Querencia

I am right where I need to be.  I am not stuck or depressed in this house. This is my querencia.  This is the little house Skip and I bought in Sept 1977 and have lived, loved, raised our boys, laughed, fought, created art, mourned losses and celebrated births.  It is not a prison of walls that I need to escape from, I do not need to get back out into the world, I need to heal and find my strength.  It is my safe place and my studio.  It is where my authenticity thrives.  It is where I can truly accept, feel and experience this grief honestly without worrying if my tears, grief and/or sadness makes others uncomfortable or want to feel sorry for me.  I need time to figure out how to live again and this is where I draw my strength.  To all of you that want to help, please know how much  I love and appreciate you, but this is the part of my healing that I must do alone, here in a place of safety, authenticity, and strength. I am so blessed to have such a place.

"Our House" Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young

Querencia is a metaphysical concept in the Spanish language. The term comes from the Spanish verb "querer," which means "to desire." In bullfighting, a bull may stake out his querencia, a certain part of the bull ring where he feels strong and safe. Ernest Hemingway's 1932 nonfiction book Death in the Afternoon [1] describes the querencia in this context:

A querencia is a place the bull naturally wants to go to in the ring, a preferred locality... It is a place which develops in the course of the fight where the bull makes his home. It does not usually show at once, but develops in his brain as the fight goes on. In this place he feels that he has his back against the wall and in his querencia he is inestimably more dangerous and almost impossible to kill.
— Ernest Hemingway, Death in the Afternoon