It takes a lot of bravery to come home.

When I speak about coming home, I mean it in a couple of ways.

There’s the literal sense of me returning to the town I grew up in. A town that I left almost 35 years ago and [with the exception of a few holiday visits] haven’t ever really come back to. The experience of returning to Cody has rocked the foundation of my life. Not only through the process of caring for my father, which certainly can’t be underestimated. It’s a daily journey that breaks me open to deeper and deeper levels of trust, insight, and compassion in almost every moment. It shows me in a million different ways how much I still have to learn, and where I have an opportunity to offer of myself in ways I didn’t even know were possible.

Being back in a place that was so hard to grow up in has recalled some old wounds to the surface. Wounds that I thought were long since healed and resolved. I see time and time again that with some things, healing is a lifelong journey. The journey of healing is nuanced and multi-layered. It’s not always a black and white, one and done thing.

What I know is that the only reason anything ever repeats in my human experience is because I have new information about it. New information opens up a space for deeper understanding. When I am able to access a deeper understanding, it offers me an opportunity to see something from a perspective that I couldn’t see before. It’s liberating in ways that I didn’t know I needed to be liberated. It takes me to the threshold of more compassion, more acceptance, and less judgement. It shows me how most humans are grappling with things that nobody sees from the outside. It reminds me that while I may not be able to understand what another is experiencing, I can always be a presence of compassion, no matter what.

This experience of homecoming forces me beyond the boundaries of my judgements of right and wrong, good and bad, sinner and saint. It opens me up to myself in the purest sense.

That’s the other kind of coming home I am experiencing. A return to myself. A return to who I was before being a queer kid in Cody, WY tried to kick my ass. Before the journey of crippling self doubt, and internalized self loathing. Before insecurity and anxiety and depression were a way of life. I have healed myself in so many ways over the years. The toxicity that used to churn within me, that created so much havoc in my inner landscape, has, for the most part, been healed. My anxiety and depression and PTSD are gone.

I am not the same person I was when I left Cody 35 years ago. Honestly, some days I am not even the same person I was 35 minutes ago! What I have seen since returning here is that there were still some old echoes that hadn’t completely silenced themselves. There were still some tender spots and old, hidden, fears.

The blessing I have been given by coming back to Cody is coming home to the parts that were still stuck in the past. I have been able to hold them closer, to love them more deeply, to accept them with a level of understanding that I have never been able to tap into before. My willingness to do so ushers me to an experience of liberation beyond previous measures. It’s like thinking I have reached the summit of an arduous climb, only to be shown that there’s an even more breathtaking view still ahead of me.

It takes bravery, and strength to do this work. For a long time, even recently, I wasn’t sure I had it in me. Spirit has shown me once again how much I don’t know. To humble myself to the needs of another and be present with an open heart and willingness to help is true service. It guarantees nothing in return. There is no victory parade. There is no gold star or blue ribbon. It is exhausting, scary, overwhelming, and often painful. Yet, it fills me with something that I can’t fully explain.

It replenishes and nourishes the deepest and most ancient parts of my being. The parts that want nothing but to be a vessel for the Divine in its purest. The parts that require no accolade or reward. When these parts of me are touched, I get more than I could ever dream of.

That, in and of itself, makes the whole journey worthwhile. Like a hidden oasis that magically reveals itself just as I am about to collapse from dehydration and fatigue.

It reminds me that while the path is often solitary, I am not alone. None of us are.

That is more than I could ever hope for, and it makes it all worthwhile.