Chapter Seven
Home.
“There’s no place like home.”
“Home is where the heart is.”
“But where is that, exactly?”
It’s a question I keep asking—one others are asking me, too. As I travel this healing road, I’m not just trying to get somewhere... I’m trying to find my somewhere.
For years, addiction's fallout has left me feeling uprooted—displaced, disconnected. I’m not the addict, but the damage has hit me just the same. Each time chaos returns, I lose my footing. I lose the safety of home.
So here I am, driving, listening, watching—and wondering where I’ll land.
When I arrived at Cherie and Philip’s house, she welcomed me with warmth and simplicity: “Make yourself at home.” And I did. It was easy to rest there, to breathe there. She carries the gift of home.
One day, we ran errands, and she decided to take me by the house where she grew up. We turned down a street called Memory Lane—literally—and I found myself swept into her childhood… and unexpectedly, my own.
She spoke of her mom’s whistle calling them in at dusk, of playgrounds nestled near woods. As she shared her story, I was transported back to mine—playing on Race Street, shouting “Meet ya out front!” to my best friend Lisa. We’d dance, laugh, and belong to one another in the way only childhood best friends do. Lisa was my first tribe.
We passed her childhood church, where she had been baptized, married, and raised a family. That church echoed my own memories at First Christian Church, beside my grandparents’ home—a place where I asked questions about Jesus, breathed in the scent of wooden pews and polished floors and ran back and forth between Pop’s place and church because both felt like home.
Cherie had stayed rooted. I, on the other hand, had been uprooted.
Later that night, I couldn’t shake the image of a tree. So I looked up what it takes to replant one that’s been torn from the ground.
Dig deeper—to make room for new roots.
Hold the tree upright—with help, if needed.
Hydrate daily—water restores the root system.
Prune the dead—so nutrients can reach what’s still alive.
That’s what this season is: a replanting. It’s painful, but it’s happening.
And I’m holding onto hope that, sometime soon… I’ll be home.
