Finding Home

Music has a way of holding our emotions until we’re ready to fully understand them.  “We Found Home” became a mirror for my own transformation—both in the moment of transition and again now, as I look back with new clarity. Home, in all its evolving forms, has always been a powerful theme in my life. 

And as I sit here now, reflecting, I come across many profound realizations. I take moments to recollect on what I've come to understand over the years that have gone by.

"We found Home"

A song by Forrester (feat Kwesi). Released sometime while I was on maternity leave with my second child.

I found it one morning feeling inspired with a deep desire to move my body. A need to release pent up energy. A cascading fire releasing into the air. Like a need inside of me trying desperately to seep out, without wanting to hurt anyone in its path. Energy uncertain of where to go, where to be put, or what to do with, or of even what it was. Deep within the depths of life transitions and utter chaos. 

Looking back, it's such a raw and powerful image—this intense, burning force seeking release, though with care, restraint. It speaks to the complexity of emotion, the way we can hold both urgency and tenderness at the same time. These memories resurface now.    

It was mere months after the world had shut down to COVID.

"We Found Home" spoke to me. I was getting to know home well. It's all where I was allowed to be or go. My home was evolving. It was growing. It was changing. I was transitioning. I was anew! 

And again, now, as I listen to it, I realize the true depths of its magnitude. The impacts to my soul. I reflect to why I was called to move, five years ago now.

It was a moment of release. My body's way of processing what my mind could not. My emotions were too large for words. Nothing the little minds of those around me could ever decipher.

Deep within my bones, the morning movement released what I could not understand then but can look back on and conceptualize now. Movement can be such a healing force, especially when words feel trapped inside. I was grieving my time, my freedom!

Independence once taken for granted. Lost to the wind. Emotions tugging in opposing direction. Mixed. Utterly in love to the depths of my inner organs. My neurons forever altered. Such adoration for the blessings before me. This evolving, ever-changing-home is my continued journey. Viscerally felt, not just in the heart, but in every fabric of my being. Love and transformation are something I carry in every cell, every breath.

It gives me clarity to describe how overwhelming and soul-consuming it can become and yet, it seems others still cannot quite understand the depths of my limits when my mind and body just take over. Soaking up every bit of stimuli around me like an energy conduit. It feels shorted! Depleted before there was a chance to even begin.

A shift from one extreme to the next in this cycle of mine from rest and hibernation. From introversion to extroversion. From capability to inability! It's not sustainable to force ourselves past the point of what we can. And it is for this reason boundaries are so critical. We need our time to replenish ourselves in the way we need, particularly, when we begin to feel that depletion creeping in. Learning to understand ourselves, our signs, and listen. Though, there will be moments this simply will not be possible. And so, how do we stop it when it comes flooding in so forcefully?

We cannot. We frankly must ride it out. Feel our feels. Let the emotion course through our veins, pump, or move through us so we can move onward and upward. This is how we grow is it not? Through our hardships and difficult, or perhaps, inspiring moments? I imagine it all depends upon how we choose to view our own evolution. Our experience is of our own cognitive fruition in the end. How do you choose to view yours?

With Love,

Melanie Watts