A home should be a sanctuary from the world, but I've never really felt as though I've had a home as such. My early childhood home was volatile at times, unstable at others and only a substitute for a thing called "home" for a while.
Difficulties between parents and loud arguments heard outside closed doors.
A divorce.
A father lost.
A remarriage.
More arguments with a less than kind step-father, now seen instead of only heard and another quick divorce.
Parents moving to far away cities and a living arrangement with grandparents. One who was chronically ill.
The return of a father and a new not quite home, with a step-mother only just enough older than I for me to be her competition, instead of any kind of child for her. She did her best but I was always an intrusion of sorts. And she made this clear when my father was away on business.
On to my own first flat straight after I graduated from high school.
I lived alone and, sometimes, with boys who used me as their home for a while.
I drifted overseas to look at greener pastures but couldn't bear the isolation or, more specifically, the winters in Europe after just one year.
I returned to my country of birth... and then departed again within just a few months.
A couple of years of an endless summer.
I drifted around Europe on my own... backpacking through the South until I heard news of the death of a friend and was drawn back to my home country to be responsible support and to make a life nearer my family.
So I married and had my first child.
And I tried to make a home.
But my understanding of what a home was, was too skewed by the acrimony and instability of my early years to ever make the right choices of a partner to do it with...
or even to create it myself.
Home was high drama. Home was high adrenalin. Home was kind of chaotic. Home was unstable. Home was conditional and demanding. Home was rejection for not being who I was expected to be.
Home was not safe.
I was angry about this for many, many years and I didn't even know it.
Looking back now, I only find it sad that so many of us equate these kinds of feelings with home. The all too familiar feeling of fight or flight being mistaken for love or passion. The all too familiar feeling of fear that forces us to be who we are not, so that maybe... just maybe... somebody will finally love and protect us in the way we desired and needed so much as our younger selves.
The safety we so desperately needed but were unable to be afforded with, by those that should have know better but didn't.
And it's not even anybody's fault...
Although, at times, I have blamed my parents.
I blamed them until I became a parent myself and I understood more clearly how us parents mess up in so very many ways, simply because we don't know enough.
Yet.
Or haven't healed ourselves enough.
Yet.
Back when I was my younger self, stressed out parents in a challenging world had little to no idea of how their own struggles might impact generations to come.
Because nobody knew about how this all worked back then.
A stiff upper lip. Keeping up with Joneses.
We were expected to not talk about the hard stuff. Doing so would expose us to being ridiculed, unvalidated and (ultimately) being rejected. To make sure we didn't even try that sort of thing again.
This, again, was not even intentional. This is how some systems learn to work together to create some outward semblance of "normal".
They do this by pretending that nothing is wrong. If you never address the problems, perhaps they can be avoided in full.
They can't.
The unspoken will appear regardless of how much it is ignored. And probably more so, in fact! This is the nature of the unconscious and we can't avoid it.
No matter how hard we may try.
“Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.” - Carl Jung
Still, I learned to call this "home". Even though home, again, is supposed to be our sanctuary in a sometimes frightening world.
Yet if you are unable to be honest about how you are feeling, what you are thinking or who you even truly are...
how are you ever going to feel truly safe?
I have still not found my home.
I'm 51 years old now and it took me a long time to learn that what I was recreating was never the home I truly desired.
I'm 51 and I've given away, sold and abandoned my home and all of the material possessions that filled a large three bedroomed semblance of it over the last years.
I did this in stages. Minimising. Simplifying. Scaling down...
until a life challenge pushed me towards letting all of it go in full.
I did this when I understood that home was never a place. It was never the furnishings that completed it. It was never even the people who inhabited it as it turned out.
Home was a feeling.
And it was this feeling that I had been searching for my whole life.
Warm and safe.
This is what "home" means to me these days.
This is the sanctuary I've been seeking in an often dangerous and frightening world filled with hurt people who hurt people, even though they don't mean to, and who are doing the best they can with the understanding they have at any given time...
There is no place that can save me from this, I have come to realise.
There is no sanctuary that can save me from being hurt by people.
It's not possible.
Not unless I completely isolate myself from the world and the people in it in full. And then what's the point of even being alive, I would wonder? When there's no real connection or exchange or, thus, living of the experience of being human in this thing we call Life.
Are we even alive if we aren't engaging with the world and people around us?
If a tree falls in the woods and nobody hears it, does it even make a sound?
I even tried to protect myself by completely isolating for over two years, but all that happened...
was that I stopped really living for a while.
The self-imposed isolation also gave me the space and time to figure out what "home" might be for me.
Warm and safe.
With this new understanding of home not being a place...
and no permanent sanctuary really being possible, for me, in a world that demands interaction (and action) between it's participants to fully experience being alive...
along with the inevitable joy and pain of this...
I've learned to find the sanctuary I was so desperately seeking, for so many years, inside myself.
Some days it's still hard to find, but I've only learned this was even possible in the last couple of years. I'm still beginning. At the age of 51. I'm still learning.
But I also know, now, that there's no time like the present to begin something new and that it's never to late to start again.
I also know, now, that by finding this sanctuary within myself...
I am finally able to create the actual physical home I will feel safe and warm in.
When I find the place to do it.
Yes.
It is never to late to begin again...
I love the person that you are, Nicky. Despite your vulnerabilities and fears, you have incredible strength and courage. You have insight and understanding. It may have taken years to reach this point, but you are here, now, at this moment. And that's what counts. That's what counts! Some never reach this point. Thank you for sharing so freely of your heart, removing the mask, and peeling back some of the layers to share the person healing beneath the surface. From the rooted chaos of your life, a beautiful soul is emerging. Hold on to that. Bless you, my lovely. This must have taken a deep dive to write. !LUV !ALIVE !PIZZA
Thank you Sam. What a beautiful comment ❤️
I'm finding it so incredible and also strange to be sharing like this here tbh.
This community has just opened something up in me again. Or actually... it's kind of helping me "become" if that makes sense.
I feel different writing here. Just more honest and more "me". And I think that's because this community encourages authenticity and because it is "safe" if that makes sense... again.
Very special. I'm busy brining more people into it now. They are starting to wonder what the change in me is about. It's visible.
The transformation (at last) is actually Hive and the senes of community around here. The lack of judgement. The encouragement to "just be yourself".
How interesting is that??? 😊
It's people like you who help people like me find our way home, by providing a sanctuary to be us ❤️ True story...
@dreemsteem @snook @tengolotodo @itsostylish @fionasfavourites @juliamulcahy
SO glad I found you and all the other amazing humans around here!
Your words are truly moving... I may just have shed a few tears reading this - very happy tears for you❤️ And I know exactly what you experience being part of this community... because I and many others experience it too... a sense of family - it's what keeps us centred, what holds our joy. The unconditional acceptance, love, and support of Dreemers is something that none of us bargained for when we first set foot in Dreemport, but it's what we received, it's what we share, and it is what continues to bring us all together day after day, "living, loving & learning."
😊
Yeah! ❤️
So happy I found you all!
You two have expressed this level of connection and community so beautifully. Love you both. 💛
❤️💚💕
💗🤗💗 !LUV !ALIVE
@juliamulcahy! You Are Alive so I just staked 0.1 $ALIVE to your account on behalf of @samsmith1971. (10/10)
The tip has been paid for by the We Are Alive Tribe through the earnings on @alive.chat, feel free to swing by our daily chat any time you want.
@samsmith1971 and @nickydee this is now my experience. It wasn't always like this and I'm so glad it is, now.
Isn't is just so lovely these days? ❤️ !LUV !PIZZA If you are ever interested in sharing your posts in Dreemport, just let me know Fiona and I will be happy to drop you a post which shows you how to register and get started and get you into the discord 🤗❤️
You know what amazes me?
Is how e find each other... it's like there's a golden chord that ties us all together.
I'm glad you found YOU, Fiona ❤️
Just be yourself, I have been that way for years, if people don't like it, well they can gtf!
Ta my friend. This turned out to be the hardest thing I ever learned to do! Geesh... mostly almost always there now. But hell did I have to lose a lot to get here.
Wish you'd been around to enlighten me thirty years ago! 😁
ah well better late than never I say;)
Yeah 😁
heck yeah!
@nickydee! You Are Alive so I just staked 0.1 $ALIVE to your account on behalf of @samsmith1971. (6/10)
The tip has been paid for by the We Are Alive Tribe through the earnings on @alive.chat, feel free to swing by our daily chat any time you want.
@samsmith1971(5/5) gave you LUV.
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HiveBuzz.me NFT for Peace
I feel so connected with this deeply......so touching....so thought-provoking....it's nostalgia.... I hope it doesn't take too long for me to realize....that this sanctuary is in me....away from people....away from the world....away from technology....peace with our maker....connection with the almighty....longing to create this eternity bond with something I can't place my hands on.
Humans will be humans....mistakes will be made....experience will be encountered...and time surpasses all...sometimes isolating myself is like recharging my soul and staying away from people....keeping them always at arm's length because they are humanns and they are bound to make you feel less, feel high, betrayal asf whatever it is.
But building the sanctuary in yourself gives you extra confidence but am a human and sometimes I breakdown...sometimes I lament, what am I living for...is there much reason to live? Asf!
I learnt a lot from this and yes it's never too late to change a path as far as you are alive and breathing.❤️🔥❤️🔥
I came in through #dreemport.💙🤍💙
Love & Light
What a beautiful response and I'm glad you found me on @dreemport
Meting more people from there so will work with it more and get to know @ecency as well this week for the Scholar and Scribe event - it's gonna be fun!
Yes. We are all too human :) And sometimes we hurt and it hurts...
I also need and take large gaps of silence and solitude to replenish and ground, so your comment resonates with me deeply too.
I think I allowed to much and forgave too much in years passed. Now I get to choose who I allow into my space more carefully and create a safe and joyful inner circle. But healing takes time... so as we both do that slowly, I guess.
Peaceful easy start to your week. Take care of you! 🌺
And thank you for the connection ❤️
Thanks so much
I appreciate 💙
I’m glad you’ve made peace with yourself and worked out what’s truly important ❤️🤗💕🤗❤️
Thank you :)
Work in progress! But progress... not perfection ❤️
Wow! What you have incredibly penned hits home big time (in a good way) as I almost thought a lot of it was a screenplay of my life from growing up, step parent thoughts, deep unrealised divorced father love only realized years later as I sat with him on his deathbed in Knysna and wished I could explain my wrong bitterness, become friends & catch up on years for years and visa versa but it only lasted 20 minutes before it was too late to do so. And then also so many awakenings/realisations/ understanding in my personal life only when I reached about fourty and still happening (yip, late male bloomer in that sense.)
Once again thanks for sharing that, it was special, and brass cajunas by you in my view to do so. Amazingly penned and thanks.
Thanks for your positive feedback, Steve. Much appreciated :)
Hmmm, sounds a bit like my family/home...
Today i know for a fact, that the only security we have as humans is in our mind. That for my body is in kind of a safe place.
What does that have to do with home you may ask? Now, wherever i drop my ass there is home... literally!
Same with "the Blood" which to me is often far from family. Wherever i found humans who "take" me as i am, there i found family. You're part of my family, i guess.
Like that.
Exactly like that. 😌
In support of DREEM-WOTW
Nice! 😊
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Thanks always Hivebuzz :) ❤️
Parents mess up not because they want to be because the resources they have is not enough to cater for their kids. It's not.easy being a parent.
Home sometimes may be interesting and sometimes would.vomes out to be chaotic. This depend of our mindsets related to home.
Yes.
The family unit sin't supported anymore in most Western Cultures and it, literally, takes a village to raise a child.
This results in stressed parenting and this leads to developmental trauma in the kids.
DOn't even get me started on Capitalism :/
Home most definitely is a feeling as far as I am concerned and home is wherever I lay my head. Family well what do they say we can't choose our family, yet people I have chosen over the years are more my real family.
Eat some more jam and toast and I hope that you are back to normal Nicky!
Soul family I call them. :)
Well... show me normal and I'll give you a dollar but almost nearly there...
Thanks @tengolotodo 😊🌻
normal just means not bad , I prefer good, so heck I am good!
I would rather a pound, how about a pound of dollars, I wonder how many dollars would that be, the bills not coins of course!
And the sun has gone down the swanney and come back as a wee moon!
Keep smiling Nicky, you know Monday is power up day ....
You guys make me smile :)
Okay... readying to power up! 💥
woohoo times 2!
don't forget to read the rules etc and make your post with#HivePUD tag ....
Er... now lost... I'll dig around but maybe send link to the rules please :/
You know me and admin by now I'm guessing!
haha yes, check my post it has the links in there let me see
okay follow this one, any probs just askkkkk
https://leofinance.io/@traciyork/its-here-hive-power-up-day-for-august-1st-2022
a beautiful journey you shared.
Thank you for that!
I am here from Dreemport
Thanks for keeping us writing @dreemport ❤️
Reading your posts makes me want to have coffee and conversation with you:) since thats not really in reach, I do enjoy the reading instead!
:)
Thanks!
My door is always open for coffee and conversation!
And ditto, fellow traveller. Let's stay connected ❤️
And yes we will:) (stay connected, I mean)
What a powerful read. As someone who had an almost opposite experience growing up, I still felt the pain. I'm glad you have found your sanctuary within yourself. It's good to know that now that warm & safe feeling can go with you wherever you may go.
Thank you, Julia.
I can't say I don't envy you a bit!
It still comes and goes at times. But I'm on the road at last... at least I know where I want to be headed now :) ❤️
Thank you, Julia.
I can't say I don't envy you a bit :)
It comes and goes. But I'm on the road at last... at least I know where I want to be headed now 👣❤️
Oh my goodness! This is all so relatable... like! My sanctuary is totally not a place and i think the best sanctuary is within us... I came in through Dreemport!
Hello and I'm glad you came :)
I hear you in full. Happy we connected! I've just signed up to Dreemport recently and am happy I took the time 😊❤️
I understand. Growing up in a place you were supposed to call home only for it to be filled with turbulence as a result of parents who hasn't made peace with their past. Yet, moved on to bring children to wander around in the chaos that they created.
And when it was time to create your own home, you find out that you have a distorted version of what home should be like as a result of your past .
But I am happy that you are progressing, and you are trying as much as you can to make peace with yourself, and create the home you truly desire.
And I accept. Home is a feeling.
Thanks for sharing your journey with us. 💕💕
AH... Iska.
Thank you for your understanding and the time you took to connect here :)
And for sharing a part of your journey with me ❤️
I'm glad you have found some peace :) ... How did you deal with the stress before then?
This post has been upvoted by the VYB Curation Project
Thank you... I feel like your name describes my life at the moment :)
I didn't. I was a messy mess. Constantly running and using all sorts of addictive behaviours and even substances at times to try and distract myself... from myself as it turned out.
Years of it until I learned to sit and be still and accept it all. As it comes and goes.
It's still not fun at times. Life isn't always a bed of roses. But I can also accept the rough times with more ease now because they're just a part of the journey.
No need to run. Or hide.
And thank you for the upvote. Your support means an immense amount to me. Truly... ❤️
It must be a relief to be calm, after so long! Do try to remember to enjoy life :)
!PIZZA !ALIVE !LOL
@nickydee! You Are Alive so I just staked 0.1 $ALIVE to your account on behalf of @wrestlingdesires. (7/10)
The tip has been paid for by the We Are Alive Tribe through the earnings on @alive.chat, feel free to swing by our daily chat any time you want.
Ah... this I am trying to regain. Busted!
Work in progress...
🤓
It's worth striving for :)
!PIZZA !ALIVE !LOL
@nickydee! You Are Alive so I just staked 0.1 $ALIVE to your account on behalf of @wrestlingdesires. (7/10)
The tip has been paid for by the We Are Alive Tribe through the earnings on @alive.chat, feel free to swing by our daily chat any time you want.
On it now...
And watch this space...
and thank you 😊🙏
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I have 8 years on you and these life lessons resonate. I really only began to recognise myself after 50. Partly because I give less of a fnck.
This is the reality - and joy of life. It's simple and very complicated.
Home is what you make it. I have, for various reasons always made a home around myself. I fled my parents' house as soon as I could - I was 12 - to boarding school. I don't regret it for a minute. I think we deal (or not) with "parent issues" until we somehow, as you say, make them visible. Acknowledging that things are not what they seem is so liberating. I'm still learning.
A very moving piece.
Wow woman!
How eloquent and succinct!
It's like that exactly...
And yes. Giving less of a f*ck was the biggest part of my progress... caring too much held me back my whole life. And people just use it to get what they want. And family is not necessarily safe as it turns out...
I had a misguided sense of loyalty and stayed stuck for many years.
Hard lessons. Learned late! But we learned them, right?! ❤️
Ah, but don't underrate loyalty. Just choose not to misplace it - in every sense of the word.
Happy Sunday to you!
Yes :) I'm loyal to the death... but was to those who weren't.
My bad and lesson learned.
Happy Sunday to you too <3 🌞