Home, Safe Home
It may sound silly, but it took me almost thirty years to learn what home truly was; which means it took me almost thirty years to feel safe.
I am going to start this piece by noting that I have always been fortunate to have a home in terms of a house; and safety and security, as far as food on the table and the ability to access healthcare. A lot of what I am referencing is a sense of home and safety within myself and also a sense of belonging in a community. If you have ever taken a psychology course then you will probably remember Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. If you haven’t, here it is:
It is is unequivocal human right to have the first two layers fulfilled and the access to the resources to do so. Physiological needs and safety and security should not be a question of anyone, especially any child, in the world that we live in. In the world we created.
As is per usual, or so it seems in these times, the violence and atrocities have escalated to unprecedented levels. It has expanded beyond Palestine and into Lebanon. As I type this over 500 people have been killed by Israel. Horrors are being committed against innocent civilians in their homes by an imperialist regime. Colonizing. Stealing land. That fucking thing every single year of history in school was kind of beating around the bush about: “this world is built on blood and genocide and exploitation” ( Bo Burnham). The most infuriating and vile piece of it all is that we know now, we know, we are watching it, there is no question: this is wrong, yet it is being allowed. Moreover, it is setting a new precedent for violence and atrocities to continue to be committed by the Western world, in the name of blood and genocide and exploitation.
*deep breath because getting mad has its time, it’s place, but there is also time and place for dialogue about growth and the complete social and institutional rebuild of the world, if we have one…because that is what is at stake*
I have said time and time again, the only way I can move forward with life is to witness what I am witnessing, stand for the right thing, and progress with the world so that I never find myself taking advantage of my privilege to look away.
———————Please follow the link below if you are able to offer any assistance to 7 lives in need. 7 lives deserving of their basic human rights. GoFundMe for Mohammad's Family in Gaza
———————If you are unable to help financially, that is so understandable, there are many other ways to contribute! Below is a list of one-click emails from Operation Olive Branch!
Operation Olive Branch One-Click Emails
Home. What is a home? Webster’s dictionary defines “home” as…just kidding.
If I am honest, it is a word I never questioned until I lived in San Diego in 2022. To be more honest it wasn’t even my living situation that brought up this query within; it was a houseless man.
I say houseless, because I learned that the preferred term by those living said experience. He told me he had a home because he had a life. I thought it was beautiful. I cried that night thinking about it, about what it would be like living on the street. About how it can happen to anyone, anywhere. One mistake and you are there. This is why it always awes me when people bear witness to the housing crisis and have the audacity to view it from a place of judgement. How dare you.
Of course I had heard the cliché home is where the heart is, but it didn’t fully…click. Again with the honesty, but even after my interaction with the houseless man it still did not fully click.
I have always been privileged enough to have a physical place to live and I learned what safety felt like when I met my husband and found true meaning to trust. I think I had never had those two things simultaneously, until now.
I do not know what it is about my childhood home, I have always felt just a little uncomfortable there. I feel like a piece of that is connected to my ability to feel energies. The energy within that home when we moved in was…off. I had and continue to have vivid nightmares about the crawl space. It wasn’t until I began sleeping other places and finding some that did feel safer that I realized it was the house.
Also, the energy of my family. I love them so much. If any of y’all are reading this, I say it with so much love, we are chaotic as fuck. Yelling, fighting, arguing, screaming were norms. When I think back to my neighborhood I remember walking it and being about to hear my sister getting yelled at from the street behind my house. I didn’t really consider it until now, how much people must have noticed that? Do you think? God, it just seemed so normal. There is no ill will in this statement, I understand why I received the yelling I did at times and the…human and emotional reactions that created the outbursts. I still have them. Less now cause I am medicated and in therapy…hint, hint Mom and Dad.
All of that being said, while I did have my basic human needs fulfilled in my young years, I did not feel the love and belonging. Especially, within myself. I was my biggest bully, still am. Turns out you can scream a lot louder in your head.
Due to all this contributing factors, while I called it home, the place I grew up really never felt like it. Neither did my entire hometown. I just…didn’t fit in, I was, I am, bigger than Marcellus, NY. It taught me so much and I am so grateful, but from a young age I knew it was not a place for me to stay, but it was a place I needed to experience. My time in central NY was critical to the development of the woman I am now.
After high school I moved out and lived for a year in the dorms at school. Now when I say this, it is not like, what you are thinking. There were no parties, frats, there were no boys allowed at all. I attended a Catholic nursing school that shared a downtown campus with a hospital in Syracuse, NY. There were eight of us who lived there. It was incredible. I felt the love and the belonging, however the safety? The security? Well, I was young and wickedly depressed and unaware. The pressures of school were serious fucking me up and my doctor at the time decided to prescribe little alcoholic me Prozac and Xanax to take the edge off. I took them, very happily might I add, so I am not defaulting the blame to the doctor alone, however now, ten years later and looking back, what a ridiculously reckless practice. If I had died that time I overdosed in my dorm room with the dead bolt locked, I hope my family would have sued that practitioner.
I also was incredibly open and free with my body. I felt the need to find love from physical intimacy and the male gaze, as so many of us have. I found my value in my body count and spent an embarrassing amount of time, money, sexual energy on people who, looking back, were emphatically unworthy of my body. Oh how I wish I could hug little me, thank the universe for the magic that is dreams.
When I failed nursing school and lost this home, I was lucky enough to have the safety net of a partner at the time who was willing to take me in and pay for my life. I did get a job as a server, but he paid for the important things, rent and bills. I was horrible in that relationship. In that time in my life I was an actual POS. I did things that I look back on and they feel like it is a completely different person living a life. Like there is no way that she is connected to me. She is though. She and I are the same. She definitely did not feel a sense of home. I don’t think she felt much at this point in my life.
Leaving that relationship at 22 was probably one of the biggest trajectory shifting points in my life. I was on this set path to be exactly that, he was going to propose, I was going to have a life. Then one day I realized that not only is that not what I wanted, but that I was deserving of vocalizing it. So I left him. I am so grateful.
Throughout my early twenties the same pattern sort of repeated of having the love and belonging but no safety; and having safety without the love and belonging.
It wasn’t a flip of a switch to find the balance of the two that creates a true home. It took years of work. First inner work on myself. Then outer work on my situation. Back and forth.
A crucial piece of the building of a home for me was also experiencing the world in as many ways as possible. Trying on as many different hats as I could find, even if I thought I may not like them. Funnily, I was always shocked to like what I was afraid of than I expected. A sense of self is honestly probably the next building block after the basic human rights layers. This is where I will start to differ from Mr. Maslow’s Hierarchy of needs and introduce:
ElizaKels’s Hierarchy of Needs
~~~~~~~~~~FIRST~~~~~~~~~~~
Basic Rights
&
Safety and Security
~~~~~~~~~SECOND~~~~~~~~~~
Sense of Self
&
Love~~~~~~~~~~THIRD~~~~~~~~~~~
Relationships
&
Community
~~~~~~~~~~FOURTH~~~~~~~~~
all the rest<3
I am sorry for all you psych majors and doctors out there who I am teaching a thing or two about how the mind really works. Kidding, this is a theory.
For me, it was not until I began to look inward for love that I was able to see the love from others for what it truly was. Maybe I am emotionally stunted, and that may be the case, but I know I am not alone. I was told all growing up that love was this thing one thing and what I was feeling and seeing weren’t adding up. I firmly believe that to be able to see or feel love in another, you must find it within yourself. It is something we are born with, but unfortunately for the majority of the population, at some point someone puts out your light. For me, it was myself; and it was very early on.
Radical self care and inner work saved my life. They allowed me to see past the version of me that I thought I was, to see my true self. My most inner, human self. The child deserving of love and protection. Psst, that child is in all of us, you can find them, you just need to look. For me a large percentage of that work looked like journaling and therapy once I was able to begin that.
It wasn’t until completing a certain stage of this work that I was able to see enough value in myself to put care and stock into my life. To stop abusing alcohol. To stop avoiding responsibilities. To stop giving into every impulse that pops in my head. To stop giving my power to those other than me.
So it took a long period of emotional/ mental work to then be able to move forward physically/ financially. Which, I feel like everyone always tries to do it all at once when they want to make changes. And maybe they can. I am a baby stepper though, I need to take my time.
Then begins the outer work! The relationships. The COMMUNITY.
Even within my family I did not feel valuable or included until more recent years of my life. I would say I reached my self love meter at 25 years old, and it wasn’t until 27 that confidence and purpose in this category began to become apparent. Again, without giving love to yourself, you cannot truly give love to others. So that means, I don’t think I truly loved until 26/27 years old. I didn’t appreciate people in my life for all that they were. I’ll admit I was a bad and selfish partner and friend in a lot of cases prior to this. That stemmed from not seeing value within myself. A part of me didn't think I was worthy of good relationships. I have to completely reset my mindset to love.
Once you are at that level and ready to share love, it’s incredible. Dare I say addicting. That’s kind of the cause of the flowing and fluctuating, I mentioned earlier. See the thing about Maslow’s pyramid is that it is a stable and solid object. A pyramid. Real human needs and abilities are a river. It flows. There is a huge rock at the beginning called “Basic Human Rights: Under No Circumstances Should Any Human Not Have These”, that rock does not move. Around it pours energy that moves with us, around us, in us.
The top level of Maslow’s pyramid includes creativity. I don’t think anyone would argue with me that creativity is fueled by all forms of feeling and human experience, so it is ridiculous to only include it at the top. People, myself included as well as some of the world’s actual artists, have created their best work when feeling the most alone, depressed, anguished.
I am sorry Mr. Maslow, but it is time to step aside, you have been debunked, someone contact the scholars and let them know!
Let’s talk about now. Home, now. To me.
For one, it is an actuality.
Something that I cling to like my breath. My home, my house, “my land”1. It is as much a part of me, as I am of it. I have spent countless hours in walking it, getting to know it with all my senses. My house is a safe space decorated with things that remind me of those I love. It is inhabited with my people, my village if you will.
This feels so bizarre, so foreign that I am constantly battling myself in my own head about the reality of it all. Could I truly have a partner who loves and supports me, including my flawed parts? The parts even I don’t accept? How am I deserving of this safety? Or, I catastrophize it all and convince myself that the only reason I could be living the life I am right now in this moment is that I have some inoperable brain tumor and it is all about to be ripped away from me. Because I am not some incredible, perfect human. I am average. The only explanations for my happiness in my mind is I am undeserving and it’s all a lie or it is temporary and is all about to come crashing down in tragedy. Or chaos theory. Other than that I cannot explain why I have the life I have, but I am so grateful for it and will never take it for granted.
For the first time in my life, I am seizing the internal conflict. I am taking control and accepting that, my situation, my life, it simply is. And it only is what is it right now. There is a “how it was” and hopefully there will be a “how it will be” but all I know and can control is the how it is now.
I always fear when I write these pieces I am coming off as some pompous dickhead who sounds all high and mighty. That these are obvious statements that I am just attaching all this extra meaning to and romanticizing into some profound message. And I am. Not the dickhead part, but the second. The truth is, if you are reading this and thinking “wow is she telling me that the secret to feeling at home is accepting your situation” I am. I am also telling you all the stories of the times I did not do that. The times I chose to desire more, instead of accepting. How more came eventually, because it will. I usually had to release the desires though. Release it and do the work. Be better to make the world better. For the sake of being better, not being best.
If you are doing it, if you are throwing the rocks in that pond, then whoever, whatever is handing out the karma points, they are paying attention. They see you. I see you.
Home is an energy, it is neither has no state of being, it is a human emotion. Home is safety, security, self, love, belonging and a cooperative flow with the others around you. Home is fluid in the sense of it being always moving, changing. Home doesn’t require a roof, it does require a state of being and acceptance of oneself. Home is rooted within our beings and it is created when we allow ourselves to be safe, be secure, be oneself, be loved, when we allow ourselves to belong.
Keep going until you find that home, you won’t know until you know. When you do, listen to it. It is the most incredible thing in the world. To have a home.
It should be one of the few guarantees of life, but it is not. There is always a home you can find though, within yourself.
The more we keep going, keep fighting, keep finding strength in ourselves, we will prevail in humanity. We will. We have to. If you are able, share your home, energy, unfortunately we cannot open our door to everyone.
You can open your heart though.
I may be a “land owner” but I disagree with the concept entirely and have vowed to allow my home to be an open and safe area for all who enter with love. Obviously with safety at the forefront, but compassion as well. This land that I live on was first inhabited by the Massasaugas so I will say that if anyone “owns” the land, it would be them.