Homecoming

20+ addresses in 18 years. Finally home.

Crisp, fragile, lifeless husks that seem more ready for fall’s surrender, surely about to drop and disintegrate at any moment, are suddenly unfurling their whimsical magenta and lilac petals in a cascading explosion all around my house as we slide toward summer, clinging to a shabby PVC + telephone line scaffolding built by the last tenants. And is every blossoming like that? The caterpillar’s cocooning deception, the snake’s molting resurrection. You might be left for dead exactly when you’re on the cusp of the most luminous expression of your unique unfolding.

I sit inside a home experiencing that now. Recently reduced to the straw and mud of its original making, its walls crumbling inside and out. Its roof was cleared of a whole century and four feet of packed dirt – the old ways of insulating — its own kind of graveyard. Shoveled and heaved over the parapets, it filled two entire dumpsters, dragged away somewhere, releasing the ghosts it had long trapped to freedom. The weight of it all sagged the pine vigas that stretch across my ceiling – permanently concave as an elder’s back ought to be, proving its commitment to existence.

We, well, my contractors and subs, rebuilt this old gal meticulously over 2.5 years.

Adobe bricks were handmade outside to fill the gaps in the walls using tools long-abandoned in the shed, likely the same that built this house from the ground up, literally. The decaying wood floor, plastered over with linoleum fabricated to look like Saltillo, brittle like toothpicks, couldn’t be salvaged. Plus the crawlspace it revealed beneath was too appealing for the vertical real estate it promised, and so the house sank earthward while new skylights reached upward, adding 2 feet of height. Skylights like lungs liberated of dust expanded the space with fresh breath and clear sight of the shimmering leaves of the mighty cottonwood tree just outside the front door, whose canopy covers nearly half the house and whose roots braid into the walls – two inseparable beings now in wider conversation with each other.

I debated relinquishing the original ceiling, too lost to layers of tacky paint, but my last and final and best contractor, the guy I wanted from the beginning, the guy I needed to trust in the long arc of time and stumble repeatedly with others until he was ready, that guy, passionate about restoring historic adobe homes, convinced me we could do it. I’ll forever be impressed by the painstaking devotion he and Memo invested into this transformation.

Not long ago, my home was just a shell. She was fading into decay, made survivable by the last tenants who strung extension cords along the walls like spiderwebs from sparse outlets plugging into a shoddy two-circuit electrical system installed sometime circa 1968 (if not older), the boiler shoved into the corner of the kitchen, dim lights and a ceiling painted a shiny mahogany. A wood-burning stove somehow didn’t burn the place down, but left every single wall covered in a thick layer of smoke stains and soot.

She might have been left for dead.

This is my home, now.

Home.

I’ve had at least 20 different addresses in the last 18 years. And I don’t just mean I crashed at a friend’s place for a week and count that… no… these were places legally connected to me one way or another — places I signed lease agreements for, places I registered my taxes to, places enshrined on driver’s licenses. 20. In 18 years.

Now I have one for good. One I can sink my own roots into and weave them along the mycelium webs of adobe and cottonwood. One I aim to pass down to the generations to come.

And the timing, which for so much of this journey felt agonizingly slow and sanity-testing, couldn’t be more miraculous or mysterious. I spent my first night here, sleeping on my couch, on Mother’s Day. 10 days later, my first podcast episode as a guest on my beloved friend Alison’s Living the Spiral was published.

Homecoming was a central theme.

10 years ago, I hit rock bottom and had no idea that the lowest I’d ever been could and would give way to an even deeper descent. My heart and spirit were completely cracked open, and simultaneously, I fell into the primordial void of not only my existence but that of all who came before me, searching, seeking something ineffable — not knowing I was looking to come home.

At a point where I felt severed and separate from life itself, it was my ancestors calling me back into the family of belonging that was waiting for me to tap into the power they patiently held for me.

And here I am now.

Ten years later.

I would be deeply honored to have you join Alison and me for a cup of tea while you sit with us in this conversation that emerged from the purest place in my heart. A vulnerable, soul-bearing discussion — the first of its kind for me.

You can also listen to this podcast on other channels like…

And if anything here beats the drum of your heart with curiosity about what’s possible in your own ancestral reclamation and renewal, visit my site here for more information about October’s course:

As always, thank you for bringing your heart here. If this sparked something for you, please click the ❤️ or 🔄 buttons (it’s public!) so more people can discover it on Substack. Comments, restacks, and re-shares are valuable means of engagement in the Substack ecosystem and help my work reach others. You can also help widen the circle, by sharing this reader-supported, paywall-free little ecosystem of hi•ne•ni with someone in your life.

Your feedback — constructive critique, resonance, provocation, anything — is always welcome. We walk together and one of the best ways to do that is through dialogue.

And lastly, obviously, no AI now or ever used to create anything in my posts. Everything from the mind and heart of my human being.

With big love, til next time,

Rach