Making It Home Without Making It Home

Last month, I was carrying a little heartbreak. Some plans changed, and I wasn’t able to make a trip to Scotland to visit my mom. I had been longing for that reconnect with family, roots, and ancestors.

Days after the realization that I couldn’t make the trip, I was sitting on the ocean sand here in Florida, and a feeling of connection to the place I was missing began to emerge from somewhere much closer.

A melody arrived, along with a stream of lyrics that felt like the beginning of a song. More ideas began to move through me as I rode my bike back home.

I then recorded a couple voice memos and sent them to my dear friend Dar, who produces amazing music. She and her team, including vocalist Taylor Rice, wove magic around those early threads, creating a song that feels like both a remembering and a homecoming.

Sometimes the things we are longing for don’t arrive in the form we imagined. And this song felt like a gentle and important reminder of that.

It also became a reflection on how our ancestors are never truly far away. Even when we can’t return to a particular land, place, or person, our ancestors live with us, in our stories, our cells, our longings, the land itself, and even in the songs that find their way through us.

If your heart could use a few minutes of beauty, nature, and a reminder that we don’t walk alone, I hope you’ll give it a listen.