There’s No Place Like Home ~ From escape to presence... coming back to yourself.

For as long as I can remember, holidays have been my escape. 

A pause button.
A place that felt better than my real life.
Somewhere I could breathe, feel lighter, more myself.

When I think about it, I realise this is most definitely a hangover from my teaching days… and come to think of it my own education prior to that!  My life was divided into periods of several weeks spent working before the next holiday arrived, and I constantly found myself counting down, hoping for time to pass quickly so I could finally feel 'free'.

But the thing is, and without realising it, that pattern fully embedded itself and quietly whispered:
“The grass is greener somewhere else.

That has, in turn became a mantra that has ruled every area of my life.

This last holiday showed me something different.  We had planned it, our ‘escape’, three weeks away travelling through France over Christmas and New Year.

Yes, I loved being away. New places, new experiences, the expansion that comes from stepping outside the familiar. But alongside that, something unexpected happened… I missed home.

Not just the house.
The rhythm.
The routines that support me.
The ease of knowing where things are.
The quiet comfort of my ‘ordinary’ life.

And I noticed something important.

When we constantly look forward to the next escape, the next upgrade, the next “when I get there” moment, we subtly leave the present. We start living around our lives instead of inside them.

This time, I began to allow both.
The joy of being away and the appreciation of what I already have.

And in doing so, something shifted. I felt more here.
More rooted.
More at home and in myself.

There’s a difference between expansion and avoidance.
Between desire and discontent.

Real freedom isn’t found in running toward a better version of life somewhere else.
It’s found in being so deeply connected to yourself so that wherever you are feels like home.

And maybe that’s the work.
Not changing everything.
But coming back to yourself, to the present moment, to the life that’s already holding you.

To understand your patterns. To remind yourself and your nervous system that it is safe to just ’be’. To hold those younger parts that learnt that they weren’t quite enough as themselves. To get comfortable with the uncomfortable that is feeling everything and staying in the wonderous gift that is presence.

It takes practice.

Not just a one hit wonder. Yes, the awareness that comes from one single 1:1 session is key but you cannot undo a lifetime of ingrained pattern in 60 minutes. It takes continuity, it takes self-reflection and ultimately self-love to keep going ‘there’ in order to reconnect to YOU.