What Does It Really Mean to Return Home to Yourself?
What Does It Really Mean to Return Home to Yourself?
Coming home to yourself is not something you do once.
It is not a single moment of revelation after which you remain forever rooted, certain and completely connected to who you are. Life changes. Responsibilities grow. Unexpected challenges arrive. Sometimes, without even realising it, you find yourself buried beneath everything you are carrying.
Over the past eight weeks, I have come to understand this more deeply than ever.
At the end of June, I moved in with my aunt to care for her while she recovered from having cataracts removed from both eyes under general anaesthetic. What began as support during her recovery became something more when I realised how much her Alzheimer’s had progressed.
I could not simply pack my bags and resume my usual life. Before I could begin stepping back, I needed to know she was safe and that the right support was being arranged. Alongside this, I have continued supporting other members of my family through their own health challenges while living with fibromyalgia, persistent migraines and some unresolved health concerns of my own.
It has affected me physically, mentally and emotionally. There have been times when I have felt overwhelmed, depleted and very far away from myself. I am fortunate to have family and close friends whose support has mattered enormously. Even so, I reached a point where I could see that the role of carer had begun to consume almost every part of my life.
I had not deliberately chosen to abandon myself. I had simply become lost beneath everything that needed to be done. My experience is personal, but becoming lost beneath life’s demands can happen to any woman.
The roles we carry
Like many women, I carry numerous roles, labels and responsibilities. I am a daughter, niece, sister and friend. I am an unpaid carer. I live with chronic illness. I am a business owner, Priestess, facilitator and space holder. I have worked as a coach and astrologer. Each of these roles holds meaning, and many of them are deeply precious to me. But none of them, individually or collectively, is the whole of who I am.
A woman can become lost while bringing up children, running a home and managing a job. Her days may be filled with school runs, meals, washing, appointments, deadlines and the emotional needs of everyone around her. Another woman may live alone and carry a demanding career, long working hours and the expectation that she should always be available. Others may assume she has plenty of time for herself, while work consumes almost everything she has.
There is nothing wrong with having responsibilities, ambitions or people we love and want to support. The difficulty comes when those demands leave no space in which we can hear our own voice.
Perhaps you recognise this.
Perhaps so many people depend upon you that you have stopped asking what you need. Perhaps work structures your days so completely that you no longer know what you enjoy outside it. Perhaps you have spent years being someone’s mother, partner, daughter, colleague, manager or carer and have lost touch with who you are beyond that role. You may simply need to find yourself within your life again.
Returning is not becoming
This is where Sacred Reclamation has met me over these past few weeks, not simply as the foundation of my work, but as something I am living. Sacred Reclamation is not about becoming a new and improved version of yourself. It is not about rejecting who you have been or trying to transform yourself into someone deemed more successful, spiritual or worthy.
It is about remembering.
It asks you to look beneath the roles, responsibilities, expectations and stories you carry and recognise the woman who is still there.
Where have you become lost?
What has been neglected?
What matters to you now?
What do you want to reclaim?
Coming home to yourself does not necessarily mean making dramatic changes or walking away from the life you have created. It may begin with recognising that you deserve to be present within that life.
For me, this has meant admitting that I need more balance. I need space in which I am not responding to someone else’s needs, managing another task or trying to solve the next problem. I need time in nature. I need opportunities to breathe, reflect and reconnect with the natural world. I need to tend to my own health rather than continually placing it behind everything and everyone else.
I also need to accept that some of the caring responsibilities must be shared, and for me that means employing more carers for her to support her at both ends of her day. This is not because I no longer care, but because I cannot provide all the additional support my aunt needs alone.
For someone else it might mean asking their family to share more of the work of running a home, creating clearer boundaries around her working hours, returning to something she once loved or allowing herself to rest before every task has been completed.
It may mean recognising that her desires are not selfish and that her life does not have to be built entirely around other people’s needs or expectations.
None of this requires her to abandon the people or responsibilities she loves. It asks only that she does not abandon herself within them.
Reclaiming the way I work
These weeks have also given me an unexpected opportunity to consider my work through the lens of Sacred Reclamation.
For several weeks, I withdrew from my business almost entirely. There was no space for anything more, and virtual hibernation became an act of self-preservation. At first, I worried about everything I was not doing, but distance can reveal what constant striving sometimes conceals.
I began to recognise that the way I had been trying to run my business no longer reflected the way I most want to live or serve. It has been an honour to support women individually through coaching and astrology, but one-to-one work is not the only way I can do that.
However, I have realised that I no longer want to build a business that requires me to be continually available or places the full weight of every offering upon my time and energy. I do not want to lose myself while helping other women find their way home. This is not me being selfish or ungrateful, but recognising that I need a life of balance. It also means I can bring more of what I am passionate about, and have missed, back into my work.
I have held circles and workshops and have created sacred spaces for women for a number of years. It has always been one of the greatest passions and joys within my work. There is something deeply meaningful about witnessing women arrive in a circle and allow themselves to exhale. They do not have to perform or pretend. They can listen, reflect, and speak when they choose and be met as they are.
My Priestess training deepened this understanding. Every six weeks, I came into circle knowing I would be welcomed and accepted. I experienced the power of walking alongside other women, each following her own path but never entirely alone.
Returning my focus to circles, community and gatherings is not a sudden reinvention of my work. It is a reclamation of what has always brought me the most joy.
Through The Sacred Sanctuary, online Sister Circles and the five in-person Sacred Reclamation Gatherings beginning this autumn, I am creating more opportunities for women to experience this work in community.
These spaces do not instruct women in who they should become. They invite them to pause, listen and reclaim what already belongs to them. Sacred Reclamation may be an inside job, but it need not be done in isolation. Sometimes we find our way back to ourselves alongside other women doing the same.
Making space for what remains sacred
Stepping away from offering coaching and astrology as standalone one-to-one services does not mean I am rejecting either of them. My coaching experience will remain present in the questions I ask, the workbooks I create as part of my beautiful membership, and the spaces I facilitate.
Astrology, the Moon and Goddess will remain woven through my work too. They are part of my spirituality and the way I understand life’s cycles and thresholds. In fact, removing the expectation that astrology must continually become a service or product may allow my relationship with it to deepen.
It can become something I study because I love it, something that nourishes my spiritual life and something I share when it genuinely belongs within a circle, gathering or piece of writing.
I will still explore astrological and lunar invitations relevant to Sacred Reclamation. I also remain fascinated by astrology, the body and health, and perhaps there will be more space for that passion in the future.
I am reclaiming these parts of myself from the pressure to make everything I love into work.
Sacred self-care within an ordinary day
Coming home to yourself does not always require a retreat, a dramatic declaration or hours of uninterrupted solitude. Sometimes it begins within the ordinary moments of your day.
Sacred self-care is not limited to having a wonderful massage or Reiki treatment, getting your nails done, going to the gym or booking something special for yourself. Each of these can be deeply valuable, and I am certainly not dismissing them as superficial or indulgent. They may sometimes be described as luxuries or ways of ‘pampering’ yourself, but that language can diminish their value. They are valid and meaningful ways of caring for yourself.
For me, however, sacred self-care begins with the small, intentional acts that can be woven into an ordinary day. They do not require an appointment, several free hours or money to spend. They are the small rituals and daily acts of devotion through which you remind yourself that you matter.
It may be the five minutes it takes for the kettle to boil. Five minutes in which you resist the urge to load the washing machine, check your emails or complete another task. Instead, you breathe. You look out of the window. You step outside and feel the ground beneath your feet. You allow yourself to inhabit those few minutes without needing to make them productive.
These moments may appear insignificant, but when they are repeated, they begin to change the relationship you have with yourself. Sacred self-care becomes something you live rather than something you occasionally arrange. It becomes a way of listening to your body, honouring your needs and creating small spaces within your life in which you are not forgotten.
It is noticing when your body is asking you to stop. It is allowing your boundaries to matter. It is asking for help before you reach the point of complete depletion. It is remembering that rest does not need to be earned through exhaustion.
It is refusing to treat yourself as the least important person in your own life.
These practices do not remove our responsibilities, but they can help us remain connected to ourselves while carrying them.
Wherever you are in your life
You do not have to be a carer, a business owner, a mother or someone living through a major life transition to need Sacred Reclamation. There are countless ways to lose sight of yourself.
You may be beginning adult life and questioning who you were taught to become, or raising a family and wondering whether there is space for your own dreams. You may be building a career or business that leaves you disconnected, moving through midlife as familiar identities fall away, or discovering who you are after retirement. Wherever you are, coming home is still possible.
You are allowed to have dreams, desires, interests and passions of your own. You are allowed to need space. You are allowed to receive support as well as give it. You are allowed to ask who you are beneath everything you carry.
Coming home to yourself is not a single arrival. Life will continue to change, and there may be times when you lose sight of yourself again. The invitation is to notice. To recognise when you have disappeared beneath the roles you inhabit and begin making your way back. Not by abandoning the life you have built or the people you love, but by remembering that you belong within the circle of your own care.
That is what Sacred Reclamation means to me.
I am not speaking from a place of having completed the journey. I am living it, imperfectly and honestly, learning how to care and serve without losing myself. I am walking this path too. And perhaps that is why I believe so deeply that we do not have to walk it alone.
The Woman You Were Before
On Saturday, 10 October, I will be holding the first of my in-person Sacred Reclamation Gatherings, The Woman You Were Before. This gathering is not about returning to an earlier version of yourself or pretending that life has not changed you. It is an invitation to meet the woman beneath the roles and responsibilities you have gathered, and to recognise what you may now be ready to reclaim.
If something within this piece has spoken to you, I would love to welcome you into the circle. You do not need to arrive with answers or know exactly what you want to reclaim. You can come exactly as you are.
