From Victim to Creator 10 - Home

As new visitors discover my website and make their way through the "back catalog" of my older blog posts, they find numerous posts about my journey of leaving the city, moving to the country, building my own home, etc. And then I quite often get an email asking something like: "So, what happened? Did you finish your home? How does it look now?"

And so, as I found myself recently pondering deeply on what "Home" means to me, I thought it was time to put together a few words, pictures and a little video. This also brings some kind of closure to my "From Victim to Creator" blog series - as well as a guest post from Lisa in which she offered her perspective on this whole journey. I can certainly recommend viewing those posts first to understand the context of what I am sharing here!

So WHAT DOES HOME MEAN TO ME?

My home is named, Anandalay, which is a Sanskrit word meaning something like, "Place of Joy". I share this home with Lisa, my ex life partner and BFF, and our two miniature dachshunds, Pikachu and Maya.

Our place of joy is situated high up in the Outeniqua mountains of South Africa's Garden Route, right on the border of the indigenous forest and overlooking forested gorges and distant, blue mountains.

Lisa and I built our off-the-grid home with our own hands eight years ago. It is completely solar-powered and we collect rainwater off our roof and clean our waste water through a reedbed filtration system, after which it is used to irrigate our food crops.

This quiet, peaceful life, with its deep connection to the land, is what supports and enables my own inner work and spiritual journeying. I share the results of this work through my writings and other offerings as my gift to the world.

In this short video and photo to follow, I share my perspective on what "home" really means to me: