The gentle routine of home wraps around me almost immediately. After getting in at midnight Monday after two weeks away, my own bed feels like the embrace of an old friend.
This newsletter creates a space for conversation on welcoming and wandering. Wandering somehow helps us to appreciate coming home. I can’t help but wonder how seeing home differently, as one does when returning from travel, might shift our perspective on welcoming. What if an essential step toward feeling comfortable welcoming others is feeling like our home is a welcoming space—to us? What if gratitude can help us access that?
I unpack, do laundry, go for a run in the blessed flatness of Illinois. I walk around the house tidying up, ignoring the comfortable clutter of our dining room table, which serves as Scot’s home office space. Why are these suddenly dear to me, rather than an annoyance?
Although I traveled with my laptop, I also spend a lot of my first day home catching up on work. I don’t make it to the grocery store, so I forage in my fridge and pantry, cobbling together a dinner of coconut rice, sautéed cabbage, onion, red pepper, and zucchini, and a package Trader Joe’s Mandarin orange chicken I found languishing in the freezer. I derive a strange satisfaction from the creative challenge of making something from what appear to be odds and ends. “Thank you. This is way better than what I made for myself while you were gone,” Scot tells me.
This morning, I walked the half dozen blocks to an early dentist appointment, wondering at the unseasonably warm February weather. Strolling through my neighborhood, which is not particularly beautiful (especially compared to the places I’ve visited in the last two weeks), I nevertheless am awash in gratitude. My little suburban neighborhood, drab and predictable, provides the perfect counterpoint to my wandering. I revel in the mundane.
My daughter and I on the slopes in Big Sky, Montana.
The view out my back door in Illinois—pretty boring but it’s home.
The sweetness of simple things
Wandering allows us to step out of our routine, out of the familiar spaces of our lives. When we step back in, we access an opportunity to taste the sweetness of simple things: the way the light filters into the kitchen, the cozy throw that’s on your favorite couch, coffee you make for yourself just the way you like it, a conversation with your neighbor, a meal cooked on your own stove from whatever you can find in the fridge.
The phrase “Welcome home,” evokes cozy, warm emotions. Coming home reminds me to welcome myself, to embrace the simplicity of domestic chores and quiet spaces. To practice gratitude.
Even if you are not traveling, you can welcome yourself home. What if we could appreciate home even if we have not left it? A gratitude practice can be simple. Walk around the space you live in, slow and open. Notice the good things in your life: the pictures on the wall, the candles on the mantle, the people you live with. Take a slow, unhurried inventory, bathed in gratitude, of the simple miracles we take for granted: running water, electricity, a fridge with food in it. Give yourself a few moments to be grateful for each thing or person that makes your dwelling place a home.
Gratitude banishes shame
When I talk to women about practicing hospitality, they sometimes tell me that’s not their gift, that the idea of welcoming others feels pressured. Undercurrents of shame and inadequacy flow through the conversation. The culture has hijacked hospitality’s true meaning, skewing it toward entertaining and perfectionism instead of simplicity. As an unfortunate result, we miss out on the joy of welcoming others—whether in our home or in some other space. We could share that sweet satisfaction of “coming home” and the comfort it brings, if we first took some time to realize and name the gifts in our lives.
You can’t give away what you don’t have. Welcoming others begins with welcoming ourselves, with letting go of shame and perfectionism. We can banish shame by practicing gratitude.
What if practicing gratitude for our own dwelling place could transform our feelings about hospitality? If we feel our home is inadequate or shabby, if we’re ashamed of the worn carpet or the humble food on our table, we’re less likely to want to welcome others. Again, we cannot hurry this metamorphosis. While gratitude will open us to welcoming others, it’s also a worthy practice by itself. We can take time to let it fill us, so that, eventually, we can share it.
If you welcome yourself home, choosing gratitude for what you have, you’ll be more likely to welcome others—and open yourself to the experience of joy.