Home Is Truly Where the Heart Is
By Dorian Martin, I Start Wondering Founder
“There’s no place like home.”
That refrain has been part of many women’s lives for what seems like eons. Many of us grew up eagerly waiting for the annual viewing of “The Wizard of Oz” and were continually mesmerized when the television screen transformed from basic black and white to bright Technicolor images. Who could forget those ruby-red slippers, the field of red poppies, the vivid Emerald City, and a horse of a different color? The movie’s message was clear: life imposes challenges galore (like those pesky flying monkeys), but don’t forget the power of home.
Earlier this year, I revisited my childhood memories when seeing this movie with Kaye Olsson on the literal big screen – a 160,000-square-foot wraparound LED screen – in Las Vegas’s The Sphere. Watching the epic unfold in a new way thanks to the technological enhancements and immersive sensory experiences not only left me in awe, but also introspective.
I left Las Vegas two days later with a new question to contemplate: “What exactly is home?”
A Home Base
During childhood and early adulthood, I mirrored the movie’s belief that home was where our loved ones are. In Dorothy’s case, she longed to return to Auntie Em, Uncle Henry, and the three hired hands (Hunk, Hickory, and Zeke). Her longing for that version of home became Dorothy’s “True North” during her entire journey through Oz, whether she was facing wise-cracking trees throwing apples or a menacing giant wizard, or the cackling Wicked Witch who had a penchant for skywriting.
Yet “home” also has become an aspirational goal in relation to our personal space, whether that’s an efficiency apartment or a multi-room structure. As we enter adulthood, our nesting instincts lead us to want to make our space into “a room of one’s own,” as Virginia Woolf noted. Once the basics (bed, table, chairs, etc.) are firmly in place, we continue to feather our nest to create a welcoming and nurturing environment for ourselves, our family, and our guests to escape the pressures of the outside world.
Sadly, that sense of having a permanent and safe home is increasingly being challenged as extreme weather events threaten our physical abodes. Just think about the fires this summer that engulfed neighborhoods, the rapid flooding that left communities across the globe waterlogged, the droughts that caused gardens to wither, and extreme heat that has made home feel like an oven.
This sudden and unexpected loss of home is exceptionally disorienting. I saw this with one friend whose home was destroyed by an electrical fire. While she intensely mourned the space, she was especially crushed by the loss of irreplaceable mementos, like her daughter’s collection of tennis trophies.
Some immigrants understand this type of loss after a war, famine, or another crisis forced them to try to start anew in another location. I now have a better understanding of this after learning that my paternal grandparents were immigrants as children. Their parents left behind the home that they knew to come to the United States in the late 1800s. While my grandparents never spoke of those experiences, it couldn’t have been easy.
Fortunately, we have literature that helps fill in those gaps. I recently finished the novel The Bread Givers* by Anzia Yezierska, an immigrant herself. This book, first published in 1925, provides a realistic account of an immigrant Jewish family’s life in New York City in the early 1900s. Yezierska paints a picture of not only culture shock and discrimination, but also the stark reality that many of these families faced in meeting their most basic needs of food, rent, and clothing.
The book follows Sara, the youngest of four daughters. After living initially in cramped and run-down quarters, Sara decides to escape her tyrannical father and follow her dream of education. She finds a job as an ironer in a laundry business and, longing for privacy, rents a room that meets that singular requirement. She describes the room – her home – as “a dark hole on the ground floor, opening into a narrow airshaft. The only window where some light might have come in was thick with black dust. The bed see-sawed on its broken feet, one shorter than the others. The mattress was full of lumps, and the sheets were shreds and patches. But the room had a separate entrance to the hall. A door I could shut. And it was only six dollars a month.”
Although far from a Pottery Barn advertisement, Sara’s one-room home served as the ideal launching pad for pursuing her dream. She went on to earn her teaching degree and have a professional career as a teacher, one of the only options available to women at the time. And yes, she “upgraded” her living quarters as she started that stage of life.
An Interior View of Home
Even though we don’t always want to acknowledge it, our rapidly changing world is not that different from Sara’s experiences. As the old saying goes, it’s just a different wolf in sheep’s clothes. Those new challenges include an increasingly hostile climate, a glut of sometimes dubious information, and the growing prevalence of artificial intelligence.
The latter has also made me reconsider my definition of “home” since AI can recreate my voice and expand the number of possibilities of using my image in something that never happened or that I personally wouldn’t approve of. Who am I if I’m not in control of making these personal and individualized decisions?
That realization has altered my concept of home. While I love my biological and chosen family and enjoy finding sanctuary in my physical space, I realize that home for me is my authentic self. That includes not only the body and the mind but the heart and the soul. It’s stripping away the concept of a personal brand and the masks that approach requires. Instead, being home in myself requires that I become comfortable in my own skin, gray hair and all. Ultimately, this is about truly becoming sovereign over my own life.
Fortunately, this process – which Carl Jung calls individuation – is accessible, although it requires ongoing exploration. Or as Glinda, the Good Witch reminds us, "You've always had the power, my dear. You just had to learn it for yourself."
Here are some things I’ve learned on this journey:
Evaluate personal values, behaviors, and choices.
We all have values, many of which were ingrained in us by our families and the communities we grew up in. But are those values still valid for this stage of life?
I’m still reevaluating my values, so I can’t answer that question. What I do know is that my life has shifted significantly in the past decade, so – like Sara and her changing vision for her home as her options expanded – I need to contemplate what is right for me.
And as I do this, I also am reviewing how my behaviors and decisions might be out of alignment with my values. For instance, I grew up being encouraged to value people who were different than me as well as those who had different perspectives. That value still rings true for me.
But about a decade ago, I found myself repeating a pattern where I would close down mentally and emotionally when my brother, who has a different political viewpoint, started an extended and intense one-sided intellectual discourse on a specific topic. I eventually realized that my behavior was counter to my values, which challenged me, in turn, to figure out how to better engage with my brother.
As a result, I committed to trying to create a meaningful two-way conversation about the topic that included honest questions designed to gain an understanding of my brother’s perspective.
I also considered the quality of my own energy in those moments. If I didn’t have the bandwidth to engage with him in a loving and thoughtful manner, I would postpone the conversation until a later time.
Although I’m not sure that my brother is aware of these shifts, I have noticed that this more relaxed and open approach on my part has improved our relationship. That relational shift means the world to me.
Remain in the present moment.
In relation to my new definition of “home,” I’ve found that staying in the present moment is critical. Taking this approach allows me to notice my body’s physical reactions – a clenched jaw, a tight solar plexus, shallow breathing – that has led me to move into fight or flight mode and mentally spin a narrative when I’m in an unconscious state.
Instead, I have the opportunity to recognize these triggers and take appropriate measures – whether that’s a pause, a breath, or asking a clarifying question – so I can respond instead of react to the person or situation.
Prioritize my heart’s messages over my head’s.
You may know this, but it was news to me: when we listen, the heart communicates to us. However, we live in a society that tends to default to the mind’s voice, so bringing the heart’s views online can take time.
Let me give you an example. Shortly after my father died, I got more bad news: my beloved neighbors were moving. Since their move was scheduled early in the new year, they planned to hold their annual Christmas Eve party as usual and invited me to come.
But I wasn’t emotionally handling their news well, so I realized that I needed to make different plans for that night. But what to do? My head came up with a list of possibilities, but none felt right. Instead of jumping at one of those possibilities, I sat quietly with my hands over my heart and asked what it desired.
A few minutes later, an image of a horse emerged. My brain was shocked by this outcome but then reminded me that I have loved horses since I was a child. But where was I going to find an experience with a horse on Christmas Eve? The brain hopped online again and pointed me toward a good friend who owns several horses. I messaged her, and she was excited to invite me to spend Christmas Eve brushing her horses. That day ended up being very nurturing – and I also didn’t become a “downer” at my neighbors’ festive party.
Become an independent thinker.
It’s always been easy to fall into groupthink because we’re socialized to do it. Whether that’s family, school, religion, politics, or a particular sports team, we believe that what we think is the right way. And now with technology, our belief in the rightness of our own viewpoint is underscored with an exclamation mark, thanks to algorithms that offer content aligned to our beliefs.
I’m finding that to be at home in my own skin means reconsidering and then letting go of some of the thoughts I’ve clung to over the years. For example, I recently started contemplating my fraught relationship with my father and recently read the out-of-print book “Daughters of Saturn” by Patricia Reis, which delves into women’s emotional blocks to creativity. Some might have turned their nose up at this book since it’s a feminist take on psychology, but I found that Reis’ viewpoint offered a counterbalance to other books that I’ve read over the years in relation to family, relationships, and personal growth.
Now with time, space, and Reis’s words echoing in my ears, I realize that Dad had his own psychological demons that determined his choices and decisions. His tendency to criticize me was ingrained in him through his own upbringing by his parents, and his continual focus on work was, in actuality, his expression of his “love language” of service.
That realization, along with my understanding of my father’s favorite status with my paternal grandmother (a.k.a. “The Wicked Witch,” as I previously described in an earlier I Start Wondering column), has released some of the inner demons that have tortured me for most of my life.
Taking these steps helped me realize that, as Glinda noted, I ultimately do have the power within me. And embracing a perspective that honors my heart, soul, mind, and body and also commits to being present in the moment means that I ultimately am at home, no matter where I am or what’s happening around me.
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