Resting in the Temporary: The Spiritual Gift in Transience

I haven’t had a home in a little over a year now.

Home meaning: physical place that is mine, where I rest my head longer than a month at a time.

I’ve been transient. Nomadic. Migratory. Wind or water-like.

Flowing here, then there.

I’ve lived in so many different structures the last year; it almost feels like too many to count. 20. 30, maybe.

Sublets. House sits. Friend’s homes. Airbnbs. Hotels. Campsites. RV’s.

This hasn’t necessarily been by conscious choice.

I didn’t leave my last long-term home in Washington state a year ago and plan to be transient.

I knew I had to leave, but I didn’t know where I was going exactly, and I thought I might be nomadic for a few months and then settle down.

Ever since I left my last home, my entire world has slowly fallen apart.

Like the container of my life has been turned upside down and everything emptied.

It’s stripped me down to the bones of myself.

To what really matters. To what is actually real.

A friend sent me a beautiful, loving text message this morning where she was reflecting what she sees and appreciates in me, and she mentioned how I have gotten so good at resting in the temporary.

This language struck me in it’s sight into my moment.

Resting in the temporary.

Because this is what this whole liminal period of my life has felt like.

An invitation to be present. To find home here. Within my present moment.

Because the external has been changing and shifting and moving so much. It can’t be relied upon to provide security.

And really… from a larger, spiritual perspective, when can it ever?

I am becoming my own anchor at this time in my life.

This does not mean I don’t need other people. I deeply do. I need connection. I need relationships.

But I am bringing a new level of deepening inner security in myself to my connections, to my relationships, to my universe.

I had an astrologer tell me recently that I am moving through the kind of transits that people lose their homes to a fire in.

But, thankfully, I have certain helpful planets supporting these transits so that it is not that quite that exactly- but more like I am just moving around a lot.

When I heard this, I felt so much validation. In a way, my sense of home is burning under a metaphorical fire.

The old structure going up in flames; Who I was when I built it, the kind of beliefs and trauma patterns I’ve used to build homes in the past turning to ash.

Fire can be cleansing.

This is something I feel grateful to be witness to here in California- in the ways that people here are returning to and re-enlivening indigenous wisdom of tending to land with fire.

The land needs contained burning. Fire to reawaken and nourish.

And so I let this part of my life burn. Let it turn to ash. Let the old die, so there is space for the new.

Allowing everything within me that would say I need to create home outside of myself from a place of scarcity and fear — or “ make homes out of human beings” (Warsan Shire)-

Burn and be destroyed.

True security does not come from anything outside of yourself.

It is natural and important for a child to base their level of security or safety in the adults around them.

But if as an adult, you place your sense of “home”, or feeling of security and safety, primarily in other people, (which adults keep doing this if they haven’t received secure attachment or reliable atunement growing up as a kid), or in where you live, or anything that is on a larger scale- temporary- you will feel unstable.

Life changes. People die. Relationships end. Homes burn. You move places.

A psychic teacher of mine recently described the process of having a human body like “renting a body”- and this made me chuckle with amusement.

I am renting my body. My body is not permanent- I will give her back to the Earth at the end of this life.

I have written about my journey with home before.

I wrote my college thesis from the perspective of: “where is home?”

And the answers to this question keep changing for me.

At first, I found that home was this fluid, changing, fragmented thing. Which was a reflection of my own trauma at the time.

Then, I found that home is within my physical body. That the home for myself as a soul is my physical body this lifetime. Still true.

And now I am just beginning to touch an ever wider experience of home.

A sense of home that is not tethered only to a physical thing, or a place on the planet.

But a feeling within myself. A spiritual home that goes beyond birth and death.

As long as I can touch this inside of myself… I know that I can walk wherever I want on this Earth.

I can travel and journey to all kinds of places; I can have all different kinds of bodies across life times…

But I am never without home.

The gift of this time of challenge has been learning that home is within me as a spirit.

Home is eternal.