Goodbits

What is a homecoming? What does it mean to “come home”? It means returning to a place of belonging. A place of familiarity. For some, “home” means comfort and safety. For others, it is as wild as a forest in the depths of winter.

More than a year ago, I made the decision to leave my job to explore my creative pursuits. But, it was more than seeking a fulfilling career or finding my calling. My choice to leave was rooted in something even deeper. As confident as I was, I always felt quite lost. I was sure that the professional path I chose, backed with my identity, relationships and personal values, served as my compass.

But there was always this deep sense of uncertainty, a need to belong coupled with a need to pave my own path. But how? And when? And why?

These questions served as my guides on this long and complicated journey…a journey that would eventually lead me back to myself. A journey filled with guides along the way. It started on my daily walk home from work. A white front yard sign with a picture of a wild bird next to the words “forever wild.” Followed by a trip to Woodstock, where I was led to a small shelf at an indie book store. There lied Women Who Run With the Wolves: Myths and Stories of the Wild Woman Archetype by Dr. Clarissa Pinkola Estes, the book that would serve as my spiritual text. A box of childhood journals discovered one evening later that spring; the content of my writings became the basis of my monologue “Breathe,” a piece on living with anxiety. These journals became portals of both trauma and healing.

Stories became my guides, as a storyteller and a lover of stories. From literature on myths, archetypes, energies, ritual, Carl Jung, Joseph Campbell and ancestral healing to workshops on breath work and connecting with one’s body, these tools expanded my imagination. I began to connect the dots and see depth, richness and possibility in these patterns. I would often share my truths, discoveries, thoughts and ideas inspired by my readings with my community, hoping they would heal others as they healed me.

Homecoming of the Human Spirit is a culmination of more than a year’s worth of learning on how to fully belong to one’s self. A curated collection of writings on, among others, philosophy, science, nature, literature, mindfulness, ideas, culture, mythology, psychology, art and spirituality, Homecoming is for those who believe in making a commitment to personal transformation, both individually and collectively. Whether you’re an entrepreneur or a creative, in your thirties or in your sixties, spiritual or agnostic, if you are on a journey, this is for you.

In her book, Braving the Wilderness, Brene Brown wrote, “Belonging so fully to yourself that you’re willing to stand alone is a wilderness - an untamed, unpredictable place of solicitude and searching. It is as a place as dangerous as it is breathtaking…and it is the bravest and most sacred place you will ever stand.”

For me, nothing is as sacred as Mother Nature. When I think of the wilderness, I think of a forest of leafless trees with wild branches. Each branch is holding onto a story we have about ourselves. So it made sense to launch Homecoming on Earth Day, to honor nature, the divine feminine and her cycles.

To Courtney: thank you for your beautiful art, which is filled with your heart and soul.

To my loved ones: thank you for being on this journey with me.

To the Wild Woman community: thank you for holding space for us wilds.

And to my readers: welcome home.

Jenn

"What is homing? It is the instinct to return, to go to the place we remember. It is the ability to find, whether in dark or in daylight, one's home place. We all know how to return home. No matter how long it's been. we find our way. We go through the night, over strange land, through tribes of strangers, without maps and asking of the odd personages we meet along the road, 'What is the way?' The exact answer to 'Where is home?' is more complex...but in some way it is an internal place, a place somewhere in time rather than space, where a woman feels of one piece."

"We are willing to erect many defenses to hedge against that loneliness and fortress our fragility. But every once in a while, we encounter another such creature who reminds us with the sweetness of persistent yet undemanding affection that we need not walk alone."

"Entering the dark forest represents entering the world of original experience, where you work out your life for yourself instead of having it interpreted for you by others. By following your own life force, you grow into maturity and become the authority for your own life, living out of your center."

Selection of the Month

"Tending my inner garden went splendidly this winter. Suddenly to be healed again and aware that the very ground of my being — my mind and spirit — was given time and space in which to go on growing; and there came from my heart a radiance I had not felt so strongly for a long time… You tell me how you are able to feel fully alive every moment of the day and that your inner life is brimming over; you write in the knowledge that what you have, if one looks at it squarely, outweighs and cancels all possible privations and losses that may later come along. It is precisely this that was borne in upon me more conclusively than ever before as I worked away during the long Winter months: that the stages by which life has become impoverished correspond with those earlier times when excesses of wealth were the accustomed measure. What, then, is there to fear? Only forgetting! But you and I, around us and in us, we have so much in store to help us remember!" - Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Woman