Home
“Home” is written by Vincenza K. Illiano, a facilitator, doula, and coach who is creating ease in growth and joy in the journey. She is a co-leader, co-conspirator, and master strategist in The Movement Movement, offering clients her visionary leadership skills while guiding them toward alignment. Together, with Leah Williams, we audaciously model collaborative leadership for our clients.
It’s a funny and beautiful thing, to love two lands on opposite sides of the globe. I’ve just returned from a month in my… what’s the right word? Home of birth? The land where I grew up - homeland? I guess that’s right, that holds all the nostalgia and past experience that place holds for me. In my case, that is in and around Washington, DC, where I was born and lived til I left for college, and lived again as an adult for a decade when my kids were young.
There is the house I grew up in, where my mom still lives - the porch swing I swung on as a child with friends and cousins, with my grandmother and my dad, with my babies in the early mornings, with friends and cocktails in the evenings. Being in that place is swimming in the river of time, being in the present moment with the weight of all the water behind me, holding me up and pushing me forward.
I’m aware of how fortunate I am to have that space, held by my mom with such loving tenderness. On this trip in particular, I felt the exquisite gift of being a daughter, relinquishing the weight of being the mom of the house. Like a breath I did not realize I had been holding, releasing the weight of being the only adult thinking about the day to day upkeep of a home and the emotional and physical health of three humans who call me mom was a rest deeper than sleep.
After the busy-ness of the holiday season, I left that cozy home for a few days in a cabin in the mountains with my sister-friend and our children. Late December drizzle and fog enveloped us as we settled into our warm haven (with electricity - yes glamping!). The gentle hills and forests of the Blue Ridge mountains feel like home to me - the crisp air, the crunch of leaves on steep switchback trails and green vistas peeking through oak and beech trees furry with moss.
Waking early, I sat on the porch with my coffee, listening to the drizzle on the roof and watching the fog roll over the hills around us and I was struck by how full that land makes my heart feel and how different it is from where I live now. Here in my current, chosen home in Maun, Botswana - just south of the Okavango Delta and north of the Makgadikgadi pans - I find a similar comfort and pleasure in watching the sunrise over the bush - an enormous sky stretching far enough to reveal the earth gently curving away at the edges of sight.
It breaks my heart open to be in these places. The sky and trees and soil and birdsong are church for me - in my homeland and my chosen home, and a handful of other places - Hidden Valley in Joshua Tree National Park, my grandmother’s back yard on Long Island and the Wild Coast of South Africa. I feel tender in these places, grateful to be with one while nursing a hunger for the other.
I wonder what places will inspire these feelings in my children. I haven’t given them only one place to set their roots down deep. My hope is that I’ve given them a constant of love, of earth and sky and water so they can choose the places that feel like home to them, wherever that may be.