Guest post: Path Over Sand

A Reflection for Thanksgiving 2022

by Tali Torres

I am so excited to share a beautiful piece of writing from one of my workshop participants, Tali Torres. Feed Your Spirit Writing offers online workshops focusing on the intersection of writing and spiritual growth…come join us!

This Thanksgiving I remember home as it was all my life, all those years that I spent with mom and dad.

Photo by Oswaldo Martinez on Unsplash

Like the sea rejoices coming home to shore, that’s how I see myself, when the sea bathes the shores of my country, it is me being washed away of all things wrong and ugly, of those memories that taint my being; but I’ve come to my shore, like those waves caressing the sand; like the waters go back to shore, I go back home, where I’m washed, my feet are washed, my heart is washed and I embrace home in my memories, to my mother’s caresses like the sea waters, to my dad’s words of love and encouragement, like the breeze of the sea. All that is the warmth of home.

This Thanksgiving I give thanks for all those years of life experience at home, with my family and friends; and with a heart full of gratitude and loving memories, I say to myself, home is where the heart is; you don’t need to travel far to be home. My parents are no longer on earth and I am no longer in my native country, but all the loving words, the disciplinarian instructions, the playfulness, the seriousness, all that still nurtures my soul. The kindness of people, the people unkind, the beautiful and the ugly, the great and the disgusting, are all now in my mind and heart but with a great sense of gratitude for all that was and has become now in my life.

Today, I’m stronger, resolute, discerning and intuitive, perceptive yet discreet, cautious and never an intruder. I have defined what I want in my life, but mainly what I don’t want in it. My parents at home gave me all the necessary tools to know who I want to be and which is what I have become, a woman of valor, who looks for simplicity and wisdom every day, without forgetting who I was and where I come from.

And so, it is, that as the waters of the sea go back to their shore, I too go back to my home, in my distant memories, the smells of bread pudding and the soft music on the background. And I am grateful for the path walked all these years as if over sand, leaving my footprints all along the way.

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