Home: I'm letting go of the resistance

After teaching a Journaling with your Chakras ( root) class, I began to unwind at home and think of how ,I too, needed to journal about the many themes pertaining to the root Chakra: home, family, work, trust, security, and structure. It's funny how quickly, I as teacher, become student. Towards the end of class one of my students in said, "these questions are hard." I thought to myself, so is life. I responded slow and calm and said, " I know these questions may seem '"hard'" but we have to ask ourselves if we have the courage to ask the questions that will help us to grow, heal, change the narratives of the past, and unravel the thorn patterns that keep us from moving forward. Our root chakra is about our foundation. If our foundation has been fractured, cracked, abandoned, then its our right- our choice to learn the tools to repave, make brand new, steady, and strong.

In thinking to myself and putting my books on the stool by my desk, I looked below and saw that there was a word magnet underneath. When I went to pick it up , I saw that it read "trust." I quickly exhaled, picked up the word magnet and said, "of course Spirit, of course!" Trust was a word that didn't land itself into meaning for me until the last year or so. Words like "lucky" with the pronoun of she and they were more common or phrases of "I wish", "I hope." I've been battling with trust because it wasn't a part of my foundation. When I think of home I think of moving from apartment-to apartment, to finally a house but leaving shortly after because my father and wife made the decision to divorce. Before, I could settle and begin to root, I was on the road again, searching for home with my father. Work meant, my father would be gone for three months and then home for a month, hence his schedule was demanding and exhausting. I spent my teenage years being checked on by relatives but mainly alone until my father met my current step-mother. Even though, "we"- her three kids and myself lived together in a house, my father still had to be on the road because he was a truck driver. From a really young age I learned that work was essential, it was survival, and took up much of ones time. It didn't leave much time for talks, rest, stillness, and the surprise bliss of the everyday. My day-to-day was spent doing homework, chores, and waiting for the phone to ring to see if it was my father on the other line and hoping he was in a good enough mood to hear me, listen to my day, make room -space for my growing.

The next day after journaling I was laying in bed and went into a full cry, "I miss my mother," I said. I laid in by bed and allowed every tear to fall and hugged myself with my blanket. My parent's divorced at the age of four and since then I experienced two step-mothers and three divorces by the time I was fifteen. I never really had time nor gave myself permission to mourn the absence of my mother and how my parents severed relationship made me question love for myself and the possibility of sustaining it , allowing it to grow, and thrive. Instead I felt completely lost in the sea of my parents new relationships and step-children. I use to reach for my mother often. This meant scattered calls, hoping she would answer and get back to me soon, random visits, and trying to locate her newest home situation. This last mother's day I didn't reach for her. No text, call or email. I didn't even turn on the television because every time I did there was some commercial about "mother". As if "mother" is only smiles, fun, laughter, quality time, and hugs. Of course these were performances of "mother" for the consumer but I know it exist for many.

For me "Mother" has meant silence, distance, unanswered questions, absence-a loss.

I envy those girls who mother's care enough for them to argue with them, spend quality time, and most importantly the mothers that can sustain themselves with emotional maturity, not forcing their daughter's to carry the weight of their shadow selves.

It's been three years since I graduated from CalArts and I have no doubt that the resistance to be at "home" is connected to the multitude of loss. I left these towns, cities, and memories in hope of greater pastors but the "greater pastor" has been learning ways and gaining tools that will assist me in my retrieval of hurt-damanged parts of self and repairing step-by-step.