Sunday Night With John: Home Again!

The feeling of home is a feeling that I have long forgotten after all these years.  It is a feeling that many people spend all their lives and millions of dollars to find.  After my holiday travels from Thanksgiving through Christmas, it’s nice to know that I have found my home again.

It’s search that started the day after Eric died.  After that day, living in Orwell, Ohio didn’t seem to fit right on my skin.  I began my journey to Iowa for college in Davenport.  I definitely needed the space between Ohio and Iowa to breathe and create friends that would help me rebuild my confidence, and my moral compass.

My next stop was Des Moines, Iowa and Grand View University where I made life long bonds with a group of friends that would shape my humor into something useful, and I would begin to listen to others. My professors at Grandview helped to light a passion in me that led me to seek out others that needed help and spread the word about emotional health.

After graduation, I bounced from apartment to apartment building my public speaking, working with youth in different areas around Iowa and I even had a 4-month stint living in Ohio that went about as poorly as it could. It’s an odd feeling knowing that you are still growing and healing from a life moment that happened so many years ago. I often have to take my own advice and remember that we all heal at different paces and never all at once.

All my years of wandering have seemed to come together this year.  I was lucky enough to add the best person I’ve ever met, Anne and her wonderful family and friends to my life.  I got to bring Anne to Thanksgiving in Ohio where she got to spend time with my family and experience our sense of humor.  Anne took it all in strides and as she and I played with my nephews and nieces, as my sister and I traded notes over working with at-risk youth, and as my brother and I debated politics, I knew I that the skin that I have been living in since I was 17, had completely shed off.

After re-connecting with a friend over a move, which you can read about from an earlier blog, Anne and I headed to Mason City to celebrate the holidays with her family.  Christmas morning started by face timing with her brother in Memphis, TN and continued with a dramatic reveal of a new bike that my and Anne’s family came together to present to me.   The Christmas week continued with a trip to watch an NBA basketball game in Minneapolis and ended with Anne’s 89-year-old grandma teaching Anne and I how to make Lefse Kling, a Norwegian dessert that she had made with her aunt since she was a kid. Interacting and watching the family bake together showed me a future that not only my future kids would benefit from, but so would I.   I could definitely feel the love from them and really felt like I was becoming a part of their family. 

 This Holiday season, there wasn’t a moment where I felt like I didn’t belong.  We all define what home means to us differently.  For me it’s knowing that where ever and whomever I spend my time with I feel loved and comfortable in my skin. It’s a feeling I felt time and time again this holiday season as Anne and I made each other’s families our family. I’ve traveled a long way to find the feeling of belonging again and it’s not one I plan on letting go of anytime soon. It’s good to be home.