Home sweet, not my home

It's about un-becoming, not becoming

Not For Sale

My body is my home

Yet I keep getting convinced that I need to sell or upgrade

So much time spent looking for another home to live in

Comparing to other homes, doing walk throughs, and pretending to live in homes that were never meant to be mine

Home sweet, not my home

If not a new one, then for sure this home of mine needs a full reno

Anyone is invited to demo day because I could never trust my own skills – could I?

I ask others to help me transform, make better, improve

This remodel will give me the perfect home right– right?

But is it really acceptance when it still needs to become something

Is it true change when I still don’t know how to live there

Are the same people telling me my house’s vale, the same people profiting from my discontent with it

Guests, it’s time to leave

This was always meant to be a solo job

I need to spring clean

Widows open so I can breathe

Curtains pulled back so I can see my home’s beauty  

Sweep out all the built-up debris from inviting other’s opinions in

Time to make space for me to live here

I’m not leaving

This is my home

my body

my soul

It never needed to be sold

It never required an update

It never demanded change

It just wanted to be lived in by me

- Nicole Grouchy (2019)

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the trends of wellness and being our “best self.” It’s no secret that I’m a fan of personal, soul work and delight in my fair share of woo-woo, spiritual things - hence this account and things I post. However the longer I live from this realm and allow myself to be inspired by like minded people I notice rabbit holes being labelled as healing. Trust me, I’ve been down a few!

I still truly believe that at the core of all this inner work is an invitation to step into the most authentic version of ourselves. But I’m starting to feel that as this type of living becomes more embraced, so does it’s risk to become another avenue for capitalism to do it’s thing. It starts being a quest to find ourselves rather than be ourselves!

At the scroll or a swipe there are hundreds of meditation challenges waiting for you, a retreat that will change your life if your wallet allows, a 5AM morning routine that guarantees enlightenment if done daily and a cold plunge tub that can be set-up in your backyard for year round use. Yes, all these things I have tried in some variation or another and I can testify to their benefits. But at what point do we start doing these things not to be our best self, but to be a better self!

We stop choosing what works for us a la carte style and buy into the set menu as the only option available. Making wellness culture into a form of diet culture, where the products being sold and beliefs being preached make us believe we are not enough. That there is something wrong with us and we require fixing. That we need do X Y and Z to become our best self. As if we aren’t already!

‘There is no end destination to get to, no time to arrive. Rather, more of yourself to embrace and expand to’. - Rebecca Campbell

I’ve had to remind myself many times that this journey requires commitment, trust and surrendering, but it doesn’t demand I live my life in a way that works for another person. It doesn’t need me to change everything about myself, but rather to just embrace myself. I think it’s easy to confuse hyper-focus with awareness. To mix up rigidity for discipline. To think there is a perfect list that is going to make me become my perfect self, but neither exist.

If the daily rituals we invest our time and money into are not bringing us back to ourselves, then we’re doing it wrong. If it feels like chasing and waiting to arrive at the ultimate destination then maybe it’s time to reassess. If healing is about anything other than just being then why would we want it. If we’re following practices for how to live, but it’s distracting us from really living then why do it.

Amongst this great enlightenment movement, I think it’s time to remember, for myself and maybe for you too, that this way of living is not about becoming. It’s about UN-becoming everything we’ve been taught and conditioned to believe so we can return back to our true self. Coming home to that self only requires softening, resting and knowing you are enough just as you are. You can love this space of learning to grow, but also love where you are right now. Healing can look like reading a self-help book, but it can also be devouring a fluffy fictional novel. It can be doing a cold plunge one day and taking a hot bubble bath the next. Because what I am coming to learn (again and again) is that it all comes back to living. Living from where we are now and as who we are now. That coming back to you true home is the healing journey!

Sending love from where I sit,

N

Book: Summer wouldn’t be summer without a new Elin Hilderbrand book

Song: This collab is everything

Routine: Napping and TV watching with my 11 year old Boston Terrier, Kobe

Follow: STEPHANIE DANLER - this post is incredibly beautiful and honest.

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