introduction quotes to The Almanac:
“The world doesn’t need another wanderlusting soul seeker.
It needs a homemaker
- me -
To make my home within it.”
-Karen Mazen-Miller
It needs a homemaker
- me -
To make my home within it.”
-Karen Mazen-Miller
“Well, you know the way I left was not the way I planned
But I thought the world needed love and a steady hand
So, I'm steady now.”
- Dar Williams
But I thought the world needed love and a steady hand
So, I'm steady now.”
- Dar Williams
Have you ever felt emotionally homeless? As if you were disconnected from an emotional core of safety, security, trust, and visibility? As if no one in your life could really see you, genuinely relate to you, or care what was happening inside of you?
I was 18 years old when my father died and with him went the fragile web that was our family. We became a set of individuals alienated from each other. I felt completely alone, isolated, and without gravity. I drifted through the space of echoes and ghosts. I was homesick and homeless. There was no “there” there anymore.
In a gradual and painstaking way I searched for my home among wise older women, bright young women, and all the wrong boyfriends. Mercifully, the good stuff stuck. I was graced with resonance. In the good company of friends and guides, my grief and rage subsided, I grew up, and I grew in connection with them. Therapy played an important role, too, by teaching me to see myself more clearly, co-operate my emotions and my mind, and practice my agency. I became less reactive, more loving, and steady.
Over the years, a chosen family emerged, even when I couldn’t really perceive it. It shines brightly in hindsight. I learned with them how to build a home inside me and to welcome home the people I love in whatever space we find ourselves.
So at 46 years old, I am home.
I am a home to myself. I make myself at home in my body and in my humanity. I am a homemaker who fosters intimate connections of women to deep parts of themselves and to each other. I bring love and steadying to my parenting and my partnership in our home.
This book is a collection of the people and practices that comprise my homemaking. In these pages I articulate the who and the how of meaning in my life. This is my testimony to the meaning of home.
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