Many things pull us away from our center. Infinite distractions from every direction. Right now, more than ever, our energy seems to scatter and disperse. It is easy to lose our sense of self, our sense of belonging, our connection to what makes life meaningful. So how do you come home to yourself? How do you build a sanctuary within you, so that no matter how stormy life gets, how confusing the circumstances are, how dysregulating the situation is, you can be the refuge that you’re seeking?

The words we use in the inner conversation, what we say about ourselves, how we frame what’s happening, the physical posture we take when certain feelings arise, the thought patterns, our relationship with food, the perspective we have, the position we are rooted in – it all shapes the home that we are for ourselves. 

What kind of a home do you want to be? What kind of a home do you need right now? 

The Witch of the Woods: How to Come Home to Yourself 

In the deep, thick, dark forest of your life, the witch shows you how to come home to yourself. The witch of the wild woods is part of the land. Ancient. Mossy. Untamed. Her home interweaves with vines and branches. She is woodland. Dangerous. She is nourishing, but she might eat you. She cackles with the jackals in the wee hours of the night. She caws with the crows that fly in through her window. She croaks with the frogs that live in the pond. Is the pond outside her door, or is it in the back room? 

Like those amphibians, she is a creature of transition; one who knows the way between water and soil. She is a place of passage. A convergence. A sanctuary of plants becoming human, becoming animal, becoming stars. She sees the world through unconventional lenses; upside down, like the bats that hang in her hut. 

Rewilding: Returning to Your Inner Home

The hut is the home of our rewilding. Not a domesticating home, but one that makes us feral. A home that teaches us to speak in the language of trees. A home within which we are not quite a creature of the indoors, but a being who finds refuge in the mythic mind, in the relationship with plants, in the song of a bird, in the howling wind, in a burrowing serpent.

The Underworld Journey: Reclamation, Rebirth, and Coming Home to Yourself 

When do you become a burrow? When is your refuge deep in the earth, under the ground? 

When you’re at home in the subterranean worlds that weave the tapestry of ancient goddess lore, the fabric of death and rebirth, you are finding a sanctuary in the darkness, in the world of the dead. This is when you are a Persephone; the Greek goddess of the underworld, who is the maiden of Spring, journeying into the reclamation of all your parts. 

Do you know how to make a home in the underworld? Do you know how to build a sanctuary for yourself in the depth of transformation, in the midst of shedding skins? 

A home is where we find safety. How do you create safety when you are molting, when you are grieving, when you are breaking down the forms that you’ve been, when you are unraveling? The process twists and turns. There is no direct path. The story is a mycelium interweaving, a feast of interconnection, of decay and revitalization. A maze of decomposition, entanglement, and integration. 

How do you protect yourself, take care of yourself, and reclaim yourself in these messy times of serpentine sanctuaries? 

Learning to Come Home to Yourself Wherever You Are

The home of the serpent is where we undress, where we learn to shed skins. But the reptile kingdom also shows us how to be at home in our own skin. The turtle teaches us to travel the world without losing our sense of place, to wander through life without losing our sense of self. 

The Turtle: Boundaries, Safe Space, Sacred Container

When do you become the turtle, carrying a home with you wherever you go? 

With the turtle we learn to be a safe space that holds the precious tenderness of our being no matter where we are, no matter what we’re going through. When we become the turtle, we remember to take moments to retreat inward, to take breaths that center us within. The turtle shows us how to be in the world, to participate in it, and to withdraw into ourselves when needed. 

The turtle reminds us that our soft interior needs protection. This is not a call to close ourselves off to the world, but to know and to maintain the boundaries that we need in order to live in ways that honor who we are. A home is a shell. A home is made of boundaries of self respect. It’s a sacred container that holds us and keeps us from harm.

The Fairytale Heroine’s Journey Home

In fairytales, the home of the young heroine is taken from her. An evil stepmother is often the catalyst that pushes her to embark on a journey that will serve her lessons of adolescence, and guide her into a process of becoming who she is. She will make a home in a cave. She will make a home with the animals. She will make a home with the friendly beings that she meets in the wild. Dwarves. Magical creatures. She may also visit the home of a terrifying witch. 

And at the end, she will either reclaim the home that she comes from – return to her origin and integrate the maturity that she’s undergone – or move into the palace, where she leaves us to imagine her future. What kind of a home does she make there? Do you think she misses the wild? Do you think she longs for the home that she made with the creatures of the forest, before the prince showed up?

Stability and Change on the Path Home 

Different times in our lives, different moments in our spiralic journey through our embodiment, will present us with different needs for different kinds of sanctuaries. The home is not where we stop doing the work. It’s where we can do the deepest work. It’s the place where we can tend to the pieces of ourselves that travel into uncharted territories. 

It’s both our place of origin, and the space we create in order to take care of ourselves. It’s a place of return, and a space we give shape to. You can’t choose where you come from. But you have agency around where you’re going. 

The home is where we are nourished. We grow a garden that can feed us and our loved ones. We tend to the hearth, and make a relationship of boundaries and safety with the most dangerous elements. We nurture the parts that need care and support. We learn that care and support can come in many different ways. We domesticate ourselves, so we can simultaneously rewild ourselves. 

Śiva & Parvati: Where is Home?

We make a home with Hindu goddess Parvati, who comes from a palace, follows her heart into the forest to win the love of Śiva, the lord of yoga, and becomes the most badass yogini. Her practices are fierce, deep, and she is oh so incredibly committed. She shows us that the journey of becoming who we are, happens away from home, in the deep, wild forest of life. We strengthen not by staying safe, but by learning to endure discomfort. She sits in the snow and meditates for thousands of years. In the high temperatures of Summer, she sits by a fire and teaches herself to withstand the heat. She forges a powerful center in the flames of struggle and difficulty. 

Her power is undeniable. And she ends up luring him, not with her seductive, irresistible, delicious self, but with her deep spiritual work. 

The Tension Between the Wild and the Domestic

Śiva would love to stay and live in the mountains. He’s a bit of a beast; a wild, unruly character. He is a yogi of transcendence, and he’d rather meditate than take on the responsibilities of the world. 

The world is a difficult place. Withstanding the fires of responsibility, the challenges of a person who is a part of society, is much more difficult than weathering the storms of a spirituality that is practiced away from it all.  

But Parvati is a householder. She wants to take the lessons of spirituality and apply them, to bring them into real life situations. After a thousand or so years of love making and homemaking in the cave, in the mountains, she wants a real home. She wants to raise the next generation, to nurture the unfoldment of the universe. And so the divine couple builds a palace. 

The tension between the wild and the civilized is always there for Parvati and Śiva. She likes the mountains. For her, the cave is a beautiful retreat; a space to rest from the responsibilities and recharge the soul. But she prefers to live in the palace, to come back to civilization, to take a bath, to sleep in a comfortable bed. And to tend to the fires of life. He, on the other hand, is never quite at home in the world. He needs the cave. The palace feels foreign to him. That’s not home, that’s a cage. 

The tension between our wild nature and our process of becoming civilized, responsible people, is a thread that weaves the story of humanity. Home is where we rewild and rebuild, untangle and reweave, untame and tend to our responsibilities, unwind and show up. 

Make it Sacred: The Art of Coming Home to Yourself

Life will take us on voyages away from home. Sometimes it feels like we cannot find our path back. Sometimes it’s not about going back. Sometimes what we thought of as home no longer fits, and we need to reorient ourselves. Home is grounding, and also changing. Home is safety and also a space to grow. Homemaking is art. 

A home needs a front door, so that we can go out on adventures. It needs a backdoor that leads to the garden, where we tend to what we are growing. It needs windows that let in moonlight. And it needs love. Lots of love. 

The art of coming home to yourself is a process. It’s a practice. It’s a continuous project of query and discovery. It requires listening, opening, softening, and arriving where we are. It also needs boundaries. Decisions about what furniture to put in there, and how to arrange it. It’s an invitation to check in with yourself, to ask yourself what you need, and to offer yourself the space to receive it. It’s an invitation to beautify, to improve, to express who you are. 

The home that you are doesn’t chain you to who you’ve been. To come home to yourself is the art of becoming. 

Who are you becoming? 

Create a ritual for your process of becoming, and build a sanctuary within you with this FREE ritual guide for the secular soul. 

Join me on Substack for Muse Medicine that will support your process of continuously making your life an art project. 

You might find this reflection on the sign of Cancer and the archetype of the Mother interesting too. 

Sending you lots of love,

Hagar