Finding Our Way Home
It's officially August, and the dog days of summer are either in full swing or slipping away. It depends on who you ask.
In truth, so much of how we see the world and ourselves depends on who we are speaking to. It also depends on whether we take time to reflect on our outlook on life. It depends on whether we prioritize our growth, our inner lives, and take stock of how we are spending the time we have been given.
Summer days may ebb and flow, but our lives reflect what we pour into them emotionally, physically, and spiritually. They also reflect what we take away from them. Like stories we once viewed as fixed, but aren't. Beliefs we once held that keep us stuck. Or patterns that are ours to transmute.
It is never too late to build the life you want. But to do so, we must become active participants in the creation of our own deeply meaningful lives. And if we want our lives to be joyful and meaningful, we have to build them to be so. We can't wait for those moments or feelings to arrive. If we want deep friendships, we have to invest in them. If we want more friends, we have to put ourselves out there just like we would for a romantic relationship. We can't sit around and wait. We have to invest the time and the effort. We have to have the courage to be vulnerable and put ourselves on the line. That same courage is on display in a story we share with you this week about women who step outside their comfort zone to try outdoor adventures for the very first time, often finding a whole community waiting for them once they do. It’s something I was thinking as I read this week’s story about people who have turned roadside farmstands into thriving businesses and places of community.
And here is the other thing I've discovered about building a deeply meaningful life: it takes silence. Sometimes it takes getting out of one's routine, and away from the life you’ve been living day to day, to create space to ask yourself if there's a different way to live, to work, to love. To be.
As many of you who have been reading The Sunday Paper for years know (and there are many of you, so thank you), I take some time in August away from social media, away from my weekly writing schedule, and away from the life I've constructed in Los Angeles.
Now, I used to take the whole month off to truly recharge, but that was before I gradually added more things to my life that I didn't fully realize would require year-round attention. Things that couldn't simply pause for a month. Things I couldn't completely step away from.
I don't share that as a complaint. I share it because every time we add something to our lives—a new commitment, a new creative pursuit, a new responsibility, even a new relationship—we're also giving away a portion of our time. Everything we choose to nurture asks something of us in return.
So before you add one more thing to your plate, think carefully about the life you're trying to build. If your goal is to spend more time with your family, don't keep adding commitments that pull you away from them. If what you're seeking is freedom, be careful not to fill your life with obligations that quietly take it away.
Every worthwhile thing requires time, attention, and care to become what we hope it will be. Before you say yes, ask yourself: Do I truly have the time? The energy? The interest? Can I invest in this the way it deserves? Those are questions I wish I had asked myself more often.
All that said, one thing I know deserves my energy and investment is my family, and that’s why I take time every August to return home. This time each year, I travel back to Hyannisport, Massachusetts, which is where I am right now. My childhood home. The same shingled house that now belongs to my brother. The same salt air. The same pier I walked up and down with my mother, brothers, cousins, aunts, and uncles.
Three of my brothers still live here in the summer. And I make this pilgrimage every year to invest in those relationships. My brothers are among my closest friends, and I genuinely wish we all lived next door to each other. But we don't. Life scattered us. And so I make the effort. Schedule the time. Carve it out. Get on a plane. Come home.
That is what this entire summer of friendship has been pointing toward: the fact that the life and the friendships we want won't build themselves. We have to build them. Actively. Intentionally. With our time and our presence and our willingness to show up even when it's not convenient. So I show up. And every year I am reminded why.
I walk from one brother's house to another. I sit around dinner tables that have held this family for generations. I go sailing. I take long walks. I hear about their lives, and I actively listen without the distraction of schedules and screens and the noise of ordinary days. I reconnect with their children, watch the cousins tumble over each other, and listen to the laughter that sounds exactly the way it did when we were young.
I also make my way to my parents' graves. I like to just sit there with them and think about their lives. Think about our relationships, what I wish might have been different. Think about the lessons they left me with and what I would talk to them about today if I could. Something about being here—on that ground, in that light, near the water—brings them close in a way nothing else does.
My spiritual life carries me through everything. And it enables me to have this ongoing conversation with my parents, both of whom have been gone for years now. Sitting at their grave, I can feel them. I feel held. I feel the weight of what they built and the privilege and the responsibility of carrying it forward.
This pilgrimage back to the Cape—back to where I grew up, where I got married, back to the same pier and the same dinner table—is grounding. Nurturing. Reassuring. When it's time to leave, as it always is, I leave differently than I arrived. It fills my heart. It fills my soul. It grounds me in my sibling relationships and my cousin relationships, which are among the most important in my life. It grounds me in my humanity and in my tribe.
I always bring my children, because I want them to know their family. Their cousins, first and second. Their great uncles and aunts. I want them to feel that they are part of something bigger than themselves: a family of values and principles and ideals, a family of service, a family of laughter and joy. Not a perfect family. Not a family without its arguments and its ups and downs. But a family you want to and can come back to. Over and over again. And so I do.
I don't have a plan for the rest of August after my trip to the Cape, and that both scares me and exhilarates me. These days, I find myself toggling between being scared and in awe quite a bit. I am often scared of running out of time. About not realizing the dreams I still carry. About whether there is enough road left to walk them into reality. And on the other side of that fear is something that feels almost like joy: the exhilaration of a life still being lived, adventures still to come, a future I haven't yet fully imagined.
None of us knows how long we have. This week, the beautiful Irish singer Glen Hansard, who sang at both of my parents' funerals here in Hyannisport and was a good friend to my brother Bobby, died in a motorcycle accident a mile from his home. At my mother's funeral, he sang "Forever Young" as Special Olympics athletes threw their gold medals down onto her casket. Those medals are there with her still, in her final resting place. And Glen has made his way to heaven, leaving behind a little boy, a great love, and friends and family who are grieving his unexpected and tragic death.
I also read this week about the president reflecting on aging, life, and death at Lindsey Graham's funeral. And instead of being triggered as I wrote about last week, I felt something unexpected. A human connection. A recognition that this particular fear belongs to all of us, regardless of who we are or what we believe.
In the end, we are all on our own pilgrimage. Our own quest. Our own journey. Trying to get back to the people and places that ground us. That see us. That help us feel at home.
Home is such a powerful four-letter word. It can be a place. Or a person. It can be the smell of salt air. Or the waves crashing against you. It can be inside you. It can be what you create or how you feel.
Home. Speak the word aloud. Sit with it. See what comes up for you.
It can also be sitting with parents who are no longer here. It can be sitting at a crowded table with a bunch of raucous Irish Catholics. Or sitting alone in silence with someone who didn't grow up like you or doesn't look like you, but who totally understands you.
Wherever home is for you, may you find your way there. Somehow. Someway. August. Hyannisport. Home.
I want to breathe it in. Hear the seagulls. Feel the sand run against my feet. Watch my grandchildren squeal and run with their cousins. I want to sail with the wind and stand in gratitude for this life. Stand in gratitude for the people in it, for the people who used to be in it, for the years behind me, and for whatever comes next. I want to bow down to it. And so I do.
This summer has taught me about friendship and loneliness and love and the courage it takes to show up for your one wild and precious life. But the lesson of August, so far, is simpler than all of that.
Go home. Show up. Let yourself be held by the people who knew you before the world shaped you into who you became.
That is everything. The dog days of summer are here. And I am here for all of them.
P.S. I'll be taking a writing break for a bit, but The Sunday Paper will continue in the capable hands of our wonderful team. I'll be back before you know it.
In the meantime, think about your own pilgrimage. Wherever you feel called to venture, I hope you go there and let me know what it brings up for you. Don't delay. No matter your age, there is only this moment. This time. Right now. God willing, I'll see you on the other side of summer.
Prayer of the Week
Dear God,
Grant us the wisdom to build lives that reflect what matters most, the courage to invest deeply in the people we love, and the grace to always find our way home.
Amen.
Also in this week’s issue:
• Maria and The Home Edit’s Clea & Joanna on Building a Life (And a Business) on Friendship
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