Tattoos of Home

I’ll be honest, lately I have been struggling with the idea of home at my core. There have been so many pieces of my life up in the air, things that don’t fit anymore, roots that were pulled out forcefully, situations that changed the landscape by moving along like a glacier, slowly enough that I didn’t realize what was changing until the transformation had already occurred.

And me, being the rational person that I am, have been dealing with this rootlessness by a healthy dose of introspection and tattoo therapy. (Okay, maybe real therapy too, but when you just walk in to a tattoo parlor and get ink on a whim it feels pretty much the same as a good talk therapy session.)

Now, the tattoo artist that I had start what will become my sleeve just had a beautiful little human and isn’t opening her books until October, but that is only giving me altogether too much time think about the pieces I want to incorporate into the rest of my sleeve. In this process of thinking about what all my tattoos up until now mean to me, I realized that I want this sleeve to be my connection/reflection on my roots and family. I have daisies on my shoulder for myself (three of them, because three is a consistently important number in my life). But I want to add to that. And thinking about what home is to me has had me remembering how much of my childhood I connect to being outside and exploring with my family. Like well, everyone, my family history even when I was young was complicated. So much of the people I was raised with as family were not blood but chosen, if only for a small part of my life.

When I meet back with my tattoo artist this fall, I want to begin working on a half sleeve that feels like being grounded to me. So far all of my tattoos are either pieces of nature or words that feed me and I plan on continuing that through this sleeve with pieces of the natural world that serve as a map of where I’ve been and where I’m going. That look like reminders of people or situations that left indentations on my skin reflecting who I am now.

So I guess home is a valley filled with yellow bursts of black-eyed susans, welcoming me every time I turn towards the place I’m from.

Home is strawberries in the summer and enjoying the jam from my grandma for the rest of the year, the little square containers of them resting in the corner of the freezer in hopes to last until we can make more when the weather changes.

Home is memories of picking mint leaves at eight years old and squeezing the oils out between my two fingers so the scent stays with me as long as possible.

Home is knowing that sometimes trees have to be cut down to make room for new growth and that growth sometimes has to happen because someone decides to leave without warning.

Tree rings marking the place they decided to leave, the years rooted in place marking the time we had with them.

Home is loving the mountains but appreciating the endless horizon of fields in Indiana.

Home is wherever I’m existing as authentically as I can.

Home is safety that we’ve built for ourselves.

Home is knowing we have somewhere to come back to when we’ve wandered a bit too far.

Finding home has always weighed heavily on me. As you’ve read before, I seem to always be looking for ways to feel grounded while still reaching for the farthest branches. What grounds you? What images resonate in you so much that when you see them, the air shifts and you remember some key piece of your becoming?

I told myself I won’t get another tattoo on a whim until I can get back behind the needle for this sleeve of mine. I can’t wait until October rolls around. Restlessness and recklessness sometimes go hand in hand for me but this sleeve is something that I want to be well planned out. Here’s to this specific work in progress. To continually digging a little deeper in the hopes of finding new roots.

Talk soon.

Nobody Likes You When You’re 23… Which is cool because I’m almost 24.

Okay, so maybe I don’t actually believe the now-cliched Blink 182 song, but this week does hold my 24th birthday so I’ve been looking back to this past year to see all the things that I’ve learned and lost and loved.

And man, fam, things have changed so much this year. I’ve lost some friends and gained some. I started therapy. I got a new job and left the university I had been at for the last five years. I sold my first house and moved to Indianapolis into my first apartment. I attended my first official Pride event (this was the first full year of me being OUT. Hey-o!). I had mono and didn’t get to run the half marathon I was scheduled to run. I wrote a lot and I tried new things. I found a new favorite place to get a drink. I found more clothing styles that actually make me feel like me.

As many do, I decided to write down things that I’m taking away with me from my 23rd year. Without further ado, here are 23 things I learned at 23.

1. Sometimes you have to drive a couple hours to another state simply to buy a longboard for yourself on a whim. And then go with your person to the lake and skate down along the water.
2. Taking “lazy days” doesn’t have to be something that causes you guilt when you tell yourself you could be doing other things. Sometimes taking a day to just exist is the biggest thing you can do to love yourself.
3. Getting rid of clothes that don’t make you feel confident or like yourself is one of the most freeing feelings.
4. Additionally, finding styles that DO make you feel like yourself feels like winning the lottery.
5. Doing chores you would normally rather avoid gets so much easier when you’re doing them to help out someone you love.
6. Selling your first home is so much more emotional than I anticipated. (Cue dramatic music playing while I sit in the middle of my now-empty living room crying and thinking about closing the doors to this house for the last time.)
7. Therapy is for EVERYONE. Even on the days when I literally had to walk in the opposite direction of therapy before I could brave walking down those steps, it was so so worth it to give that time to myself. Doesn’t matter if you think you need therapy or not, I’m convinced that everyone can benefit from it.
8. Leaving a job that you were no longer growing in anymore feels empowering.
9. Starting a new full time job and trying to integrate into a new group of people can be daunting. (It’s okay if it takes a while to find a new work friend, especially when you’re in a whole new city.)
10. Having to specifically pay to do laundry when you move into an apartment is frustrating (But you love your new apartment so you deal with it.)
11. When you move to a new city, finding somewhere new to be your “place” feels really good. Especially when the cider on tap is incredible (shout out to Ash and Elm!)
12.  Sometimes you have to be sad. And just let yourself feel the sadness. This year I think I learned to embrace that more than I have before. Acknowledging emotions and letting them happen instead of pushing them away. (TBH I’m still working on this, but there was a definite shift this year.)
13. Christmas music really can and should be listened to on road trips year round. (Cue Michael Buble on the drive to work in the morning.)
14. Actually making significant progress on paying off a credit card is officially the best feeling.
15. Getting rid of things really does feel good. I’m not just talking about this whole Netflix craze that is sweeping the US right now to tidy up. When I was prepping to move this past fall, getting rid of things just felt good especially because of how much I had changed in the last year.
16. I learned that hiking is something that I should actually do more often, and I didn’t let myself get outside in that way near enough in my 23rd year.
17. Sometimes getting a new tattoo can make you feel even more deeply embedded in yourself. (Shout out to Nevada at Firefly Tattoo).
18. Apparently those horrifying little moments of having baby fever have in fact descended upon us. (Gotta steer clear of the baby section of Target from now on.)
19. A little patience goes a long way with the people I love. And knowing that I have the patience now to be what my people need makes me feel really thankful.
20. It really is okay to not know what you’re doing. It’s uncomfortable and maybe some days it will make you want to just choose things just so you can feel like you know what you’re doing, but it’s worth it to sit in the uncomfortable to figure out what you really want to be doing.
21. Maybe using planners really do help you keep on top of your goals and dreams (and day to day adult things???). So use one. Please.
22. Doing the things can be everything from writing five poems in a day to flex your creative muscle to just simply making your bed when you get up in the morning because even that feels impossible sometimes. Not all steps are live changers, but constantly taking small steps can change your life.
23. It’s finally starting to sink in that this whole “work in progress” canon that I’ve been talking about for a few years now is something that I always want to be. I always want to be in progress. To be growing. To be learning. To be breaking and rebuilding.

BONUS: Getting older is actually kind of rad, even if it makes you feel fragile at times. So cheers to 24.

So yeah, maybe the song is wrong when it says that nobody likes you when you’re 23, because this year has been the biggest year of learning to love myself and having confidence in who I am and who I am constantly becoming. It has been the biggest year of growth for me in general and I’m so thankful for all of the hard moments and the amazing moments I got to experience.

24 is just around the corner and I hope that this year brings even more change and adventure than last.

Seven days since leaving the ground…

It’s been a week since I got the keys to my new apartment in Indy. Six days since I closed the door to my first house and said goodbye for the last time. 

Do you know the feeling of having a place to come back to? How comforting it can be to be out adventuring and know in the back of your mind that when the moment is over you still have a space to come back to that is carved out just for yourself? The last few months have been a continuous feeling of losing a place for myself. I haven’t felt home in my house because really, once I started putting in job applications in Indy, I was checked out of my home town. I had already purchased my ticket out of town before I even had a true destination. I was ready load up my wagon and head out west, so to speak. Once that decision was made in my mind to move to Indy, it felt like a metaphorical cutting of the ties to the place I had grown up. Not in a never-coming-back kind of way, but in a way that felt very much so like I was meant to leave and find my own. 

I was living in an in-between for months waiting to hear back about jobs and then waiting to hear about selling my house and then waiting to hear about the apartment I applied for. The waiting is not a comfortable place for me. In that time, I still felt very grounded in what I had known forever. The wait, however, is already over in what in hindsight feels like a blink of an eye. There is an apartment with white walls and wood floors that I get to come back to now. There are spaces that I can call mine again. And there are infinite spaces waiting for me to discover them. 

The last few days I’ve been trying to write down the random thoughts that being in these new spaces have brought to me. I’ve been trying to take in the moments that feel important. 

Seven days ago I was thinking that it is a good thing that I don’t carry boxes of books up three flights of stairs every day. I stood in the middle of my empty apartment for thirty minutes, just looking at my three rooms feeling so thankful that it was mine. Thanking God for the opportunity to be in a beautiful space like this. Thanking Them for a chance to create new things in this place for myself. 

Six days ago my brothers and I (mainly them) were kicking ass moving the rest of my stuff into the house. And it felt so good to crash on the couch that night knowing that the hard part of physically moving was done. 

Five days ago I was unpacking and realizing that I really did this thing that I had been working towards for months. I had found a new job, sold a house, and moved myself to a new city. It feels like floating. 

Four days ago Charlie finally started to seem comfortable being by herself in a room at our new place. Settling in was starting to happen. 

Three days ago I put up our Christmas tree. It feels like home with lights twinkling next to you. 

Two days ago I was trying out a new brewery that is less than fifteen minutes from my new place. I invested and bought myself a growler because the ciders were so incredible there. 

Yesterday I felt a little homesick for something I couldn’t quite place. 

Today I’m welcoming the feeling of being up in the air, endless exploring expanding out in front of me. So many words to be written. So many things to see. So many places to leave my mark on. 

Today I’m thankful for getting to be a work in progress in a city that is constantly evolving. 

Today I’m here. In this moment. And I’m ready to have time this weekend to make my apartment feel a little bit more like me. 

If things feel overwhelming or your goals feel too far off, trust me when I say that if you keep at it, when your goals are reached all those long nights and anxiety filled moments melt into a deep feeling of gratitude that you made it through the hard moments. 

Wishing you a moment to reflect on what is in progress in your life. Wishing you well. 

Talk soon. 

vulnerability.

As you can probably guess by the title of this post, the idea of vulnerability has been heavy on my mind lately. The concept of being vulnerable is incredibly intimidating to me, if I’m being honest. I mean, the definition basically says that being vulnerable leaves you standing on a target range, hoping that you won’t be hit.

Vulnerability, n: the quality or state of being exposed to the possibility of being attacked or harmed, either physically or emotionally.

As someone who lived a long time being extremely closed off to even the people I was close to, I know how intimidating it can actually be to think about opening yourself up and giving someone the power to know you well enough to hurt you. Because isn’t that what it is? To be vulnerable, you have to put your trust in someone else that they won’t harm you when you let them in. That they won’t use your vulnerabilities to your detriment. And THAT is what can make being vulnerable so incredibly difficult, especially when someone has broken that trust in the past.

But I have also learned that life is too short to be anything but vulnerable with the people you love. Yes, I am fully aware that this can be incredibly reckless for my own heart, but I feel a lot. I feel so much all the time and I don’t feel like myself when I have to quiet my feelings or emotions to make a situation more comfortable for other people. This doesn’t mean I don’t still protect my own heart, but it does mean that I have worked really hard (and am still working hard) to allow myself to let go more often and really be in whatever moment or situation I’m in. I don’t want to love halfway. I don’t want to experience pain halfway. I don’t want to only live half my life because I am afraid of being hurt. Anyway, don’t the best stories involve a little conflict? I think it’s inevitable, so I might as well be willingly going into it.

I realize that having the gumption to to be that recklessly optimistic and vulnerable seems ridiculous. But I think it is becoming a part of my truth.

“Vulnerability sounds like truth and feels like courage. Truth and courage aren’t always comfortable, but they’re never weakness.”

That is author Brene Brown has a lot to say about vulnerability. So much so that she has a TEDx Talk on it, has written several books that touch on it, if not focus on it, and she has literally spent the last decade studying vulnerability and the power behind it. I haven’t had a chance to yet, but I have my eyes on her book “Daring Greatly”. It’s one of those books that has quotes from it floating around Facebook like it’s religion, except for some reason her words actually stuck with me and had me thinking instead of just forgetting about whatever shared post I scrolled past over.

But the words that stuck with me the most are these:

“Wholeheartedness. There are many tenets of Wholeheartedness, but at its very core is vulnerability and worthiness; facing uncertainty, exposure, and emotional risks, and knowing that I am enough.”

The thing is, the more vulnerable I have worked on becoming, the more I am seeing that I should feel worthy of living the life I am living and feeling all that I can be feeling.

I think being vulnerable is worth the risk.

I think it’s worth being a little reckless.

That’s a lot of what it means to me to be a work in progress. It means being open for things that may be uncomfortable. It means being okay with the chance of being hurt in exchange for the opportunity to be insanely happy or to feel things all the way. Life is too short for anything less.