishment, and nourishment abound.
Sandra Magsamen
Living Artfully (2006)
Living Artfully (2006)
We all have within ourselves a blueprint for just the home that will shelter our spirit. This blueprint doesn't deal in design and dimensions; it is the plan for home as a spiritual construct, or that homey sense of safety and belonging that can come with us from house to house and from one phase of life to the next.
Victoria Moran
Shelter for the Spirit (1998)
Shelter for the Spirit (1998)
I've been thinking a lot over the past few weeks about what home means to me.
For many home is a place they call their own because it is their own, filled with things they own, things they value, where their family is, where they feel connected to their personal history... rooted, settled. I get this. Strangely, home is none of these things to me right now. I own relatively little, my family live far away, I have only a recent connection to the place I find myself, no significant history to speak of here yet and no intention to stay for good. This new apartment will be the twenty-sixth different place I've lived during the course of my life (only those I remember and where I've been for longer than 6 months qualify) and it probably won't be the last. I know that just the thought of this freaks some people out. But it's true. I know it's a big number and perhaps hard to understand how, but most of them have felt like home. Some more so than others but for the most part, home is where I am. My environment is important to me. It has an impact. I struggle to be happy in an ugly, uncomfortable place. But I can be. I have been. Because home is a feeling. An emotional space.
Having said that, I'm looking forward to making my new home (even if it is only temporary) a physical place that both reflects and shelters my spirit again.
I'd like it to be calm, comfortable, creative, colourful, casual - eclectic. I'd like it to be a place where I enjoy spending time alone, where my loved ones gather (even if only occasionally), where my few treasures surround me and bring me pleasure, where my heart finds comfort and rest at the end of a day.
What makes you smile when you think about your home? I'd love to know.
(quilt from Anthropologie)
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20 comments:
I have thought about home a lot lately too. For me, I think of my bed! Haha!! There is something so wonderful about having a big, fluffy, comfy bed! I love it when my kids are in it with me. I love it when I'm alone. I love it when I'm with my love bug. BUT, at the end of the day, when I fall into those soft sheets, I feel safe and happy and warm. I can think and plan and dream and be anything I wanna be.
I love my bed. Suzy
Home...I haven't moved a great deal in my life, I come from a region where family and the land are supposed to be a part of your very being. You stay close to "home"...I've never felt connected like that. Really, I yearn to be..to seek, to explore. I think my soul is tethered to this world differently...as silly as that might sound. When I think of home, I think of a feeling, of warmth, and comfort, and love...so it would be the time I spend with my children...darn them for growing up and moving out...
Home for me will be where that feeling of warmth and love is, not a physical place...it may be found anywhere...it isn't made of brick and mortar, it is made of hope and love...
you are a girl after my own heart! i've moved just as much as you have, and only a handful of homes - actually only two, now that i think about it, have been difficult for me to leave. i dream about them often, even though i lived in them years ago, as if a little sliver of me was left behind. as for the others, the shell of the home wasn't so important to me as the memories and experiences that were made while i lived there, and of course, those always move along with me.
this is a terrific question/topic to explore - thanks for bringing it up!
Funny you should post that today. I was out in my garden, that particular one as void of any colour but brown, cleaning out last year's dead stuff, and belting out to the world that old Joni Mitchel song about the spinning wheel going round & round. And I thought..this is why I love it here, I can garden naked (which I wasn't) and sing totally off key with no one to see or hear me.
That said, I can't beliebe you've lived in that many places...wow! You're right, that would freak me out. I would be happy living the rest of my days right here.
As I was reading I had the thought that home is where I am, then that is what you wrote! Also essential to my home, apart from the obvious Andy, is cats and books, then things with which to create-if nothing else, at least pencil and paper. And that feeling of not having to perform in any way, but to just enjoy.
I have lived in only 12 places I think, and I have moved quite a lot. 26! Wow!
I think home has to be somewhere you can unwind and be totally yourself. As long as you have a little space where you don't have to be the public person you are expected to be. A place where you can feel totally at ease, surrounded by the things that make you happy, like books and flowers, the art and crafts you lovingly create, objects you collect that hold memories ....
The two pieces you have here ( or is it one piece reversed)are so beautiful. They say home to me. Did you make it Kenda?
It sounds like you've found a way to become grounded in your own heart. Being true to yourself is something that can't be lost or stolen. Stuff comes and goes and can give comfort. But peace of mind can go with you always and doesn't need to be dusted.
Six months after we moved into our house a dam broke and flooded the whole valley. We had little so loss was minimal but it did teach us a lesson in priorities.
i know i'm 'home' with my grandma's crocheted blanket over me. i feel her love in it and that is indeed very comforting.
I have been moving a great deal, especialy when I lived in England ! I like the way you say a shelter for your spirit ... I think of my home as a little oasis ... there is a nomadic soul in me and I could live easily in the desert with the bare necessities (I did it), I like this idea of essential, simplicity, lightness and freedom ... and I am a homely soul too and my environment is very important, anywhere I am it must have this oasis feeling of wellbeing, retreat and welcome :)
what warmth and art in this image and word...home is the clicking of an old dogs nails on the floor..the faraway sound of a wind chime ...the soft couch ...i feel a post brewing ..kenda !
Home being a reflexion of oneself...hmmm. I have been so fecked up since October- no wonder I am cranky! This "home" is frightful and there is no peace in it...ACK!
Moving into a new place for you will be such a grand opportunity! A shake down and shake loose! It iwll of course be lovely...your reflexion.
the perfect gypsy quilt for a beautiful gypsy girl!
Your description of home sounds a lot like what mine would be. I have been doing a lot of much needed spring cleaning and it feels so good to purge unnecessary items!
Happy spring!
Yes, I am sure you will make a lovely home wherever you are! Home...some of it is about your things, so much more is about comfort. About who you are, no matter where you are.
there have been times when i have picked myself up and realized that for whatever reason, i must move. times of both happiness or sadness. inevitably people say to me, how can you leave your beautiful home? my answer is always the same, i can make anywhere i live beautiful, it is not the home, it is who lives there, how they live and why they live.
I hesitate to comment. I love to read this blog, not just for Kenda's wonderful writings but the comments left by others are so profound too and many speak to me also. Aimee dreaming of previous homes, I do that too. Leenie's grounding within your own heart - what a poet! Flowing moments nomadic soul ... Linda Sue's fecked up - my last house was like that! I contemplate Margie's who lives there, how they live and why they live whilst wrapping myself in a crochet blanket like Joie's. I don't really need to add my own story to everyone else's.
Oohh I love the quilt!
I once had a conversation with my mother whereby I was complaining that my house didn't have 'molecules of homeliness'. I felt that it was in the tiniest details that I would find my sense of home - in the molecules. Our home now, which we will hopefully be in for a long time, has great molecules! Sometimes I think all the incense I burn plays a really important part in anchoring me to my home. Incense. One of the little things.
Tonight I'm going to take photos of my favourite room and post them tomorrow. Thanks for the inspiration.
Home is my haven. I love being there. Thinking of you as you transition from one to another! I know it is going to be an interesting and delightfully aesthetic.
Like Sarah, I must have something close to hand so that I can create.
Our current house is only just starting to feel like home. maybe it's something to do with spring.
Once again you've posed an interesting subject close to our hearts that we could just talk on about. And it's interesting to read everyone elses thoughts.
I've moved about 16 times and I thought that was a lot, and Mike had never lived more than two miles from where he was born, until we moved to Sweden!
Hope the packing is going well.
That it's cozy and it has color...and my kids' laughter in it.
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