What does it mean to feel at home?
Most of us associate home with a place, the people we love, or the community where we’ve established roots. It’s where we feel safe, comfortable, and accepted. It’s where we can take off our shoes, let our guard down, and stop worrying about how we’re being perceived.
But what happens when the familiar structures of our lives change? When we leave a community, end a relationship, change careers, or simply outgrow an identity we’ve spent years cultivating? Do we lose our sense of belonging along with them?
This question has been on my mind lately, particularly as I’ve been reflecting on my recent move from Santa Cruz to Marin County and my studies in Taoist Death Medicine.
One of the self-inquiries from the course asks:
Am I at home within myself?
It’s a deceptively simple question, and the more I’ve sat with it, the more I’ve come to understand that home is something much bigger than I originally imagined.
Growing Beyond Who We Were
Last summer, I left Santa Cruz after twenty years, said goodbye to an established Chinese medicine practice, and began an entirely new chapter of life with my husband and stepchildren in Marin County.
You might imagine that leaving behind so many familiar parts of my life would have brought about some sort of identity crisis. But surprisingly, it didn’t.
I didn’t feel like I was losing myself. I felt like I was expanding, like a tree growing new branches or an octopus gaining an extra tentacle. 🐙
That doesn’t mean I haven’t missed parts of my old life. About five or six weeks into the transition, I found myself really longing for my clinical work. I missed the intimacy of being invited into people’s lives, learning about their physical and emotional experiences, and having the privilege of helping them navigate their health.
It reminded me how much joy and meaning that work brings me. I hadn’t lost that part of myself simply because I’d left my practice. It was still there, asking to be expressed again, perhaps in new ways.
I’m rebuilding my practice here while also exploring writing and other avenues that allow me to engage with the work I love.
Maybe that’s part of what it means to be at home within ourselves. We can allow our lives to change without requiring ourselves to remain the same.
We Were Never Meant to Do This Alone
There’s another part of this transition that I want to acknowledge because it would be easy to tell a lovely story about trusting the universe and following my heart without mentioning the very practical circumstances that made it possible.
My husband, Kevin, provides the financial stability for our family. Without that support, I almost certainly wouldn’t have made this move, at least not in the way that we did.
I had a fulfilling practice in Santa Cruz, but it wasn’t making me wealthy. I could keep my head above water, and I was proud of what I’d built, but walking away from that income without another source of financial security would have been a very different proposition.
And yet, I’m still a little embarrassed to admit that.
Kevin is generous in reminding me that my contributions to our family matter just as much, even though they look different. My increased presence at home and involvement with the children support his ability to do what he does professionally. We’re supporting one another.
I’ve been thinking about this a lot, particularly because I have friends approaching forty who are still single and navigating all of life’s responsibilities on their own. Housing, career, finances, health, relationships, and the occasional existential crisis are a lot for one person to manage!
We’ve become so enamored with independence that I wonder whether we’ve forgotten how much freedom can come from interdependence.
Being supported doesn’t mean we’re incapable. Needing other people doesn’t mean we’re incomplete. And contributing to a family or community doesn’t always mean bringing home a paycheck.
We are relational beings. We need our people, our communities, our villages.
Perhaps being at home within ourselves doesn’t mean becoming so independent that we no longer need anyone. Perhaps it means knowing ourselves well enough to participate in relationships without losing ourselves in them.
The Freedom to Be Entirely Yourself
When I think about the moments in my life when I’ve felt most deeply at home, the first things that come to mind are love, acceptance, and being understood.
My closest friendships and my marriage have given me the extraordinary gift of being able to show up exactly as I am.
And this may come as a shock, but I am not always the most charming version of myself (gasp).
My people have seen me in bad moods, difficult seasons, and moments when I was probably being a real pain in the ass. They’ve seen the parts of me that aren’t particularly impressive, mature, agreeable, or spiritually evolved.
And they love me anyway. 🫶
I don’t have to fake a smile, pretend I’m doing great, or carefully manage how I’m being perceived. I can simply be myself.
When we feel accepted, we no longer have to expend so much energy trying to earn our place. We can acknowledge our imperfections without making them evidence that something is fundamentally wrong with us at our core.
Of course, being loved unconditionally doesn’t mean we’re exempt from accountability or personal growth. We still have to own our behavior, apologize when appropriate, and make an effort not to be assholes.
But there’s a difference between growing because we want to become more conscious and growing because we believe we’re fundamentally unworthy as we are.
I think we could all use a little more of the former.
The World Is Alive, and We Are an Integral Part of It
My experience of belonging doesn’t end with my relationships with other people.
One of the most meaningful changes in my life since leaving Los Angeles for college over twenty years ago has been a growing sense of relationship with the natural world.
When I’m walking through the California redwoods and oaks, I often feel the presence of the trees, plants, animals, and even the mountain itself. I experience the landscape as alive and aware, and sometimes I have the distinct feeling that its attention is turned toward me.
I first experienced this sense of aliveness and sentience in the natural world one misty winter night on magic mushrooms in Venice Beach. What began as a mystical peak experience has since become a familiar part of my everyday life.
Lately, I’ve found myself wanting to greet the trees as I pass.
Hello. Thank you for your service, lungs of the earth. I love you.
I know. 🙈
But genuinely, it feels strange not to acknowledge them. It would be like walking into a room full of people and refusing to say hello. Just, rude.
I don’t experience nature simply as scenery or somewhere I go to exercise and clear my head. I feel myself in relationship with it.
Through years of meditation, contemplative practices, and exploration of consciousness, what began as a philosophical understanding of interconnectedness has gradually become something I experience more directly. I feel as though I’m participating in an ongoing conversation with something greater than myself.
In Taoist philosophy, we call this the Dao.
You don’t have to share my spiritual beliefs to appreciate what I’m describing. Perhaps you’ve experienced something similar while watching the ocean, sitting beneath an old tree, looking at the stars, or feeling unexpectedly moved by the beauty of the natural world.
For me, these moments are reminders that I’m part of something much larger, and that experience feels like home.
I believe that the same consciousness that animates the natural world also animates us. We’re not separate from the intelligence of life, observing it from the outside. We’re expressions of it, experiencing it through the unique circumstances of our human lives.
Nonduality
This brings me to something that Eckhart Tolle explores so beautifully: the distinction between duality and nonduality.
In our ordinary human experience, we perceive the world through opposites: self and other, birth and death, pleasure and pain. We experience ourselves as separate individuals moving through a world of seemingly separate things. This is the nature of duality.
Nonduality points toward something deeper: the possibility that beneath these apparent divisions, there is an underlying unity of consciousness. Tolle describes this as Being, a dimension of awareness that exists beneath our thoughts, identities, and the forms through which we experience life.
Through presence, we can begin to recognize that our individuality is only one dimension of who we are, without needing to reject or escape our humanity.
And here’s where it gets interesting. If we are fundamentally connected to this greater whole, why do we experience ourselves as separate individuals in the first place? Why come into a world where we can experience extraordinary love and beauty, but also heartbreak, suffering, and loss?
Well, I have some thoughts on that.
Earth School
I believe we’re souls having a human experience.
Yes, like the bumper sticker. And yes, I realize how that sounds. 😂
But the idea resonates deeply with my understanding of consciousness and the teachings I’ve been studying.
I think of human life as Earth School, or perhaps Earth University, depending on how ambitious your soul was feeling when it enrolled.
Within my spiritual understanding, we come into physical form to experience something that isn’t available to us in the same way in an immaterial state of consciousness. We agree to the limitations of having a body, experiencing the world through our senses, and navigating a reality defined by time, space, and the apparent separation between self and other.
We experience individuality, relationships, love, loss, uncertainty, and all the complexity that comes with being human. I believe there’s a karmic dimension to this, and that our experiences offer opportunities for the evolution of consciousness across lifetimes.
But here’s something I think is important: the point isn’t simply to transcend the human experience. It’s to actually have it.
We get to taste incredible food, dance to music that makes our whole body move, laugh hysterically with friends, fall in love, and marvel at the beauty of this extraordinary planet.
And yes, we also experience grief, disappointment, heartbreak, and pain.
All of it belongs to the curriculum.
Imagine signing up for the extraordinary adventure of being human and then spending the entire time engaged in relentless self-examination, trying to fix every perceived flaw and accelerate your spiritual evolution.
Good Lord. Give yourself a break!
There’s a difference between living consciously and constantly working on ourselves.
Sometimes the most conscious thing we can do is put down the self-help book, stop analyzing our emotional patterns, and go enjoy being alive.
Meaning Doesn’t Always Arrive on Our Schedule
I’m someone who tends to extract meaning from just about everything. If something significant happens in my life, you can bet I’ll find myself contemplating what it taught me and how it fits into the larger story of my becoming.
But I’ve also learned that understanding doesn’t always arrive when we want it.
Sometimes something happens and it’s simply painful, disappointing, confusing, or unfair. We don’t necessarily need to figure out what it means while we’re still in the middle of experiencing it.
We can allow ourselves to feel the grief, anger, sadness, or uncertainty without immediately turning it into another assignment for Earth School.
Often, after the experience has settled, meaning begins to emerge naturally. We recognize something about ourselves that we couldn’t see before, understand why a particular relationship mattered, or discover that an experience changed our priorities.
Sometimes that understanding takes years. And sometimes we never fully understand why something happened.
Trust me, I know how difficult this can be when faced with life’s most challenging circumstances. I’ve sat across from a mother desperately needing her final round of IVF to work, and witnessed families torn apart by addiction and tragedy.
We don’t need every experience to reveal its purpose on a rigid timeline. Instead, we can remain curious, open, and trusting while allowing life to unfold.
Perhaps this is one part of what it means to feel at home within ourselves: not requiring certainty, resolution, or constant improvement in order to be at peace with where we are.
We Don’t Have to Earn Our Way Home
One of the most comforting aspects of my spiritual beliefs is the sense that I’m supported by something greater than myself.
I experience my relationship with the Dao almost like being the child of wonderfully loving parents. I can leave home, spread my wings, go off to college, make mistakes, change directions, and discover who I am through the experience of living.
But underneath all that exploration is a deep sense of safety.
I know I will be welcomed home again.
Within my understanding of consciousness, death isn’t the end of our existence but a return to the greater whole from which we’ve emerged. I don’t imagine that return as a moment of judgment or condemnation, but as a homecoming.
Perhaps we review our lives with a much broader awareness than we have access to while we’re here. Perhaps we finally understand experiences that seemed impossible to make sense of during our lifetime.
But I believe that understanding is accompanied by profound love and acceptance.
We’re essentially children of the universe doing our best to navigate an extraordinarily complicated human experience. We are all very brave for signing up for the course.
That doesn’t mean our actions don’t matter or that we shouldn’t take responsibility for the ways we’ve hurt ourselves or others. Quite the opposite. Our relationships, choices, and experiences matter enormously.
But I don’t believe we’re here to earn the right to be loved.
I believe we’re already loved.
And that brings me back to the question that started this entire inquiry.
Are you at home within yourself?
For me, that sense of home has become less dependent on where I live, what I accomplish, how much money I make, or whether my life unfolds according to plan.
I feel at home when I’m with people who love and accept me, when I’m walking through the forest and acknowledging the life around me, and when I’m quiet enough to experience the presence of something greater than myself.
And perhaps most importantly, I feel at home knowing that I don’t have to become someone else to belong.
We’re here to experience this extraordinary, messy, beautiful adventure of being human. To love, learn, make mistakes, grow, and hopefully enjoy ourselves immensely along the way.
And when our time here is complete, I believe we return to something that has held us all along.
Maybe the work of conscious living isn’t about finding our way home.
Maybe it’s about remembering that we never really left.
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