Nostos: A Homecoming
My therapist asks me often who I was as a kid. I initially responded with clipped stories of a quiet girl, blonde pigtails, and minimal friends. A filler of notebooks with fictional stories, a shower singer, a contemplative. While those characteristics are true, it is missing pieces of the puzzle of who I was before any trauma shaped who I was to become.
There is a home video, grainy and warped with age, that plays in my memory when I allow it to. It is my baby sister’s first birthday, and I was already put out that the gathering was meant for her and not me. I was front and center at three years old, in a circle of family sitting on clap chairs, singing and dancing to an unidentified tune. My own. A family member shouts out a request for a song and my body language, facial expressions, and then verbal admission are obvious and sharp: no, I will not sing that song. I don’t want to. I don’t like it. THIS is the song I am singing. It is mine.
At three, I knew exactly how to be at home in my body, in my heart, in my mind. I knew my song, and I knew how I wanted to sing it. I was unconcerned with the desires of others, and they carried zero weight in my decisions. I was bratty and self-centered as most toddlers are: but I knew where home was and it wasn’t worth trading.
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When I began eating my words close to a decade ago, it was a profoundly painful and liberating process birthed from a season of betrayal and loss. I had lived through some shit that was rare and typical and unavoidable, and it not only changed my day to day, but shifted my entire perception of how I grew up, the things I always held to be true, and where I would go from there.
I’ve been eating my words for ten years about faith, marriage, family, societal roles, bodies, and what purpose really means. It was a slow and necessary journey to end up where I am today.
And here is where that is:
I am no longer “deconstructing” my evangelical background in a way that “tears down” for a large percentage of the time. This step is necessary- especially when you’re going to build something new- and of course, on-going as there are always things discovered that need to be repaired. But that is not the space I am holding any longer for a large percentage of my time. I needed to allow time to be angry, grieve, and move on in my own time; to hold onto what was beautiful and let go of what weighed me down. I’m proud of the journey I took to get to where I am- but eating my words doesn’t quite fit anymore.
I am no longer raw and aching- a walking wound. Unlike some, I believe that it’s necessary to share what you can when you can, during the exact time it’s happening. How else will people not feel alone? I despised every single “Self-Help” book I could get my hands on that had a happy ending when I was deep in the throes of my own chaotic existence. What about the rest of us, still in the middle? I felt passionately that the people stuck in the middle were my people- and that I would not leave them behind. (I still do. I still won’t). When you choose to love, there will be suffering involved. That’s the gig.
Growth is endless, grief comes in phases, and joy shows up in surprising places. The boxes I built to process are no longer necessary in the ways that they were before just to survive. I am no longer just surviving. I needed to say that aloud.
In short, my background, my messaging, my lived-in trauma, and experiences have taught me:
This world is not my home.
My body is not my home.
My heart is not my own.
My life is not my own.
I’ve spent a great of time owning what that has meant and being honest about the toll it has taken.
In ancient Greek literature, there is a word that means, “returning home”. Nostos. It refers to an epic hero like Odysseus, making the trek home by sea. It suggests that there was great tragedy, heartbreak, obstacles, horror and pain- and those who managed to survive their Nostos, return home with limps and scars that cannot be undone. But they do make it. Home. That feels right.
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So what does that mean for this space, here?
The last ten years of writing have led me here, to this place of leaning into the art of returning home: physically, spiritually, and emotionally. And that’s where I will continue to write from.
What does it look like to return home to my own body? Heart? Mind?
What does it look like to return home to my own imagination? My own desires, thoughts, feelings, leadings?
My own spirituality that’s free from the familiar constructs I had to break down?
What does it look like to “return home” to someone I knew once- someone I was born to be, but had abandoned long ago?
I’m not sure. But I’d like to find out. I hope you’ll come.
Branding will shift over from Eat My Words slowly to the Nostos Newsletter- and you will notice, I hope, that you will find the same words that became your friends years ago when it started. I won’t hesitate to share the recipes that help me return home to myself, the books that assist on the journey, the music that provides the soundtrack, the stories that have shaped my life in beautiful and brutal ways.
But you will notice something else, too. Because I’m committed to returning home to my full self- that is who you will get. And I am no longer eating my words.
So if sharing my heart and my stances and my strong feelings about things you may also have (different) strong feelings about no longer serves you, I wish you all the peace this world can offer you.
And now, to journey home.