Homing

Most people I’ve supported over the years have experienced lives of unbelonging. Whether to the larger social group through persecution, or via relational disruptions in their family of origin or other significant relationships. In some cases, it's all the above.

This has shaped my work and caused me to question the nature of belonging and how we have safe, deep connections with others. Or, as James- Olivia Chu Hillman poses, how do we regard our own belonging before we experience it with others?

I've come to know regard for our own belonging as developing an affinity with our feelings, senses, needs, intuition, and boundaries.

This affinity needs to include our most disliked aspects so they can release the burdens of the past. It's about an allyship with whatever emerges within and being your own advocate. All relationships require a deep relationship to self; otherwise, who and what are people relating to?

I dearly cherish the alliance I have with those I support. I love witnessing them come home to themselves as they discover an embodied sense of who they are. Or frequently, it’s a remembering that’s always been there, but long interrupted by various harms. It reminds me of a bird's homing instinct, their ability to return to their territory after travelling long distances, especially by magnetic means. Like we can’t help but have a gravitational pull back to ourselves, even after long spells away from wells of pain or unmet needs.

This homing is sometimes by choice, other times by outside forces, but it's those moments where you say to yourself, I can’t live like this anymore, or something’s missing. 

When I say coming home to yourself, I don’t mean it in a sentimental way that implies an easy process, especially if you’ve been away as a means of protection. Homing might feel like many strange encounters with yourself until it becomes more comfortable, and then how you prefer to be. I see homing as cultivating a “you with you” relationship. This self-intimacy is friendly, respectful, and fiercely supportive. Or, as Audre Lorde puts it, you have an unwavering sense of “it’s right to be me”.  Belonging is from the inside, out. 

I hold an animist view of belonging that remembers our interbeing with non-human ecologies. This is echoed in many somatic processes I hold for people, as they often perceive soothing or protective qualities in animals, bodies of water, trees, rocks, dirt, clouds, or something larger than the human. This is our bodies reminding us of our interconnectedness, dissolving the colonial myths of separation.

'A body is skin wrapped around stories, is tissue filled with veins that the truth runs through, is a box of bones with a voice inside.

i don't want to be a volcano. i want to be a garden full of flowers

bursting open toward life, all of them singing,

i'm here.

i mean something.

i want to live'

(Cheng Thom, K. 2024. Falling Back In Love With Being Human. Herizons, 37(4), 14).

Looking forward to meeting you!

I'm Jager Corvus. I am a certified Somatic Experiencing Practitioner ™ with SE International and a social work counsellor. Get in touch with questions or to request a booking here >