Bless My Soul
Listening to Alabama Shakes every dang day for weeks now, I come back to some of the same lyrics: I feel so homesick Where's my home Where I belong Where I was born I was told to go Where the wind would blow And it blows away, away… I feel far from home, and while some of that is being away from my parents’ home, and they from their ancestral homeland—I write about this, for goodness’ sake—it’s also about forming home, being at home with myself and my little family, and seeing the afterlife as a home, though it feels severed for me right now. Music has been a kind of saving grace for me these past months as I slogged through working and being a mother at once—and these things both pushing me away from centering and being at peace, and pulling me toward a better practice of time. It’s been an unbelievable challenge, and I find myself still dealing with the ramifications of so much of the year: the tear in my body healing; the tear in my heart from all the losses, also healing, some...