Playing House

I never played house when I was little.

I was too busy running around in a little cape trying to save the world in the forest behind my house emulating a cross between Robin Hood, She-Ra and an Earth Priestess. I was obsessed with swing sets and canoes.

I had no fear of the unknown, the dark or what was hiding around the next corner. I wanted adventure in the wild unknown.

Playing house was the last thing on my mind. I didn't want to be the mom, cook dinner, get married or burp the baby.

I felt weird sometimes when I would go play with some of my friends and we would play house. I had no idea what I was doing. I kept feeling off when I tried or I would invent something that "didn't go" with the ideals of this game I didn't understand called playing house. (Like pirate ninja priestess can't play house.)

I had greater tasks that were unfolding, I wanted to learn every bit of wisdom the trees offered from their leaves. I wanted to know the lyrics that were written in the wind and learn every constellation in the night sky. I wanted to take to the lake and explore every hidden cove and little stretch of beach, I wanted to write and I wanted to be free.

As I got older, I learned first hand that it wasn't only little kids that play house.

Some adults do too. And they were just as lost as I had been as a kid trying to figure it all out.

You date, find a house, get engaged, marry, go on a honeymoon, build a picket fence, dinner on the table, make the yard pretty, office job.

It was all so perfect in a way that seemed so foreign to me. But pirate ninja priestess didn't fit.

I tried, believe me.

I kept the house, I hosted the parties and I decorated. I matched the linens to the seasons and had little centerpieces. I planned and I baked. I was even convinced I was doing ok at it in my awkward ninja way.

I did everything that I thought I was supposed to do in this life to guarantee happiness, the ideal that had been sold to me by those that had gone before. I did what I was taught and it was falling short of the dreams of my heart.

I didn't have the fulfilling feeling that I had long associated would come with it, I didn't see the joy that my little childhood friends had exhibited all those years ago.

At long last, I found myself playing house and I didn't understand the game at all.

I found myself in a spiral that pinned me between what I had been brought up to believe I needed to be and the cry of desire that howled in my soul. I never could shake the knowing in my veins that I was meant to run and free wild in the forests with a band of merry beings bent on saving the world. I never shook the feeling that I had left something behind.

Everyone has their own truth, and that one wasn't mine. 

For me it was an act, when some are drawn so naturally and beautifully to it. For me it was a harbor that I didn't really understand and felt so out-of-place in.

I wasn't intrinsically designed to play this role. There are some people who are really good at building a home, having a family and saving the world all at the same time, and I am honored to know lots of them. They made conscious decisions because that was the dream of their heart. Just like my friends so long ago, they were following their heart. They knew their joy was in that life and they followed it.

When we're little we're so close and clear on our dreams, even if we don't have the words yet to describe them. We know what we like and what we don't like and somewhere along the path we let go of the swing and start to move with the perceptions of who we are taught to be. We start to believe what we see as the mold we need to fit or the path we need to follow because it's what is taught to us.

Sometimes we can find ourselves caught up in the paradigms of others beliefs, even if it was never their intention of modeling that sort of life for us. Sometimes we believe it's the only way or the only choice.

The further we get from the dreams of our heart we more we feel this aching tug in the direction of our authentic truth. For me no amount of matching linens could mask it. There was a great lesson to me in learning first hand what I want and what I don't want. It only took me this long to get back to where I once was.

I'm not saying that I didn't get any joy at all out of the path that I traveled up to the point, I think it was part of the expansion and growth that led me here. There were beautiful moments along the path and I treasure them.

But my message to the little one's being She-Ra warrior forest priestesses or Robin Hood: never give that up for anyone. You know better than anyone the dream that you are here to live, you know it's whisper, it's taste and the footprint it leaves in the dirt in front of you. Follow the call.

I used to wonder if she would be mad at me, the eight year old little girl who trusted that I would guide her on some great adventure somewhere. I know now she isn't mad, she seems to be the most patient of beings as she waited trustingly that I would return for her on the path. I reclaimed her a few years ago, seeing a picture in an album and promising that I was going to get back onto the dreams that we had started for ourselves so long ago.

I know now that I have.

Step by step in the direction of dreams once known by my heart even if my lips didn't know the words. Some of them I still don't know the lyrics to, but they're not going to get buried again no matter how foreign the melody. Even if we don't know the way sometimes we have to trust in the unfolding. Even if the world doesn't understand our forest ninja priestess ways, we must walk it anyways.

After all, if we don't live our truth who will?

We have this life right now moving through our fingertips like the strings of a balloon. What direction it moves is up to us until we let the string go and it flies into the unknown. So every moment forward seems like a pretty good time to move in the direction of our deepest joy and run along with that beautiful balloon floating in the sky.

Now if you will excuse me, I have to run; there are forests and swing-sets calling me home.