There’s a verb that doesn’t exist—the one that means, as we say in the South, I don’t know whether I’m coming or going. Because really, I’m doing both: coming home and leaving it.
This year has been a lot about the noun of that—home—and making definition of it, figuring out what that means. For me.
Home is where the heart is. We’ve all seen that one cross-stitched and hung on a wall. But where do I hang my heart?
Home has been a confusing thing for me for a long time. Maybe being adopted has something to do with it. Hard to say, because I only know how I am, how it feels inside me.
My family was always my family. Mine. I belonged to them. I felt that, and still do. Their history felt like my history, even if the blood ran from somewhere else.
But I always felt like I came from somewhere beyond all that.
I left North Carolina looking for that place. But really, I was like a tumbleweed blowing, who occasionally found comfort or curiosity between some walls.
Last year, when I left Todos Santos for the summer, I knew something was changing. The wind had picked up again. And when I returned, something was different.
Me.
The thing is, these days, it’s not that I don’t know where home is. It’s that all the places feel like one. It’s an upside-down thing that feels right inside me.
What proved that to me the most was coming back to this place that, for so much of my life, I wanted to leave so badly—North Carolina—and even here, feeling at home.
It’s been almost half a year here now. I came, without knowing, to shepherd my mom out her exit door, and then stayed behind to tidy up after.
These have been some of the deepest and wildest months of my life. And I’m grateful that I could be here fully and long enough to be changed by them.
As I close out this chapter, I want to do so fully—to publish the writing from these many months, the words taken directly from my journal pages. It’s the way I process my life and also honor it—the way I live my life most fully. My wish is that you will find something in the following pages that helps you feel your own life more deeply. It’s certainly the thing that these months have given me.
Watch the Video
This writing was inspired by Quincy Jones’ song “Comin’ Home Baby,” which, after it came on the radio, I listened to on repeat. I made a short film around the song and these months in North Carolina, which you can find on Instagram if you’d like to experience the piece the way it first came together. Click here to watch.
Continue reading the North Carolina Journals → 02: Terrible, Necessary Things
Want to go even deeper—open your own journal pages wide, touch pen to paper, and see where it might lead? You can.