Unravelling Home: Finding a Sense of Home as a Product of Displacement

By Doriana Diaz 

We all have unravelled at some point in the name of home. We all must leave it. Some of us have been displaced from it by natural disasters. Some from terror caused by those who may have lived inside it. Some by an urging desire to develop on our own. 

As a product of displacement, I used to believe that home could only be defined by walls, windows, appliances and floorboards, by land or lineage, or by stains of neglect and ridicule. For those whose sanctuaries have been violated. For those who left without turning back. For those who have been harmed or neglected. Home does not have to solely be marked by blood memories. Allow the unravelling to take place here. You are safe. 

Sometimes home must be mourned to be rejuvenated again in a new vibration or frequency. 

In recent years, I have come to know that home is an extension of you (B Carrie-Yvonne). It is an unwavering definition in motion, layered in multifaceted experiences conjured by serendipity or fate. 

This is how we can build our house; this is how our house forms, thriving or struggling. Take a moment in the here and now. Breathe and let out a large sigh of relief and gratitude for simply making it this far. If you have access to a phone or computer, go to any listening service and type in ‘It’s My House’ by Diana Ross. Take another moment. Settle yourself as softly as your spirit will allow. Breathe deeply with the inhale. Let out a long sigh from the gut. Release any tension you may be carrying. 

Some of us may define home by sound or scent or even by the whispers from voices of those who used to soothe us to sleep with fairytales. Some may define it by poetry or the warm and fierce embrace of someone who has watered and harvested our seeds. Many of us may have learned about it from hooks, Baldwin, Giovanni or maybe even Morrison. Some of us may have been taught what a good, righteous home feels like from the heartbeat of a lover or the sound of a smile. 

More than most of us may have found it from the things we have birthed and raised. Some of us regretfully have lost it in the killings, the trials of injustice, along with all the things that were burnt in the fires or are buried six feet under the soil. I hope that for those of us, it was brought back to life again in homage to the dead homies and the scent of Harlem, or the soul cries of our own inner child, calling us to revisit the people who we have been to heal them. 

I pray that many of us have provided a home to someone lost or someone who has proven themselves in need of your juju years, the mould of your mind and the delicacies of your divinity. 

I used to ask myself: can I be my own home? I think of the suede couch where I milked myself of secrets, the times when my cousins and I lived in our childhood bodies, skipping towards where the honeysuckles bloomed and knew our age only from where the light touched us, the Sunday mornings when I see my soul from the front of a poem and meet myself at the end.

I have come to observe that those memories are stored in the most sacred of places and pronounce themselves in remembrance when home feels void and empty. In my years of restoration from displacement, I have given myself and my inner child the right amount of room to reckon and make peace with the pieces I have lost while simultaneously opening my hands for fate and serendipity to build a home in me. 

I can tell you where home began for me. It was in the pause before the moment my papi and mami decided to indulge in the confines of one another’s flesh, allowing their bodies to love what they loved. There was the body of my mami, hands prying open the land for me to climb inside of.

As a child, I spent Detroit summers laughing into the clouds I called home, playing with the sun when the streets were lined with wildflowers. Once or twice, it was Black women under the light of the moon, running hands over every surface until we were raw and smelt of each other’s home countries. There was the belly button of the boy with the white mama. There was me, throwing myself at the wind and longing for vaguadas, the heavy Puerto Rican downpours that come for the whole month of May. 

Sonia reminded me of all the unlived lives in my veins. It was her who consoled me when the cancer came back, and Grandma had to teach me how to hold all of our memories under my tongue behind my torso. After she was gone, I found that boy who I thought I was going to marry. He came like fresh rain falling from the heavens. Ohhh, then there was his scent. A mix of honeysuckle and silk skin. When I folded myself up inside him, I knew that I was home. Since seventeen, that scent has filled up my soft and round places.

Then there was the day he left. Months afterwards, I still woke up every morning reaching for him, searching for his scent on my bedsheets. I thought I could never have a home again without the threat of it burning. But then there was that night when we lived in i love yous and let our thighs get angry at the sound of bongo-drums, our mouths dripping with slurs and love songs. 

There was the first place I ever lived in alone, with only my mind and my body to keep me company. There was the absence of light, the pulsing heartbeat. I started collecting the scent of my own skin, and I felt myself falling deeper and deeper into my own depths, a steady pour of devotion.

There was the bathtub where I gave birth to myself again and again until I knew I had no more blood to lose. In that place, I learned there was me, just me, me and all my meness. 

I need to remember where I have been, who has assembled me, who has unravelled me, who has left specs of themselves behind. They all live in me, gathering in a flourishing way. That is mind. Every now and then I stop, weep, smile, scream, raise my palms in love for how it all began, in the pause before the moment.

For those who have had to unravel home in the wake of so much thunder, I hope that these words are held as relics in your spirit. That you can call upon them when violation and violence entangles you. You have the power to weave your way back into your own home sequence. Yo skin is love, yo spine is love, yo collarbones is love. Your body sings see me see me see me. Shifts may occur. Feel them. Old homes may lead you to new ones. Meet yourself in relentless joy, gently, slowly and then all at once. Everything that you’ve ever needed is waiting for you there. 

Written for SYLA Studio’s Home is An Extension of You digital exhibition. 

Curated by B Carrie-Yvonne, 2021.