Home.
When I say ‘home’, what do you picture? Do you picture cottage with a roaring fire, wooden beams and a freshly boiled kettle? Or perhaps a sleek city apartment, walls adorned with paintings by your favourite artist? Until recently, ‘home’ for me was a thing. A physical place. Bricks and mortar, wood and cement. For the past 24 months, I’ve felt like I have not had a home: I’ve moved house. I’ve moved city. I’ve moved country. I’ve moved country again. But still, no home. I’ve felt unsettled, untethered: a loose cannon. A few months ago, however, I had time and space. Time and space to think. To not think. To empty my mind and focus on everything. To focus on nothing. I had time to make thorough preparations for a 100 mile running race that I was about to embark on: preparations that wound up leading me home. Preparations tightly wove my physical and mental well-being together. Every day contained as many greens as I could fit in, the most nutritious meals three times a day, daily yoga, writing, and even some colouring in. Realising that when I nurtured and nourished by physical being, my mental being flourished and thrived. Knitting the relationship between physical and mental being was the vital step in finding home. I am my own home. For me, when I looked after my body to the highest possible level, I felt calm and settled in my skin. I felt a sense of peace and stillness in my body, and in my mind. My body became my home. Treating this newly found home with love and respect seemed to dissipate anxieties about being and belonging. I became happy in where I was living. This was the first step in finding home. Love: self-love and feeling rooted in that feeling. I came across a quote from Maya Angelou, an American author, poet and civil rights activist. The quote spoke to my heart, my soul, and my anxieties. You only are free when you realize you belong no place — you belong every place — no place at all. The price is high. The reward is great. I had a defining moment when I felt a wave of warmth. A comfort. A long lost feeling of belonging. I can only ascribe it to one thing: finally feeling home. Home was the knowledge that although my heart and my love lay in the mountains, so long as I had love for myself and my home every day, I would always feel connected to them. Looking back to pictures from Switzerland and Nepal, although giving me itchy feet, reminds me of where I can call home: a mental state – somewhere above the clouds. Whether my body is there or not, it doesn’t matter. Home is in the mind and the heart. Home is not where the body is, but where the heart is. When my head and my feet tell me that I do not belong, I let my heart remind me that I am in fact, always home. Home is love. When times have been unsettled, keeping a strong emotional connection of love has helped provide a sense of calm. Strive to love your body, your mind and your thoughts. Love yourself. Love your quirks, your strengths and your weaknesses. Love every part of you. When you find that love, you will find love, calm and peace every day. You will eventually build your sense of home. For me, a sense of home can come and go: it is not a solid, permanent entity. It fluctuates in waves, but can always be found with working on embracing every aspect of my body and soul. If you’re feeling lost, untethered, or free-wheeling, root yourself. Take your thoughts and your energy back to you. Find that self-love, self-respect and self-worth. Whether that is through daily yoga, greens, gym-work or otherwise: do whatever it is you need to do to find that love. Find comfort and peace in knowing that you do have a home. It might not be a house, a city, or a place. But where there is love, there is a home. Cat Attfield @cat__attfield www.likealass.com