HOME SHOULD BE A PLACE where we can be ourselves, where we may laugh out loud or cry with our whole heart, where we may sleep peacefully and restore. My home makes me grateful to return; I sit in silence and gaze around the simple room.

I smile at the art, the books, and the memories captured in travel photographs. Home provides a sense of peace; yet home means more than a house, a room, a dwelling — home is where we feel whole, where our mind, body, and spirit may rest as one.

This world is home to each of us.

The source of all of life is a home to return to, a decision to let go, a left at the fork instead of right that leads to healing instead of pain. As we navigate through life, we’ll confront tests and seemingly insurmountable trials.

In the darkest days we feel lost, not knowing who or where we are or how we’ve ventured so far from the source of life. But the source is always there. It’s the beautiful light that crests the sea each morning.

It’s the comforting laugh and the warm hug of a friend. No matter how far we stray or how hopeless life becomes, the journey home is just a step away. This journey is the path of healing, becoming whole once again.

How do we know how complete we can be until we’ve truly been broken? How do we know when we’ve returned to the source unless we’ve strayed millions of miles away? There’s an energy that emanates from our common effort to find our way back home.

This effort is the path of healing. Every day we wake up and face the day. It doesn’t matter what we’ve been through, what we’ve endured, what’s held us down; the day presents an opportunity.

Every time we face the day, we have a chance to heal. We don’t have to go at it alone. We’re connected — every human being to one another, and every person to the planet that is home. To heal ourselves takes healing with others through a smile or a gesture that says let’s go.

We’ve all been broken somehow; we can all heal, somehow.

Through daily acts of courage to be there for a friend, a stranger, a loved one. Sometimes it feels that we must focus on what needs healing — a body part, our spirit, our past; but healing lays in the ability to care for another human being when we are hurting, too.

These words, they come from somewhere. Perhaps it’s me, an individual, untangling my thoughts through the words on the page. But maybe they come from the source of life that we’re all a part of — a well of collective knowledge, joy, and peace.

As the words pass through me I feel a sense of release, that no matter what life puts in front of me nor how far I stray from my physical home, writing makes me whole again, at least as whole as I can be.

Writing makes me feel like me, or maybe I’m just uncovering my essence, cultivating who I may become, a return to who I’ve always been. Our lives will move at a pace often impossible to keep up with.

The seasons will turn and our identity may change — we might lose sight of the source — the reason we’re really here. Writing wakes me up again. We’re alive, and as long as we’re alive the opportunity is there to truly come alive.

Maybe we are all broken, for nobody has this figured out. There’s something incredibly beautiful about that.

It means we can heal together.