Returning to my parents' home

|This post is for anyone who is between homes and who has had to return to their parents’ home in the peak of their adulthood. The intention of this post to invite reflection, to question and to wonder “what?”|

Ten years ago when I filed for divorce, my parents’ home was the only option that I was left with. I could not afford to rent and I would have done anything not to return to my parents’ home.

At 30 I felt like a failure, years of study and working and I had nothing to call mine or my own. Divorce was not hard on me, I was hard on me. I wished to be swallowed and to disappear. Returning to my parents’ home was hard for me; my thinking, my beliefs about what it meant to be successful, what empowered women were and should do did not ease life for me.

I believed that being on my own would have helped me thrive and I struggled for years because of this belief.

I struggled for years to be at peace with being at my parents’ home. I did not know how to ask for help and I was hostile to receiving support and help. Back then, I believed that growing through this phase meant doing it on my own.

Maybe as you read these words, they may resonate with you. Perhaps for you, it’s a change in job, a transition between countries, a situation within the family that asks of your presence and support and much more.

Perhaps you are in a phase where you had rather be anywhere but at your parents’ home.

We live in world that teach children that growing up means going away from home and if you ever return home then something is wrong with you. We live in world where we are taught to believe that one’s power can only be owned outside one’s home and hardly inside in the presence of one’s parents.

Here is what I have learned through these ten years and may these words find their way to mind, heart, body and nervous system bringing you solace and ease.

1. In the company of my own is where I started healing.

Growing, healing, rewiring of one’s brain happen in the company of people. On our own, we are limited, we stay within the comfort of our comfort zone and nothing much happens in one’s comfort zone. It asked of me great courage to say “yes” to help and support. It took me years to open up on what I had lived and went through. In the company of people I have learned the beauty of relating and bonding.

Being surrounded by people is crucial for our nervous system. Being surrounded by people supports us especially through anxiety and panic attacks.

These past ten years I have received in ways that I did not know was possible. I have learned and I am still learning to trust myself to receive, to ask and when to say “no” and “yes”.

I do not intend to glorify this process. There has been years of unlearning, of attuning, of aligning and of reparation and it is an ongoing process

As I say these words, I hold space for many for whom home has been and remains unsafe.

2.My beliefs were out to haunt me

My beliefs toughen life for me. What I thought should be and ought to be and what I fought against because they were conflicting with my internal rules about life, about being a single woman, about being at my parents’ home in my adulthood.

I was hunting myself every day. I made up stories and I believed in them.

I decided that I knew who liked me and who did not like me. I decided that I could tell what people were saying about me.

I dimmed myself in my village. If I could, I would have erased my existence, so people would forget who I was and here I was.

It was not until I realized that no one is out to get me and we are busy with our lives. My judgements severe me from life and no one else and nothing else.

3. Allowing my mother to be mother

Our parents are elder to us and it is their role to worry and to be concerned for us. For years, I have heaved at hiding my pain and sadness for I least wanted to trigger concern and worry. Little did I understood that being a parent to your child meant being part of the life of your child fully.

For years, I held back, I never showed that I was depressed, burn out and neither did I ever cried in front of my mother. Until the day I started saying “I am not well”, my words hit my mother and me by surprise.

I have learned to be humbled by the fact that my personality and my mother’s personality may never meet in alignment and still there is undeniable love, care and concern for each other.

The day, I allowed my mother to be witness to my life, that day onward, I took ownership of my life unlike before. By allowing my mother inside, I got sucked back into life through life with life.

It was no more about what we believed differently rather what we share in common. We share the same body.

Allowing my mother to witness my life does not mean to allow her to plan my life. It asked of me great courage to plan my life within the walls of my parents’ home.

Growing up means exactly it !

4. Success

I have redefined success for me over the years. There is nothing to succeed and there is nothing to win over.

How much of a success I feel of and about myself?

This is a question that I am unable to answer and I do not feel the need to.

There is so much pressure on what it means to be successful as a woman, as a man, as a human. These beliefs and expectations haunted me for years.

I am still living at my parents’ home and life has never been fulfilling and receiving at it is here now. I don’t have a car. I don’t have a child either.

I am nearing my forty’s and I am self-employed with all the bounties, the risks and the challenges that come along.

I have birthed magnanimous projects in my childhood room and the walls whisper my unfolding, stories of growth, transformation, humility, fears, tears, simplicity and so much more.

Success is not something that I thrive for. Fulfillment is my aim.

Success has nothing to do with what others say of and say of.

Whose idea of success are you living?

Even if you say it is yours, then who are you modelling?

Wherever you are, however you feel, whatever you think and believe, know that here now is the place to start, regardless of your perceptions of available resources and/or stressors.

It takes going back to one’s roots to be able to reach further in life. It takes a community and support of each other to grow in life. It takes an entire life to learn to receive and to give within the ebbs and flows of one’s heart.

Love from my heart to yours

Love from my body to yours

Love from my nervous system to yours

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