You Can't Go Home Again

There's a moment in every woman's life when she realizes Thomas Wolfe was right.

You can't go home again.

Not to the place you left. Not to the person you were. Not to the life you thought was waiting for you, unchanged and patient, like a room kept exactly as you left it.

I learned this the hard way when I moved back to Louisiana with my three daughters, leaving behind a life in Texas that was unraveling. I was chasing something I thought I could return to—the comfort of familiar ground, the safety of "home."

What I found instead was the beginning of the most profound lesson about what home actually means.

What I found instead was a series of displacements. Rental houses that felt temporary. Shared ownership that felt precarious. A pool house in my parents' yard that felt like retreat rather than arrival.

Each space whispered the same truth: the home I was seeking no longer existed. Perhaps it never had.

The churn was relentless—physical, emotional, mental. My youngest two daughters were 5 and 7, adapting to new schools and different patterns in a state that was home to me but foreign to them. I was moving through motions instead of making choices, surviving instead of living.

My daughters watched me pack and unpack, trying to make sense of spaces that didn't quite feel like ours yet. I couldn't feel settled no matter how hard I tried. There was too much movement, and nobody seemed to truly understand. 

What I couldn't see then was that this displacement I felt wasn't just about geography. Somewhere along the way, in my effort to be everything to everyone—mother, provider, the center that holds—I had quietly abandoned myself. My oldest daughter, wise beyond her years, had once told me at five: 'You're not like other mommies. You sit with us and truly explain why.' She saw my gift for presence before I did. But in that season of survival, I had forgotten how to be present to myself.

Then came the apartment.

Small. Imperfect. Nothing I had ever "seen myself in."

But when I signed that lease, something shifted. I wasn't trying to go home again. I was finally coming home to myself.

That first evening, as I placed my coffee mugs in the kitchen cabinets with full presence and intention, I felt it—the quiet exhale of recognition. This was mine. Not forever, but for now. And "for now" was enough to begin.

I filled the space with candles because I loved how they made me feel. I played music—whatever matched my mood that day—without asking permission or seeking approval. I cooked my favorite meals. I let silence sit with me when I needed it, and cranked up the volume when my soul required it.

For the first time in years, I respected the space around me as my own.

This is the sacred work of coming home to yourself through space.

Not decoration, but devotion. Not perfection, but presence. Not returning to who you were, but honoring who you're becoming.

Home was never the place I was trying to return to. Home is the relationship I was learning to create—with space, with myself, with the woman emerging from the chrysalis of change.

This is when I understood the profound truth: nobody else had really left me. I had left myself a long time ago, making daily unconscious decisions to abandon my own needs with good intentions—to raise my children, build security, accomplish all the things you're 'supposed to.' It wasn't until everything was falling apart that I realized the only way to feel 'home' again was to start making decisions that brought me back to myself.
Home was never the place I was trying to return to. Home is the woman I was learning to come back to—the one who knows that connection, not perfection, creates sanctuary.