As we near the end of this calendar year, I find myself returning to the guiding question I set for 2024:
How expansive can a sense of home be?
I’ve explored this question in terms of place, but I’ve especially turned it toward people. Throughout 2024, I visited loved ones frequently, and I allowed certain places and certain people to stretch and deepen my internal sense of home. That experience of home is now both wider and richer.
But as this year comes to a close, I find a new question emerging:
Can home be… a time?
With this question, we might imagine ourselves in a past era when we felt especially at home or recall a chapter of our lives when we felt most fully ourselves. Those directions make sense for this question.
But I’m wondering about something else:
Can home be a time when certain narratives have shifted—when they are no longer active, no longer tripping us up, no longer showing up in our thoughts, our bodies, or our actions?
Are we more at home when these narratives are firmly in the past?
“I’m not wanted.”
“I’m not capable.”
“That’s impossible.”
“That’s foolish.”
“My needs don’t matter.”
“My needs can’t be spoken.”
“I still feel guilty.”
“I still feel ashamed.”
And more…
Certainly, these thoughts might bubble up from time to time. But if we can move into a new era, one where old childhood messages or operating narratives from relational trauma or conflict no longer dominate, do we feel more at home in ourselves?
Can home be a time when these narratives are no longer active?
— Renee Roederer
Smuggling Grace 