Finding Your Way Home
Do you ever have a sense of overwhelm that makes you feel like you’ve lost yourself? Do you ever find yourself absent in the many roles you play and the things you feel you have to do to support those roles? I found this comment in my inbox last week. “I think I’m completely lost and can’t find my way home. Can you write about that for your next blog?” Yes, I can.
There are many paths that can lead you home. Whether you’re in the middle of an overwhelming time in your life or you just feel you aren’t showing up in your own life, here are several ways you can get back to yourself.
Actually go home. While this may sound fairly obvious, it’s not always the easiest option physically. If you have a good relationship with your parents, and find love and comfort in being home, this can be the ticket. If you’re too far away for a quick visit, pick up the phone, send an email, send a card. This can connect you to feelings of love and appreciation of you, just because you’re you.
If home isn’t the place to go—maybe you don’t get that loving, accepting vibe from your family, or your parents are no longer here. Find a sibling, a childhood friend or mentor, someone you connect with from your past and give them a call. These people can often help us remember who we were before life started piling up on us.
Make your surroundings conducive to your well-being. When my oldest son went off to college, I re-did his room in colors I love and when I felt overwhelmed, I’d go in there and just sit on the bed in the clean, chaos-free space. Fast-forward twenty years and I’m doing the same thing with my new office. I painted it a soothing green, my favorite color. It’s still in progress (yes, that means it’s a mess right now), but I have many of my treasures in there: my grandma’s candy dish, the dish my father-in-law collected his spare change in, turtles gifted to me by various family members, one of my dad’s rosaries, a hat box that was my mother’s, pictures painted for me by my grandchildren. When you walk into the room it has “me” written all over it. If you don’t have a space like this, maybe you should think about creating one (even if it’s just a corner of a room).
Remind yourself that it’s not your job to be everything for everyone. I know sometimes we can’t avoid the overwhelm, but it’s usually short term; the school play will be over in a week, company will be leaving in two days, and our friend will be out of the hospital in no time. But if you’re finding yourself overwhelmed most of the time, it’s time to step off the hamster wheel of needing to please everyone and learn to say no to commitments you can’t handle without losing yourself. Your first commitment is to yourself and your family. Don’t take on so much that you can’t do that commitment justice.
Take a quick reading break. Have you ever found yourself reading slower at the end of a book you don’t want to leave? I felt that way about Rick Bragg’s Ava’s Man. When I’m in a tough place, I turn to the third page of the epilogue and read the passage Rick Bragg wrote about himself imagining the reunion as he’s flying home. It never fails to slow me down and often makes me cry like it did the first time I read it. It only takes a few minutes to read, but it reminds me of how much the people I come from and their traditions have shaped my life and how lucky I am to have been a part of my own family as well as the southern family I married into. A good cry never hurts either.
Engage with nature. Don’t just look out the window, step outside. Feel the wind in your hair, the sun on your skin. Breathe in the fresh air, deeply. Listen to the birds chirping. Go for a walk if you have a few minutes. This doesn’t have to take up a lot of time, just enough to infuse you with the miracle that life is. Slow down and try to enjoy your busy-ness.
This, too, shall pass. Everything changes. The overwhelm should pass in time as you get out from under all that’s going on. Or, if your life feels like it’s all overwhelm, work on changing that. Much of it is within your own power. Things may not change overnight, but keep moving in a direction that takes some of the stressful feelings away. Taking even small steps in the right direction can give you a sense of control over your life and can help spur you on to bigger steps.
If the overwhelm is not anything you can do anything about—a family member’s illness, taking care of an elderly parent, a divorce—ask for help. Even just having someone to talk to, whether a friend or someone from a support group, you don’t have to face life’s big challenges alone. Chances are, there are other people you know who have been through what you’re going through. Reach out if you feel comfortable, or confide in someone you love and know won’t put your business out there in front of others if that’s more your style. There are people out there who love you and would be willing to help out if they only knew you needed them.
Don’t be too hard on yourself. It’s life. We all have our ups and downs. We each deal with it the best we can. This is how we gain knowledge and wisdom. We survive and then we are able to help others do the same.
I’d love to know what makes you feel overwhelmed and what you do to find your way home to yourself. Leave a comment if you would. Everyone can benefit from knowing a few new strategies!
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Love this message
Thanks, Becky. I appreciate that!
I don’t think I’ve ever felt “absent in my own life.” I’m always right here right now, whether I like it or not. But I have certainly felt overwhelmed many times. And nearly all of the suggestions that you mention, Carol, I have employed at some point! Not as strategies per se but as… actions that I felt were needed in the moment. So it’s great to see them all listed and laid out—that’s not something I would think to do necessarily.
I wanted to speak specifically to the notion of “going home.” Seven years ago, when I and my family relocated to Vermont from California, that was in some sense what I was doing. Returning to my roots. But of course I was doing so during a very different part of my life, being older, having children. And I was doing it for many complex reasons, only one of which was because of feeling overwhelmed. At any rate, what I found interesting were my very mixed feelings about returning “home.” In some ways, it felt like a failure. Somehow, somewhere, I’d internalized the notion that our lives should only be forward-looking; so I wrestled with self-judgment and with second-guessing myself, and with thoughts of defeat. You know? “What a loser! I’m right back where I started!”
Now, seven years later, I have a much different perspective, and I’m grateful to have followed my intuition. I’m living a more creative, more connected, more contented, more interesting, more peaceful, and more purposeful life. Although I’m not doing anything particularly splashy or glamorous, I’m finding joy in all the little things. And I’m involved in activities that I love but was always too busy for (or overwhelmed for) when I lived elsewhere.
So I would say, in general, don’t be afraid to circle back around to a familiar place or idea or way of being. There’s healing to be had in that.
Annie, thanks so much for sharing that. And you’re right. There is healing to be had there. I have heard many people tell me that going home (for some, even just a visit) made them slip back into the role they had as a child and feel very small. While I’ve never experienced that myself, I can understand it. As someone who would have loved to move back home though, I always saw it as going out into the world and doing my thing, then bringing all that I learned about the world. about life, about myself back to the place and people I belong with. When you go to other places and meet other people, live different lifestyles, and see things you were never exposed to growing up, it makes you appreciate what you grew up with. When you come back, your heart is bigger, more open, and you see things through new eyes. I never would have suspected you felt like a loser moving back home. You are one of the most kind, funny, articulate, together women I know and it just never occurred to me! All the while I was thinking “What a great adventure!” I love how you ended your comment: “don’t be afraid to circle back around to a familiar place or idea or way of being. There’s healing to be had in that.”
I read a poem online probably 20 years ago. I do not remember the name of the poem or the author. But this one line has stuck with me all these years. It goes like this…
“If time would let me have my way,
I’d run back home to yesterday.”
Love it!
As a wife, a mother, a educational assistant, Kid’s Club instructor, a PTA mom, a soccer mom, a basketball mom, a Cub Scout den leader and Assistant Cub Master, (not to mention all the rolls I played at home) I hadn’t felt like myself in many years. At the tender age of 48 I returned to school to get my art degree. It was the best thing I ever did for myself. I slowly began to find that sense of self that I had been buried underneath all those different hats I wore. In that time I re-found my confidence, my ability to stand strong, and my love of life and adventure. I also found my way back to the path I started to travel so long ago. On that old, but new path, I found my way back to my family, my home, and the love and comfort from my childhood that I was desperately needing. Here it is, 11 years later, and I am not only healing, but I am looking back on my life and realizing that when I felt the most afraid was when I was my strongest. When I felt like a total failure, was when I was working my way to the finish line. There was a time when I could not find a shred of anything recognizable within myself. I now look at that time as my metamorphosis. It was the time I needed to gather together who I was and who I was becoming so that I could emerge into who I was meant to be.
Life is just such a journey…a seed is planted. There are torrential rains, droughts, compaction from people walking all over the seed without taking notice that they’re crushing something precious, and then, when the conditions are just right, the seed grows and blooms into a beautiful flower!
Hiraeth (pronounced [hiraɪ̯θ] is a Welsh word for which there is no direct English translation. The online Welsh-English dictionary of the University of Wales, Lampeter likens it to homesickness tinged with grief or sadness over the lost or departed. It is a mix of longing, yearning, nostalgia, wistfulness, or an earnest desire for the Wales of the past.
from en.wiki
Thanks Jim! I often feel this way myself. I need to add Hiraeth to my dictionary.
I am feeling overwhelmed by chronic illness – an invisible illness that takes a heavy toll- so good timing for me Carol. I think I’m going to take a page from Lou’s book and go run (or walk slowly 😉) around my yard in my bare feet! Or maybe lie in the grass for a while. Hopefully my neighbors won’t think I’m peculiar! But I’m working on not caring about that too!
Nancy, whatever works! I like the barefoot lying in the grass idea. Being outside with nature, whatever the season, has such a deep feeling of the miracle that life is, it always humbles me and brings me back to what really matters. I also don’t mind if the neighbors think I’m peculiar, I already know I am. I hope your illness becomes less overwhelming and you can discover ways to make it easier to live with.
Thank you for the inspiration Carol! I did go barefoot and it felt great! Winter will be more challenging, but I love walking around in a snow storm too. So soft and quiet. Cold has never bothered me 😍.
Hey, the days are very barefoot in the summer on Walnut Street! Maybe in the winter too!
I loved this message. There are so many great ideas and wonderful advise here. I agree, go home sometimes, go back to that place of your birth. The hard thing for me is that I have lost both of my parents in the last five years. So going home is a lot different. Its not a bad thing, just very different. Fortunately, my brother and his wife renovated and updated my parents home and live in it. We just came to the conclusion how wonderful this is and have started new traditions of gathering family members during the year in a “New, Old” home full of good bones and a great foundation from my parents. Home will always be home. If you still have your parents go as often as possible. Home will always be home, whether the same or different. You can’t ever take the South Georgia girl out of my heart and soul. I was born there and will rest my head there one day next to my daddy. Thank you Carol Horton. Love you.
Susan, I love what you said here: “Home will always be home, whether the same or different.” What a gift to have lived in the same place all your growing up life and then to be able to go out into the world and have your parents still there holding your world safe until you return. I was lucky enough to have that, too. The house in the picture on the post is the house I grew up in and where my parents lived until they passed away. A new family lives there now making their own memories. It’s wonderful that all of you can still gather in the home you loved, although different, and continue to share your lives and love and enjoy the family that grew out of the foundation your parents built so long ago. But when you’re not there and you’re needing a dose of “home”, you need look no further than your heart to find it.
Oh Susan,my friend the great stories you have shared ! I remember telling you we could write a book. The interesting ‘ characters would be so easy to embellish . I do believe we could come up with something even Rick Bragg would love. Take the time to write your many stories, if only for yourself. The memories are there,keep them and your parents will be too. Love you.