No, I wasn’t lost in the grocery store, I thankfully learnt to navigate my way around them a few years ago. I mean that I came home to myself while pushing a trolley at 7pm one midweek night in (of all places) Florida, USA. I had an inexplicable and abiding sense of being at home. I found a place within that was so clear, so contented, so connected, so complete. In a grocery store. It was so profound that even time took on an alternative texture, seemingly slowing down, inviting me to embody the experience.
I have a morbid fascination with American grocery stores. I once measured 20 long steps of just pizza fridges. A similar amount for the ice cream aisle. The yogurt aisle. The anything-that-comes-in-bright-packaging aisles. The options are vast.
By 7pm the air is thick with everyone’s to-do lists. The collective sense of humour is scant. On this midweek evening two staff members, clearly over their duties, were shooting the breeze by the processed cheese section. One was picking at their nails and the other swinging a set of keys on their index finger. The once charming “did y’all find what you were looking for, ma’am?” had begun to ring plastic to my ears as I realized Americans aren’t actually that friendly, they’re just that well trained.
Our family holiday in Florida was underwhelming. The extraterrestrial insects and kamikaze mosquitoes make African bugs look like pets. The land is flat, as are many of the people. Ghastly generalizations, I know—but this was our experience. We’d had a day of six-lane highways and weeks of cramped accommodation. The teenagers were grumbly, and the husband not much better. I was hunting for dinner that night as visiting restaurants daily was cost prohibitive. There I was, pushing a trolley of overpriced produce, feeling inexplicably at home. The sense stopped me dead. “What is that?” I queried myself. I wondered if indeed Florida was meant to be my home. “Surely not!” And so, it dawned on me – it wasn’t America. It wasn’t Florida. It wasn’t Orlando. It was me. I was completely at home in me, and the contrast of this inner sense being so incongruent with my outer experience is what brought it sharply into view.
Gravity pulled hot tears down my cheeks. I stilled my trolley amidst the evening madness and felt into this sensation. I felt like I had arrived at a destination I’d been yearning for, realising simultaneously that I had always been there.
I was born a seeker. I have worked deeply, longingly, intentionally on myself. I’d yearn as a younger adult to be like those who seemed so comfortable in their own skin. I set “inner peace” as my dream, my goal for years. And here I was in Florida, Rand poor yet abundantly rich.
Reflecting on this seemingly insignificant yet profoundly significant moment, I’ve come to appreciate my journey to this point. One of the key tenets of my now fully articulated “Coming Home to Yourself” 6 part framework that I run with women is this: getting clear and coherent about ourselves. An aspect of this section of my framework meant courageously mining down to what I didn’t like about myself – what created division within me. Things like being judgmental, reactive, or jealous – and learning to course correct them. It’s deep work as much of what we don’t like about ourselves, we couch in justifications over the years or we normalise. I wanted to genuinely like and love myself the way I do others, so I wanted to show up as the best, most loveable version of me. But here’s the clincher: I wanted to do this for me, so that I could inhabit my being with love and appreciation. With an inner connection (which takes us into one of the next tenets of my framework for coming home).
Clarity resides in ever-deepening self-awareness. In one of the activities I use 5 simple words as stewards of my intentional thoughts and actions:
Is this loving to me?
Is this thought loving to me?
Is raising my voice at the kids loving to me?
Is being grumpy with a telemarketer loving to me?
Is skipping that meal loving to me?
Is over scheduling my diary loving to me?
Is showing up exhausted for clients loving to me?
Is that extra biscuit loving to me?
Is missing yoga loving to me?
This may sound self-centred, but paradoxically, what serves others best is a natural byproduct of what serves me. It’s a mental pivot that transforms the energy from seemingly selfish to profoundly selfless. Neglecting ourselves is the true selfishness—it serves neither us, nor those we care about. When we love ourselves deeply, we naturally show up as our best selves in service of those around us.
This process is one of the processes that brought me home to myself. It has introduced me to my body, my heart, my essence. It’s reconfigured me in ways that I find myself showing up to my family and friends as a deeply available, present, loving, and connected me. It’s brought me, even in aisle 6 of a store, state, and country I did not want to be in, home to me.
