Hello, dear friends,
I hope your Weekend was happy, weather sunny or fresh.
This morning I want to share with you a post by my favorite inspirational coach, author Jennifer Louden.
It spoke to me, as yesterday we went from a drive around my childhood hometown of Kifissia, a leafy suburb in the North of Athens.
Jen's discription fits with my feelings so well. Highlights are mine.
I'll post some photos later.
Enjoy!
Greetings from Sunny Florida!
I'm back "home" visiting family. I grew up in Stuart, Florida and left for the West Coast at 19 and never came back. It wasn't that I didn't like my small town -- I love small town life! -- but I was looking for a different climate (literally) and also the wild expansiveness I found in the west.
But deep sweet ties remain here and I finally made it back for a long overdue visit. I'm smack in the middle of my time here and I wanted to share this thought from my experience:
You can't go home again because you are always home.
Let me explain.
I have found myself feeling so wistful, visiting the house I grew up in, wishing with all my heart I was 10 years old again, hearing my dad come home and running out to hug him. He would say, "Now wait, Jenny, I'm all sweaty, wait till I wash my hands." He would go to the utility room and wash his hands with Lava soap. And I would jump on one foot and then the other, telling him about the book I read all day, what Barb and I did, or how I rode my bike as fast I could.
This sadness -- not just for Dad being gone, but also for my younger self who could skateboard down that bridge or run madly down that golf course so fast and strong, for my friends who have passed on, and the clean innocence of youth -- started to make me twitchy. It all felt so hard. I wanted to get away from it. I wanted to eat sweets. I wanted to be someone who didn't have to always feel so much.
But then, meditating on these feelings each morning, I found underneath them this place where all the memories and all the people and all the Lava soap in the world is still alive, in me. A place where there is such vast tenderness. A home place that is always in me, always in you, always here for us to remember, and rest in.
It makes me cry just feeling it again. But good tears, grateful tears. That we can have such vast lives and love so much and it's all part of us forever.
I am always stunned: when I stop running and judging, and settle in to touch and be with what is here, I come home.
I hope this makes some sense and is of some use to you today.
With great love,
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