According to romanticized nostalgia and tales of happily ever after, going home should be an easy thing: a sweet visit to a place of warmth and welcome, a loving family, and only the happiest of memories. But in the days leading up to Samhain, when many folks choose to acknowledge or venerate their ancestors and gone-befores, the sometimes complicated, darker truths about home can cast a shadow over the season.
My parents were good people who loved their children and did their best to raise the seven of us to be decent human beings. For the most part, I believe they were successful in that endeavor. But here in my 56th year, as a woman who grieves her own failures as a parent and a sister who grieves her struggles as a sibling, I understand all too well that doing your best and loving your children does not mean you can safeguard them from pain, sorrow, trauma, or life. Nor can you love or magic away the negative connotations that home might develop. That is work a child must eventually do of their own accord.
My father began asking me to go home sometime in August. He started with subtle hints – the aroma of freshly brewed coffee, random old music, and snapshots of shared memories. At first, I thought he was doing this because he knew the depths of my longing to see certain loved ones and to ground myself once again in Adirondack soil. But there were other sorts of foreshadowing, and when news came about a family member’s illness, Dad’s nudges became a clear directive.
“Go home, Sheri Ann. Go home.”
I should mention that no embodied being in my home drinks coffee, and my dad left this realm 16 years ago.
Ray and Mae Barker’s gravestone [S. Barker]
Those two factors in his recent communications should have been enough to help me make the decision, but when he dropped my middle name into the conversation, I knew I would be traveling. I also knew it was a journey I needed to make alone.
Since the day after Mabon, I have been immersed in all things autumn: pumpkins and apples, changing light and color, falling leaves, honoring ancestors, divination, the deeper meanings of harvest, tucking into homestead and hearth in preparation for the season ahead, being amused at debates about how the veil is thinning or not thinning or gone or never existed, and so much more than anyone really wants to read about.
My not-so-long-ago arrival in this realm delivered me into this season, and we belong to each other. The aspects of autumn hit deeper because of that, and the turning wheel has carried me into time and space where I am aware of stepping more fully into who I am.
I recently began living and moving from a place of balance with roots that pass through the hub of the Wheel of the Year and go deep into spirit center. In order to face the ghosts of home, I understand that I need to be centered in that space, and I am. After two years of intensive shadow work, I am still not entirely sure how I arrived at this state of being, but I am comfortable here. This current personification of me seems to know what she is doing, so I go along with her out of curiosity and a seeker’s desire for discovery.
So it is that less than a week after Mabon, I packed my bags, loaded the car, and hit the road. After too many years away (and on the cusp of my birthday), I was returning to the first place I ever called home. I barely remember a time when “going home” or even living in my hometown was not a source of deep anxiety for me – until this time.
At the start of my trip, I tuned into a class with an instructor who starts each session with a grounding exercise. A minute into that exercise, I realized I was not feeling the tension or anxiety that I expected. That surprised me, but I tucked that knowledge away until the class ended. When it did, I spent much of the next 650 miles and 24 hours having interesting and enlightening conversations with my shadow selves and a few of my ancestors.
As the presence of shadow selves indicates, the topics of discussion in those conversations were deeply personal, and I choose not to share them here. Eventually, they spiraled down to the main reasons for this trip:
- Reconnecting with my sibling and other family members.
- Time with beloved friends.
- Embracing the reason for the season and remembering and honoring my ancestors.
- Time in my personal sacred spaces.
The relationships behind each of those reasons have long been both subtly and overtly influenced by my own shadows and by long shadows projected by other people. As the road before me grew shorter, I shifted my thoughts to the season, my ancestors, and home. I have a deep and abiding love and respect for my ancestors, beginning with my parents and moving back through time. My healing journey and growth have also added layers of understanding and compassion.
But there is history there, tough times and misunderstandings caused primarily by difficulties in communication and a pigheadedness so deeply ingrained it can only be genetic. The grace of time, distance, and love have rendered much of that history insignificant. Disagreements and hurt feelings from 100, 50, or 15 years ago just do not matter anymore.
Sacred space [S. Barker]
The problem is that my protective shields have been in place for so long and deliberately crafted in such a way that I did not have to constantly acknowledge the reasons for my pain. Eventually, some misguided, protective part of me blinded me to those shields. In time, when I was ready to connect with my gone-befores, I subconsciously built those relationships around the shield barriers. Even as I healed, grew stronger, and progressed in my shadow work, I still held a wall between us.
These thoughts, this deep dive, these revelations – these were hardly the playlist I imagined listening to and singing along with during my time alone in the car. However, I am glad I was presented with the opportunity to hear what I needed to hear and to process these profound realizations. I am truly grateful to my father. He was never particularly good at talking about hard things, but it seems he has not lost his ability to point me in the right direction, whether I am willing to listen or not.
By the time I was meandering my way through a peaceful, charming old cemetery to visit my paternal grandparents’ graves on my way into town, I understood what was so vastly different about this particular trip home. For the first time in my life, I will walk and breathe and stand in the places my ancestors lived and loved without holding onto the fear, shame, guilt, self-doubt, anger, and grief that for nearly all my life had shadowed my connection to those people, the land, and the spirits of place.
For the first time, I will see home without the filter of negativity.
For the first time, I have no expectations, nor will I accept them from others.
For the first time, I am wholly myself in these places I call home.
For the first time, I will allow myself to feel the love I could not accept or believe in.
I stood in front of the gravestone for Ray and Mae and released the old and now unnecessary protection shields before I spoke a single word to them. Then I sat on the ground, leaned against their stone, and talked with them for a while, warm in the knowledge that the literal and spiritual distance between us was gone. When I was ready to go, I kissed the top of their stone and laid down the lavender from my garden.
I had planned to visit grave sites and sacred spaces while in New York. The morning I left North Carolina, I picked lavender, hyssop, rosemary, and roses to leave as gifts for my gone-befores. I wanted the remembrances I left to be personal and an extension of love from my Cottage home. Summarizing significant pieces of two years’ worth of shadow work during the drive changed my perceptions and intentions regarding those visits, and parts of this journey that were meant to be an adventure became a pilgrimage instead. Leaving a gift became an intentional act of connection.
The second stop in town, as planned, was a visit to my parents’ grave. Once, this would have been the most complicated and difficult visit of all, but moving from center with an open heart, I made certain I approached the space with love eldering ego. I thanked my dad for his guidance and spent more than an hour talking, listening, and keeping company with the two people who loved me first.
I kissed them goodbye, put roses on their grave, and left feeling happy and more complete.
Every encounter after that was the same, whether with people or places, ghosts or the living. Days and nights were spent moving where my heart and my ancestors led me, seeing and seeking with an open mind and open heart. My time in my hometown and home state was deeply satisfying. I remained mindful of always moving from my place of center, although I know I sometimes spoke as though I were not.
I spent an entire day in a place that is sacred and holy to me, accompanied by a sister of heart and spirit. I visited a personal shrine where I often return to in meditation, waded in the cold lake water, and spent hours sitting in the sunlight on the shore of that lake, watching the light dance across the water, and communing with the trees, water, and wildlife. I wondered if I was like the tamarack, looking as though it fit in with the surrounding evergreens until suddenly it did not. We stopped in Old Forge for dinner on the way home, which for me was a black raspberry ice cream cone at the parlor where my dad first bought me ice cream more than 50 years ago.
My last night in my dad’s beloved north country was spent in a cabin by a small lake. While there, I gathered fallen Red Maple, Black Cherry, and American Beech leaves and used them to create a simple, quiet meditation that helped me bring my mind and heart to order. Leaving that place was not going to be an easy thing to do. My ancestors gazed upon similar trees, leaves, waterways, and wildlife in the days they spent in those beautiful mountains. I have always been aware of the connection to a shared place of love; I often speak of it and write about it. Yet I had never truly opened my heart to it. I know now that I will always carry that connection with me. I pressed the leaves I found in the pages of a book: a reminder to stay in touch with the natural world and spirits that surround me as much as they live within me.
Adirondack leaves [S. Barker]
My current stay in this realm once again delivered me into this season. I grounded my body, mind, and spirit in the pine-scented loam of the Adirondack forest and wove a physical and spiritual connection between the Adirondack, Appalachian, and Catskill Mountains. I gave sunflowers to the great lions of my childhood, carved jack-o-lanterns, ate cider donuts, went through a straw maze and on a hayride, and met raven, loon, deer, and black bear. I honored my ancestors, spent cherished time with family, and, most importantly, carefully considered what I was willing to give to attain a long overdue harvest.
The turning wheel carried me to some of my touchstone places and slid my own veil aside to remind me that I am the beloved daughter of Ray and Jean, the granddaughter of Ray and Mae and Ed and June, in a line of ancestors too many to name. My connection to those who came before me is no longer hindered or haunted by the ghosts of false expectations and long shadows. Once, I was the leaf dancing on the Autumn wind.
Now, I am the tree, supported by roots that love me.
My spirit is a tamarack, standing tall, thin, and green
on the edge of an Adirondack lake,
mingling with the evergreens, longing to be loved.
My ancestors lived and played here, loved and died
among the pines and cold, clear waters, but
this changeling child never felt she belonged with them.
Roots meet roots deep below the surface, and I can feel the connection.
Soon, my needles will turn gold and fall, baring my bones to the cold.
Changeling or not, the roots assure me that the ancestors
will hold my bones safe through the darkness that lies ahead.
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