Making Home

Part 2/2

Learning to make a home began within myself. Because my vision for home is as a refuge, it is a safe place for joy and grief; for self-expression; for learning and for resting. It is a place to build core memories. Home is where I have room to heal and recover, to grow, and to just simply be – without all the busy of doing. You cannot truly build such an authentic home with your life and yourself without knowing and loving who you are. Despite having few adults in my life capable of modeling this self-discovery, soon after I finished school and moved west – aka had space and resources – I started the process of healing and discovery. It was finally the beginning of the end of survival mode.

Making a home within myself was the very first step, but also continues simultaneously in all the other ways I learned and continue to learn about myself, my people, and the lands and stories I come from. I began to connect differently with others. I found more people who are right and good for me; who support my questions; who are possibility models for me in a variety of ways; with whom I can be my full self; who show up for me; who are aiming toward similar things as I am. I also dug deeper into where I come from. I began interrogating what stories, traditions, and ways of being I might reclaim for my life, today. With these building blocks, a foundation has formed. Home is now more than a concept, theory, or intangible hope. It is a thing that requires intentional nurturing and care. Home has come alive for me.

I remember reading and hearing this phrase regularly in the 90s. You might recall, too: “Home is where the heart is.” I understood the general meaning of it, but as someone who did not have a lot of experience with examples of healthy love – and instead got a plethora of enmeshment, parentification, and authoritarianism that was called “love” – I did not exactly have an embodied experience of heart or of home. The phrase is starting to hold more meaning, now. I will soon begin the final year of my thirties. This was the healing decade. Everything prior to my thirties was regularly cloaked in survival. I often existed rooted in trauma responses, with unmet needs and unprocessed grief, amidst the grueling and unjust reality of having to teach myself things no one should have to learn on their own (a common outcome for adults who experienced significant childhood neglect). Since my early twenties (likely even earlier) I have been emotionally raising myself; reparenting myself. I’ve taken steps to learn the real me that had been obscured by layers of trauma, neglect, and abuse. Learning to mask parts of myself was an effective survival strategy, but to truly thrive I had to learn to look beneath what I’d attempted to cover and unmake. This process of healing and finding myself began before I ever grew up and left to make my own life. I credit the early start to an innate resistance that was never completely snuffed out. Sure, I figured out how to play some parts and attempt belonging; to survive toxic situations and relationships; to get through expectations on me and things that were actually too hard and harmed me. But there was always a seed of resistance that remained. I’ve always had a strong No within me that somehow stayed largely untouched by cult-ish, misogynist, white evangelical and purity culture.

Just one month into my thirties, I began dating my spouse. I was barely ready for him, but he saw things in me I did not yet see in myself. Since then, I have been making a home in so many senses of the word. In this capitalist patriarchy world that rewards 1:1 romantic partnership and the institution of marriage – especially hetero-presenting couples – my spouse and I have stable, physical housing together. We are creating a space and place, here, which holds precious memories, rituals, and routines. We have our needs met in ways that allow us agency in how we make our home with and for each other, and which also makes it possible to mutually support others to gain more stability in their lives, too. The material and the emotional both deeply matter. The individual and the collective journey of home matters.

Years of therapy, self-discovery, and unlearning old programming helped me make a better life than would have been possible, otherwise. I will always live with the impacts of complex PTSD and ACEs (childhood adverse experiences), but more than anything else what helped those symptoms ease in adulthood was having my basic needs met. I grew up and was able to leave. I now have financial stability, housing, food, clothing, healthcare. I have disposable income. I have supportive relationships and possibility models in my life. I have space to rest and to process. In order to heal you need capacity and resources!

I occasionally experience something akin to survivor’s guilt: why did I get to make it out and have security and relative safety in my adulthood? There are so many many people that deserve this outcome, too. Everyone deserves to have their needs met! I “beat” statistics in some ways. I also have benefited from the intersections of my light skin, being straight-sized, living in Canada, having formal post-secondary education (thank you student loans! and poor-kid bursaries!), being English-speaking, and more. As discussed in Part 1: Seeking Home, I also had the life-changing, buffering impact of my grandparents showing up for me. They changed the trajectory of my life not only emotionally, but materially. Every single person should get to have the stability I now have – every child, every adult, in any situation. People should get to have what they need, and without having to earn it at some invented standard of “productivity”. Withholding materials required for basic survival and thriving should not be weaponized as something you have to earn or something that can be withheld. I carry the injustice of this deeply after watching my parents struggle [in part] because of the ways they could not fit within the boxes and norms of society. As an adult, I have been able to carve out a secure life, including addressing my emotional needs and trauma healing. But without the privilege and grandparent impact (and luck) I doubt my life could have led to currently having my material needs met.

[Home] is all about connection and coming together. – Jeremiah Brent

In June of 2024 I said goodbye to my grandparent’s house. My grandpa passed in early 2020. My grandma had been managing at home with support, but a fall led to a major injury and surgery and had her no longer able to return home independently. It had been the only constant home through my life. It housed me when my parents split up. It welcomed me when I was upset or wanted to celebrate, or when I just had no plans. That house was made a home not only by the memories that filled it but by my grandparents being there. They were home, themselves. Without them living there anymore, the house is less. It held many memories and experiences of my life. It represented the two people who kept me tethered in the tornado of my tumultuous upbringing. It is both difficult to let go and know I will never set foot there again, and easier to let go of then I expected. Because without Grammie and Papa there, it isn’t home to me anymore, anyway.

Where thou art – that – is home. – Emily Dickinson

In recent years I have begun learning more about my ancestral roots. When my great grandmother (Grammie’s mom. My mom’s grandmother.) immigrated from Ireland by herself at the age of 17, she carried stories with her we do not know and never will. She seemed to give up pieces of herself in order to survive and belong. I assume she carried her own traumas that led to not imparting culture and what it meant to be Irish into her own children and grandchildren. Unfortunately, stories and traditions simply did not survive the generations. The same can be said for my French, paternal side. I was raised so quintessentially white Canadian that I had almost zero knowledge of where I actually come from. It is such a common tale among generations of families who have adopted white supremacist ways of being that require assimilation and forgetting about the land and the ancestors, among other things. I see the threads of this in my family, especially in the fractured relationships but also in the lack of roots and story. Once I (un)learned enough to begin recognizing this, I also began to value learning my history as a central part to knowing myself and dismantling the white supremacist culture still alive within me. So began the borrowing of stacks of library books on Ireland; the many internet searches about holiday traditions or looking at satellite images and maps of the county in Ireland where we come from; and asking questions of my mom and Grammie. Years prior, my mom’s cousin had begun a search into family roots and lineage. I am so grateful for her efforts to piece together more of our family lineage in Ireland than anyone else ever has. One thing I did always know about my great grandmother, but which comes alive even more today the more I learn about Ireland, is the spark of fierceness that always lived within her. No doubt it’s partly what led her to Canada at 17 in the first place. It’s also something she was known for. Resistance and pursuing justice is central to the Irish story. I like to think I have inherited these traits and this history within my own body from my ancestors. Knowing these stories of our families and where we come from is powerful and so important to the process of making home in our lives.

My current house is a place of so many memories and much love. I am building a true home here with my love, my chosen partner, my spouse. As much as my grandparents house and their love were home to me for all my youth, this home I am now building is a deeper-rooted place. It is something I am making and building for me and my partner. It is full of a liberating love that is and always will be still becoming. In this home, we fight for eachother and our relationship, over and over again. In this home, we survive and endure; we dream; we dance; we laugh; we create; we love. Our first kiss was over there. Here is the front door where I surprised him with homemade, heart-shaped apple hand pies early in our dating years. The living room hosted countless pre-pandemic gatherings with friends. The dining room is where in December 2019 I floated a proposal and we decided together:

Him – “So what does 2020 have in store?” Me – “Maybe…we get married?” Him – “Oh ya? I’d be up for that…”

The following August, I walked across our backyard in my wedding dress to him in his custom grey suit. We celebrated with our closest few friends and families in a mostly outdoor pandemic wedding with dinner and desserts from neighborhood restaurants we loved. In this home, we learn about living with chronic illness and disability. We imperfectly learn how to be allies to one another in our marginalized identities, and together for others. We cultivate online faith community with other people deconstructing, recovering, and reclaiming spirituality. We know and love our neighbors. My partner’s woodworking can be spotted in each room – our dining table, breakfast nook table, coffee table; our bed frame and nightstands; the custom walk-in closet; the mountain-shaped shelf; the window seat. Our plants mark every window, and dot the landscape of our front and back yards, seasonally. Every year we add something new. Stacks of books are strewn everywhere. Pen and paper in every room of this writer’s home. My spouse’s home office where he has written books. The basement family room where we watch our tv most evenings – where we’ve laughed and cried and fought; where we argue over who gets control of the remotes (he usually wins); where we eat our huge bowls of Whirly-pop popcorn; where we listen to a record croon while we decorate the christmas tree. This house is a home we are continually making.

The beautiful gift of my husband is that he saw the way I’ve always wanted to be seen and there’s something really powerful to that. When you find true love I really believe that’s what is at its core. – Jeremiah Brent

Everyone deserves a safe space to land. Everyone deserves to have housing stability. I do not deserve my home any more than another person. What makes me deserve it is being human. Housing is a basic human right, so why isn’t our world set up to make that possible for everyone? We all deserve to have not only a sense of place, but a physical space to call our own. To make safe. To create into Home. My parents had many factors which influenced their financial statuses and housing stability – none of which justify having to struggle like they did and still do. They deserve to have their needs met just as every human being does – no exceptions. The village that raised me includes my grandparents who were able to step in and provide affordable housing for us, among other things – ensuring we were fed, clothed, housed, and had a safe place with them and at their house when we needed it. Without them, I’m not sure I would be where I am. Without my parents determination to survive, I don’t think I could be, either. And without my own internal drive to get out and start over in a place of my own, free(r) of trauma memories (though they remained alive in my body for a long time and always will to some extent.) I found my way to my now husband of nearly 5 years (this year!), and the home we are making together within these 4 walls, with each other.

Coming home to myself is the largest endeavour I’ve undertaken in life thus far. Making home with my partner is the greatest joy and pleasure of my life thus far. With the influence of people who celebrate me and show up for me, and learnings rooted in a reclamation of identities, ancestral roots, and spirituality; with better understanding of my family contexts and childhood, the needs and limits I have, and the ways in which I have experienced the world, I have been making home in my own bodymind and life in ways I was not capable of dreaming before. Home is real and alive in my life, now. It is not a dream or wish or aspiration to arrive at some day – Home exists! My child self could not be more content and hopeful to learn this. The song I chose for our wedding was a live, piano-only version performed by our friend Timothonius. I didn’t choose it because of a particular attachment or memory (she is not even an artist I listen to!) I chose Home by Chantal Kreviazuk for the lyrics that felt so authentic to my experience with my partner and what we were aiming for, I could have written them, myself.

It feels like home to me. It feels like home to me. It feels like I’m all the way back where I belong. – Chantal Kreviazuk