Home Is Also What We Leave
In Genesis 12, God tells Abraham to leave his homeland without telling him where he is going. The Hebrew lech lecha means “go to yourself.” Similarly, in the Qur’an, Abraham says, “I am going to my Lord; He will guide me” (37:99). In both accounts, the journey begins not with knowing where you’re going, but knowing you cannot stay as you are.
It can be hard to leave what we’ve known as home: our parents’ world, a relationship that has protected us from change, an identity that has given us false certainty. We think, “If I leave, I’ll lose myself.”
But sometimes we leave too quickly, convinced that what we’re looking for lies just ahead: a new job, relationship, place. Then we arrive and find the old dissatisfaction waiting.
In the style of coaching I practice, we call this a “polarity”: some problems aren’t meant to be solved but tensions to inhabit. The question isn’t whether “here” or “there” is the real me, but what I can discover by holding the tension between them.
I once told my old therapist that I wished I had a stable childhood home to return to. She replied, “Home isn’t just what we return to. Home is also what we leave.”
Sometimes we have to leave a place to understand how deeply it belongs to us. I left my father’s house only to discover how much of his voice and language I carried with me. I left traditional Judaism only to find its humor intact in me. I’ve moved to the other side of the world only to hear an American song and be moved to tears.
At some point, you will have to leave every house you think is yours. But if it’s really yours, it will never leave you.
As always, if you’d like to be held through your own process, reach out and we’ll set up a free coaching call.
Comments