I have been writing about life after loss for almost 8 years and it just hit me today.
After loss, tragic loss especially, the feeling of home is hard to find.
You never feel at home again.
You move houses.
You look for new beginnings but nothing is quite like the home feeling you had before the loss.
When you felt like you belonged.
When everyone was yours.
And you were theirs.
I don’t talk about it much, but living with my stepdaughters has always made me feel like my home is not my home.
And I will leave it at that.
But here is the unexpected gift of it all.
I carry my home inside of me.
I am my home.
You can find me mostly at home walking the streets.
Writing.
In my car driving.
In the darkness of a movie theater.
At the beach.
I took my home with me.
I do live in a beautiful home overlooking mountain tops.
But the views have become more my home than what’s inside of it.
And now that my own girls are so grown up.
One of them is going to college, the other is close behind, when they are not at home I find myself not wanting to be there either.
But here is what I know.
Happiness now means the insides of my own mind. (Click to Tweet!)
It means that my thoughts, my feelings are my home.
Even when I fell in love again and married the most wonderful man, my happiness was an inside job.
I had become an island.
And I stayed an island.
Now dear friend, I must tell you that happiness that stems from you is the most wonderful thing in the whole wide world.
You never run out.
You don’t need someone else to make you happy.
Loss may be devastating for the traditional lives you used to live. But a magnificent builder of lives you never thought were possible.
May you have the feeling of home everywhere you go. A thousand places, a thousand homes made by you.
With life,
Christina
P.S. Order the Where Did You Go? book here: https://www.amazon.com/Where-Did-You-Go-Life-Changing/dp/0062689622
