Home is sanctuary, home is domesticity, home is a place of safety. Home can be a reminder of all the things you have not done, all that you cannot achieve in a day. Home is my house. Home is the stuff around me. It is suffocating. Lisa Baraitser in her book Maternal Encounters examines how the new mother is “the subject literally weighed down with stuff” (2009: p.146). I hear this. Yes. I am weighed down. With stuff.
I reject this. For this task I will return to my childhood. I will make a den. I will cocoon myself beneath the mess. I will make a home within a home.
"To inhabit a room is for it to be in us, and for us to be in an entire house and world through it. … inhabitation itself is two-way. Just as I am in the dwelling that is also inside me, so I feel centred by being within the dwelling in which I reside – orienting myself by what is around me." (Edward Casey)
My house is in disarray. My life is too busy. My work feels substandard. But that’s ok because in this moment I can concentrate. I am safe in my cocoon, my den, my womb. It is cosy and comforting and I feel contented.