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Do you feel imprisoned, stuck, estranged and alien in your own skin, home, land?

The journey from prison to freedom is about removing the negative connotations of home, expanding our perception of this sacred space, taking it on a journey from prison to freedom. I am writing this article to claim the sacredness of the home as a safe haven where to nourish your life force, stir your creativity, feed your soul, enliven your spirit.

Through my work I have offered my space healing services to women with a certain level of ‘power’ in the outside world who at one point couldn’t help but cringe at the idea of having a home you love that is also a source of pleasure. I have to admit this is how I felt in my college and graduate school years. I noticed a sense of guilt associated with the enjoyment of the domestic realm, due to its rampant associations with imprisonment.

I see the pervasive contraction of home as a source of suffering. This sense of home as prison is something that needs to be discussed and brought to light. There have been so many waves of feminism, and understandably, the home was at first rejected as a domestic prison. Newer waves have, however, reconnected with ancient traditions and salvaged the sacredness of the home as as a source of nourishment, connection, and renewal.

We can’t feel at home in the world if we don’t feel at home in our own body. We fail to realize it is not the home that is the problem, but the way that home is inhabited. When we experience trauma and abandon the body because it has been the locus of oppression, we disassociate as the only solution to our pain, one that creates more suffering.

Embodiment is not a burden to transcend; it is a gift to fully embrace.

This is a call to come back home, to shift our perception and experience of body, home, landscape from mechanistic, static, dead; to organic, dynamic, and alive. Truth is a space can be a prison or a temple. Your space can restrict, limit, block, oppress, close you in; or it can enhance, support, liberate, open you up. It is the awareness we bring to our space-making that colors the way we inhabit ourselves and our dwellings.

Underneath years and layers of constriction there is a healing story pulsing under the surface of your heart, your body, your home, your land, waiting to bring you alive.

I would love to know what your experience of home is. And if you need a guide on your journey to creativity, expression, and freedom at home, click here. With love,