When We Come Home

Some of the family goes home today.
Some are still here.

And somewhere over these past few days, something happened that I didn't expect.

We became an us and a them, and somewhere in between, we became ours.

Family is a complex weave of feelings, memories, expectations and surprises. We can surprise ourselves when we realise how much we have missed it. How much we have missed learning each other again.

Because we don't stay the same.

We shift. We grow. We leave. We return.

We move out into the world and become different versions of ourselves, gathering experiences and stories along the way. And then sometimes, we come home.

Back to our centre. Back to self. Back to family.

And we discover that we don't quite fit together in the same way anymore.

But perhaps that is the point.

We learn to navigate the spaces between who we were, who we have become and who we are becoming. We learn to accept, to understand, to see from perspectives we couldn't see before.

And sometimes we are completely surprised by what we discover. Something we thought was lost returns. Not as it was, but something familiar and unfamiliar at the same time.

New doors open. Old bonds find new shapes.

Because in the end, family is still family. There are things we feel and understand with family that belong only to that particular weave of people. The history. The memories. The things that don't need to be explained.

That is why family can be both challenging and extraordinary. It keeps asking us to see ourselves differently. Something we were sure of may never have been quite what we believed. We simply needed to look at it from another angle.

Everything is moving. Like a river shaping the landscape as it flows, neither the river nor the land stays the same.

And neither do we.

Then this morning, I come to the gym. Exhausted from a late night, up early with my coffee.

And I see my partner Will's beautiful face, smiling and laughing.

And I notice something softening. The armour dropping a little more, minute by minute.

I sit back and watch, and I can feel something moving through us. Healing. Not something that can be explained or seen. Just ripples moving beneath the surface.

And I smile, because I can see the kintsugi.

The Japanese art of repairing broken pottery with gold. Not hiding the fractures. Not pretending they never happened. Allowing the places that were broken to become part of what makes it beautiful.

Perhaps that is what family does. What love does.

We don't return to one another untouched. We return carrying our fractures, our misunderstandings, our growth, our scars.

And when we are willing to look again, we discover the cracks haven't destroyed the relationship. They have simply changed its shape.

And some of those fractures are now filled with gold.

I look over at the board near the coffee machine. Little notes, written anonymously. Tiny pieces of someone's life, left where strangers can see them.

One says:

“It's not a tumour.”

Someone needed to tell someone. Even strangers. Even a board by the coffee machine.

And I am reminded that every person around me is moving through something. Something I may never know about. Something carried behind a smile, behind their strength, behind an ordinary morning.

We never really know what someone is navigating.

And family isn't only the people we share blood with. It shows up in many forms.

Sometimes it is the people who know our history. Sometimes it is the person sitting beside us while we fall apart. Sometimes it is someone who simply says, I see you.

Sometimes it is safety. Sometimes it is being held. Sometimes it is being allowed to soften.

And sometimes it is discovering we don't have to carry everything alone.

Maybe that is what coming home really means.

Not returning to a place where nothing has changed, but returning to a place where we can change and still belong.

Where we can grow and still be loved.
Where we can fracture and still be beautiful.
Where we can leave, return, become someone new, and still find our way back to the centre.

Back to ourselves.
Back to one another.
Back to ours. ❤️

Julia Longin
Author of Sacred Defiance