the story of my little white house

There’s something I feel I need to confess.

 

I’m not sure if confess is the right word – it certainly wasn’t a sin or wrongdoing.

Perhaps what I’m looking for is to be witnessed, even if no one actually reads this post, there is something concrete and ritualistic about publishing words in the digital space.

 

In February of 2023, I was forced to leave my home.

 

If you’ve read my last 2 posts about some profound realizations in grief (HERE & HERE), you’ll know I’ve been dancing in the dark over the past 2 months, dreaming, journeying the inner landscape, and uncovering some deep magic in my bones.

 

I could talk about the traumatic experience the actual experience and the cascade of intense experiences that would follow over the course of this year, but the thing that called me to share these words with you today, dear reader, is to share in the witnessing of what this HOME actually meant to me, and the story about how I manifested it, and created a healing space for myself and others.

 

From the moment I stepped into that empty blank canvas and saw the had laid stone floor, humbly laid down, in honour and reverence for the beauty that is building a first home for a future family, I knew in my heart it was mine.

 

I had walked by that little house for years, wondering, who lived there? Who were the owners? Did they ever rent it out?

November of 2019 would forever shake my bones and change the course of my life forever. It was a distinct moment when something shifted. Innocence was lost forever, but underneath, a woman was saved – and that woman was me.

I had decided to face evil in the eyes and tell him “no more”.

Never again would I allow abusive dynamics to enter my circle of energy, relationships, or being. Period.

Little did I know, those words would cast a spell that would forever change the course of my life.

Little did I know, the cascade of healing that would initiate, in my own body, and in the line of my lineage and eventually ancestry.

 

With no home to return to, I lay in the capable arms of the Universe, that held me safely until in February 2020, I moved into the little white house on the corner – my house.

The circumstances of my living there were magical, manifested, and felt destined somehow. That little white house I’d walked by so many times wondering, was now a phone call passed on by my dear friend Maria who’d mentioned to me that “my neighbour is fixing up this little house and I think he wants to rent it out”.

 

It was perfect.

From my dear friend Aimee sending me a tip about an estate sale in March, my little white house started to fill up with the energy of loved things, beautiful things, and art.

It was a small 2 bedroom house and I had planned on creating a healing space and office in the second bedroom.

I wanted to create, not just a home for myself, but a sanctuary for anyone who came to me – clients, friends, family. I was creating a womb to hold us – for me, my work, my 2 kittens I had adopted (Pelé & Isis – my goddesses), and the countless beautiful souls I imagined being held in the container that was my little white house, upon this magical land I found myself living on.

 

Over 3 years, my home evolved. Living in a vacation town by the ocean during a global pandemic shifted my plans for business and I adjusted. My office and sanctuary became an Airbnb rental to help keep me afloat financially and afford to keep living my dream.

My guests would always remark on how magical my home was, how beautiful the energy was, and I began to have repeat guests, long delicious conversations of depth and soul, my guests returning home after being held in the womb I had created.

The house itself was doing my work – unwinding nervous systems, resetting deeply held patterns, allowing systems to unravel and surrender to the healing nature of the land beneath us. I was delighted and marvelled in the many ways my work manifested through me and through the land. I realized that my home wasn’t just an office for my work, but the womb I had built was the medicine that so often my guests needed.

 

The harmony and energy intertwined with my own energy – land, home, body.

My house became and extension of me and also my own mother, holding me, in my own healing journey.

 

And there was healing, oh how there was healing.

Not only was that home a place of massive transmutation of deeply held traumas in my own system, and my familial systems, but also it supported me in unraveling and healing my relationship with the feminine, the masculine, and most profound of all – Desire.

I experimented and cracked open a softness and compassion that I had never held for myself before.

My ritualistic work and healing through herbalism and witchcraft took root and blossomed.

I was rebirthed.

A woman.

A mother.

A witch.

A child.

A goddess.

A wolf woman.

Wild woman.

 

I deepened my ever spiralling relationship with surrender.

 

What does it mean to create a home?

What is home even?

 

I’ve written on the meaning of home several times here on my blog (HERE, HERE, & HERE if you’re interested) and the deep, fundamental importance of home within our lives.

Our physical home is an extension of our bones, our blood, and is the external manifestation of our ancestry in a way – not just our DNA genetic ancestry, but the harmonics of home extends from the literal womb in which we were co-created (inside the body of woman – gaia) to the earth, soil, water, plants, from which each cell is literally formed (and where we will eventually return to).

Home is our ancestral lineage of blood, bones, and affinity.

Home is roots, trees, soil, and the literal land that birthed and sustains us.

We eat her.

We are her.

And so although we live in a modern day culture that has in essence forgotten the importance of our origins inside of Gaia, our cells still know and yearn for, home.

 

The other day, I was reading a book by Malidoma Somé in where he describes the West African rituals involved in building a new house in the village. It isn’t just the house that is seen as a living being, but the land itself. It is the synergy and harmony of the spirits of land, soil, the elements, that support the home that will be built. The home then is a community of living beings and spirits – the land, the elements, and the village, that includes the structure itself.

When we dwell, live, commune, make love, break bread, we are nourished by not just a lifeless building, but the spirit of house, of earth, and of the whole community. We live a cycle of reciprocity in which we care for home (and all life and spirit that encompasses home), and in return we are cared for, held, nourished, safe.

Somé writes:

 

“Among the Dagara, because the house is the most visible symbol of the earth, home is sacred. Similarly there is a link between home and relationships, especially the relationship between the family and the community. This is why building a home is a very serious ritual undertaking. It is as if building a house is building a relationship.”

 

As Somé continues his chapter on his tribe’s rituals in creating and building a home, I felt the parallels in my own experience in my little white house. In my mid-30’s it was the first time, I consciously decided to lay down the roots of my spirit, and build my own home, and I did so with reverence, care, and ritual.

 

As I write this, it’s been almost 1 year since I had to leave my home and over the past 2 months in uncovering the depths of the layers of my hidden grief, I realized that although I’ve done a lot of processing and healing since leaving my house, there are deeper layers still.

 

It’s left me with questions.

How do we grieve something so interwoven with our essence?

How do we reclaim not just the harmonics of the energy interwoven with home, but all of the parts of hurt, betrayal, and resentment that reside in the soft echo of trauma?

What are the funeral rites for leaving our home?

What are the funeral rites for saying goodbye to the anchor and symbol for the earth and our life’s work?

 

And I don’t yet know the answers.

Right now, I am content in sitting with the questions.

I am sitting with the realization that home that I had created was more than just a place to sleep, eat, and break bread.

For me it is interwoven with the essence of my work in the world.

 

It has asked me to put into question and examine everything I had though to be true.

It has asked me to consider the depths of the work I do in this world.

It has asked me to consider how I am supported in the material world.

 

There are many consequences to the huge risks I took in building that home – financial risks, personal risks, my safety, livelihood and sustenance.

And although I don’t regret the decisions and experiences, I now am left, sitting with the aftermath.

Shaken to the core with my health and physical wellness this year several times.

$30,000 in debt.

Sitting with an unsustainable business that I have nourished and nurtured for the last 7 years and realizing that it’s time to also let it go.

Questioning my decisions and if it was all worth the risks and consequences of pursuing my dreams.

Finally realizing the massive impacts on my health, my wellbeing, and nervous system, of living in cycling material uncertainty over the last few years.

Feeling for the first time, the magnitude of it all.

 

It’s all connected – the house, my dreams, my business, how I thought I was building my life.

How do you grieve all of that?

How do you grieve a life you thought you would be living?

How do you grieve your dreams after taking all risks to realize them?

 

Right now, I know I don’t need all of the answers.

Right now, I am trusting my heart.

Right now, I sit, asking the questions, and listening, for the whispers on the wind, for the messages in my dreams.

Right now, I practice the art of dreaming in the dark.

For it is in the dark, where the light is born.