It is the mixture of love or should-be-love with violence, that hurts the most. Often, it is the not being sure that makes it most damaging. ![]() Because home, which should enfold us in the presence of the people who care for us the most and love us the best, can also be the place where those very same people visit upon us the cruelties that seep up from the poisoned wells of their own human failings and miseries. The result being that we are not sure, even as we approach our own front door, the door of that place called home, whether we will be subject to hugs or slaps, literal or metaphorical, physical or emotional. Our very bones ease within our bodies.ĭoesn’t that all feel so good? Now picture it differently.Īs our footsteps approach, our shoulders tense up, our jaws clench, our body systems start rounding up all our internal weapons, preparing for a fight. We wind tighter and into our selves hardening up, battening down. Swallowing down the terror that rises again and again in our throats. We touched a well-known door handle, then we put one foot in front of the other and entered into that safe haven, our home! At the door, with relief we shed coat, shoes, hat, along with a myriad invisible things that had attached themselves to our being during our encounter with the big, often uncaring world of the outside, the world of the not-home. Perhaps a familiar voice calls out gladdening our hearts with its beloved cadences, and ours sings back in reply. We plunge into the smells, the comfort, the welcome home. Home. Like a warm bath on a cold day. ![]() Working with Dialogue Books, we asked five authors to write a personal response to Shelter’s core belief that Home Is Everything. Each week, we’ll be sharing one of these responses on our blog exploring the history, the impact and the importance of home.Ī snail does not travel without its shell, so goes the Yoruba proverb, meaning every person should always have a safe home within which they can be their whole, best self. Which of us has not walked towards a familiar door, time after countless time and as our shoulders eased, and our breaths calmed, and our lips curved into an unconscious smile, our hands reached out with a familiar key.
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