What if we define home as the place that you can rest, find solace, let go, be yourself and find unconditional acceptance? Where is that place for you?

A few weeks ago, I was listening to a Tim Ferris podcast episode with Richard Schwartz. I was intrigued at the idea of the true Self inside each of us, who is a source of compassionate healing. After listening to the exercise between Tim and Robert, I wondered if Robert has a book, and if I could take myself through a journey to visit and soothe the wounded, scared parts of myself.

Robert Schwartz has a book You Are The One You’ve Been Waiting For. Searching for that title brought me to an article when contained a poem by Derek Walcott. Seeing the name Derek Walcott, Nobel Prize winner from St. Lucia, my place of birth, I slowed the scroll. I read the poem again and again. There is a message here for me, and maybe also for you.

Love After Love

The time will come
when, with elation
you will greet yourself arriving
at your own door, in your own mirror
and each will smile at the other’s welcome,

and say, sit here. Eat.
You will love again the stranger who was your self.
Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart
to itself, to the stranger who has loved you

all your life, whom you ignored
for another, who knows you by heart.
Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,

the photographs, the desperate notes,
peel your own image from the mirror.
Sit. Feast on your life.

Love After Love, Derek Walcott

We can apply that poem not only to heartbreak but also to depression. What if that’s the thing keeping you from being home.

Lost in Depression

Parker Palmer, in conversation with Krista Tippett, speak of understanding depression as a friend pressing you down. That is certainly traumatic and heartbreaking. Krista describes it as “your soul feels missing”. In those cases, you have to find your way through.

In the same podcast episode, Krista talks to Andrew Solomon who speaks of how medication brings him back to himself from depression.

Coming Home

When we are in pain, hurt, suffering, we need to find a way home back to our Self, that inner being who is compassionate, healthy and kind. That is the perpetual challenge.

I invite you to look for glimpses of your true, inner self. We can get caught in our head, overthinking, rationalizing. The SELF feels and has this intuitive sense of what to do to find happiness for ourselves and others. Step one is to be present to your emotions in each moment, to feel them and name them. And when you are ready to do a little more, then you can meditate, journal or share your feelings with someone whom you trust and will be kind and nurturing to you.

Credit: Photo by Neha Godbole on Unsplash

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