Coming Home: The Journey Without a Map
There is a moment in many of my coaching sessions—sometimes quiet, sometimes earthshattering—when someone stops striving to become and begins simply to be.
This is what I call coming home.
A few years ago, a man read a piece I had written called The Mistress of Medicine. We connected on LinkedIn afterward. The piece spoke to him in that rare and powerful way where words reach beneath the surface of daily life and land somewhere true.
That was the beginning of our authentic connection.
This is what I want my writing to be: a call out into the vast expanse of our lonely lives, reaching for something real.
A quiet signal flare, not just for attention—but for belonging.
To say: I see you. Do you feel this too?
That is what happened here.
He later became my coaching client—but “client” doesn’t quite capture what happens in coaching.
Coaching, in the way I hold it, isn’t a transaction or a transfer of tools.
It’s a safe and sometimes sacred space where someone can begin to remember who they are beneath the noise.
It’s a companionship that makes space for someone to return to themselves.
Recently, he shared this as a response to one of his own pieces on Substack:
“You have walked alongside me a good long ways, until I have become comfortable with a journey without a map, without an itinerary, without a specific destination beyond equanimity, and thus without a conclusion. It's really a lovely place to be, knowing that every day contains a little discovery and that the journey will take me right past all the way-points I might imagine until I find myself free of this mortal anchor. It seems that everything I sought after was right here in front of me, at home on my own acre.”
This is the heart of the coaching, writing and leading I do.
We live in a world of constant orientation—toward goals, identities, and the next big achievement.
We learn to ask, “Where am I going? What’s next? How do I get there?”
We internalize maps and milestones, and we forget the ground under our feet.
So often, we use our professional identities as armor.
Titles, credentials, productivity—they become a way to say, “I matter. I’m safe. I belong.”
But when those identities become the only place we feel worthy, they stop being empowering and start becoming a hiding place.
Letting go of that—of the performance, the proving—can feel terrifying.
But it’s also where the real freedom begins.
Because you are not your résumé.
You are not your LinkedIn profile.
You are not what you produce.
You are already enough—without the title, without the mask.
The real transformation—the kind that lasts, that softens us, that roots us in peace—rarely comes from reaching the summit.
It comes from realizing that the summit was never separate from the path.
That we don’t have to be more or better or elsewhere.
We can be here.
Home is not just a place.
It’s a felt sense of belonging—to oneself, to one’s life.
It’s the moment you stop auditioning for your own existence.
It’s the quiet recognition that what you’ve been searching for has been patiently waiting inside you all along.
This is what I witness again and again:
People learning to live without a rigid map.
To trust the terrain of their own experience.
To orient not around productivity or perfection, but around presence.
And there is such comfort and ease in that.
Not because it’s all easy—far from it. But because it’s real. It’s grounded. And it’s really all you need.
Coming home doesn’t mean you stop growing. It means you grow from a place of rootedness, not restlessness. It means you can let go of the need to prove or perform, and instead, inhabit your life fully, consciously, as it is.
If you are weary of the chase, of the endless search, maybe this is your invitation too—
To come home to your own acre.
To trust the unfolding.
To know that the way reveals itself not through force, but through presence.
After all, as my client reminded me:
“Everything I sought after was right here in front of me.”
🌿 Begin Your Way Home
If this resonates, I invite you to explore The Way Home, a free mini-series designed to help you reconnect with yourself—gently, honestly, and with great care.
You can start it anytime, at your own pace.
👉 Sign up for The Way Home mini-series
And if you're curious about what coming home might look like for you, I'd love to offer you a free 30-minute coaching call—a spacious, pressure-free conversation just for you.
You don’t have to do this alone.
Come home to yourself.
I’d love to be your guide on the most important journey of your life.