Tips for Growing Better Garden & Humans

How Hospitality Saved My Life & Can Save Yours Too

Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash

On Surveying & Tilling Old Land

In December of 2020, I found myself looking up from the page to see a story unfolding that I did not remember writing. In that moment I realized that all my prose about escapism had led me to a place that I no longer recognized. I was in the thick of it. What had once been intentional separation, had transformed into a place of longing and wandering. Desperation had led me to desperate acts. I was committing crimes against myself. 

The first time I ran away from home, I was young. I was the eldest child who dreamed of a world where I was met with delight and freedom. I still daydream about that moment. The moment before I made the decision to flee. I go back and often long for that moment. The way I played in the leaves. The pleasure found in gathering large piles of and throwing them in the air to let them fall across your face. Landing in your hair, your shirt, falling all around you. The way the skyline is endless, a place where the sun is shining and the air is crisp around you. Moments of deep pleasure found in innocence and simplicity. 

And that was the day that I chose to run away, in pursuit of that feeling. Even at the age of 8 or 9, I decided that rebellion and whatever death may face me was better than trying to find refuge in a place that was so casual about taking away my pleasure. That would rather implore punishment as a means of conforming, versus embracing life's silly little pleasures, like the need to take off your shoes and feel the drops of water on wet leaves between your toes. So I left, with only one thought on my mind– “I will not be punished”. 

Though I left, I came back, and punished I was. And somehow, someway punishment became a daily ritual. And here I was some ten, fifteen years later, still bounded by an oath of punishment. I had run away from home again, baby in tow desperate for freedom. I crossed the country with no other logical reason than the singular thought “I will not be punished.” In the pursuit of freedom, I still punished myself. I could run away from home, but I couldn’t run from rituals and traditions of punishment. That fateful December in the thick of punishment, my body screaming at me for relief, I surrendered. I knew my body was buckling at the weight of the crimes I had committed against myself and the sins of others against my flesh. My body was frail, I was on the verge of collapse and I was mad enough to believe that I could still journey a little bit further, because I had not yet found freedom. I hadn’t found freedom in two jobs, continuous returns to academic institutions. I hadn’t found freedom in coparenting and long sleepless nights. 

What I did find was that I had worked myself to death. In my surrender, came the collapse of the walls that had built the fallacy around me. I believed that the pursuit of freedom had to be a cold, hard path in the opposite direction of punishment. That in order to not feel alone, I had to be alone and figure things out for myself. What I found instead was swelling on my brain. I found myself physically and metaphorically paralyzed by a stroke. When I finally decided to look up from the page, I discovered myself being wheeled off by a team of nurses and doctors. I was greeted by the sounds of a stroke code being called all around me. I was overwhelmed by fear and grief as tears fell from my face, with no way to make a sound. But I was heard when the nurse took my hand and began to pray. Her ability to utter words that I could no longer say. On my deathbed, I realized in the flee from punishment, that I had forgotten how to live. Rebellion had become a cold master. My refusal to settle meant that I had been roaming endlessly, refusing to breathe, refusing to settle against brooks that could have washed over my worn soul. I had started running and I didn’t stop until my body could no longer move. I could no longer see, no longer talk in coherent sentences. I could no longer tend to myself nor my son. The revelation broke me.

In the shattered pieces of my reality, I decided that to survive this meant learning how to live. Not to run from place to place, but to learn how to settle and find peace in any place that I found myself in. I found myself in rural Virginia. I found myself amongst strangers. Strangers that quickly grew into family. I found myself learning how to live slowly. I found radical hospitality. In hospitality I found freedom. The freedom I had been chasing since I was 8 or 9 years old found me when I could no longer run. I found it while sitting still listening to the soundscapes of the silence.  There’s a silence, a stillness that you can only find far removed from the busyness of hustle culture. That you can only find when you draw away in order to draw near. 

I found liberation in rural Virginia amongst strangers. I tasted liberation in the butter beans that were stewed with more butter than I could have ever fathomed. I witnessed liberation in onions chopped in the palms of old hands with large old blades that could tell stories. I found liberation in being seen, in hospitality that welcomed me in, never questioning how I got here. Simple acts of hospitality healed me. In that old shack of a home, I learned to walk again. I was able to return to my first love, remembering how to cook again. I still remember how the fresh air felt on my face when I paced the land, remembering what it felt like to connect my body and the land again. I learned to let others care for me, and how good it felt to be loved. On that land I learned what true wealth was. Wealth, wellness was in the simplicity of good company. In sharing abundantly, generously from the little that you had. Wealth was being able to sow with your own hands and having the patience and faith required to let things grow, and sharing your labor with others as they share with you. Wealth is communing with others regularly, often. It is connecting with the land, letting the soil feed you, ground you. Allowing the skyline to hold the expansiveness of your emotions, your tears, your dreams. Allowing the whispers of your desires to be carried by the wind, the same breeze that scatters seeds. 

I could not have written this story. I could not have foreseen the irony of spending decades longing for the same feeling I had when I was 8, maybe 9 of letting leaves fall on my face longing for freedom to be 25, feeling the most free in the company of strangers on land I had never set foot on, yet the air was heavy with nostalgia. This feeling of being home, like deep deja vu. 

Now, I pass the gift on to you, the gift of radical hospitality that saved my life and can save yours too. 

Learning to walk again, taking my first steps on the snowfall in rural Virginia.

An Invitation to Radical Hospitality: A Guide on Living

If you want to live well, begin to live slowly.

If months of that fresh air taught me nothing else, it showed me through the whispers of the 

trees, the breeze on my cheek that you aren’t really living until you slow down to enjoy the life around you. You will never make it to anywhere worthwhile by trying to get there quickly. Surrender to the journey, take your time. 

Create a praxis of communing daily.

I firmly believe that one of the most powerful benefits to inviting radical hospitality into your life is when you begin to practice and indulge in a praxis of communing. Communing for me was defined by the ritual of setting aside time to intentionally return home. I associate returning home with the memories of physically returning home to the place I often found refuge in, my Nana’s home. I would be often greeted with the smells and wonder of the magic she created with simple ingredients and leftovers. This alchemy healed my soul. So for me, the simple and yet necessary act of creating a meal is the nucleus to returning to myself as frequently and often as I can. 

Invite others in.

Little did I know that the invitation, the request to join, to be invited in would change my life. The pleasure and delight that I found in not being allowed, permitted, or tolerated but to be invited in was the foundation of this radical transformation. I realize now that far too often I have found myself in places where I later found that I was simply tolerated, the pleasantries a mask for hatred and misunderstanding. The act of invitation is so intentional and personal. On the other side of this invitation was witnessing how these once strangers in rural Virginia had made room for me, setting a place for me, creating a space that I could call home. What would happen if we intentionally began to invite others in? Into our practices, into our rituals, into our lives and created ceremonies around invitation and warm welcomes? How might the lost become found? 

You must use your hands.

Without exceptions, radical hospitality requires the use of our hands. Creating safe houses in isolated lands where wanders roam requires not just words, but actions. If you want to build something that lasts for generations, if you want to leave behind something to be enjoyed for generations to come, it requires the work of our hands. Wrinkled hands kneading weary souls, breaking apart the bones of oppression, this movement of radical love, radical hospitality needs our hands, it cannot be store bought. This work is homemade, handmade, carefully crafted.  

To be loved is to be seen. 

Somewhere floating around the webs of the internet are various quotes about love and visibility. An endless sea of ways to interpret and comprehend the feeling you experience when you witness the love of someone who sees you. Witnessing what emotions rise and what hardened places soften at the realization that someone outside of yourself cares about the small things in your life, someone who has noted your preferences and desires. To be seen behind the veils you wear to shadow your basic needs. As if the desire, no, the need to be loved, to be held, to be cradled, to be fed is taboo. Radical hospitality asks us to see each other, to bear witness. It necessitates surveying the land, learning to compass around caverns of pain, to climb the scaffolds of dreams not yet materialized, taking the time to learn what grows and what can grow again. Allow others to see you, gaze upon others without turning your head, do not flinch at their horrors, find delight in their pleasure, their joy, dream together with open eyes and open hearts. 

Sharing is a necessity. 

It’s not just sharing the fruit of hard labor like the onions grown by 80 year old hands, but allowing others to share in the burden you carry upon the shoulders too small to hold the largest of your dreams. What has shaped the landscape the most of my journey back home has been allowing others to share in my care. This is mutual aid, this is what community care looks like. It looks like opening doors, it looks like telling the independent warrior to sit down and rest. It looks like offerings of hot pots of food to the mother with red and wet eyes, it looks like long hugs with no release in sight for strangers whose arms are begging to be touched. It looks like holding each other after a cancer diagnosis, helping to hold the weight of a new reality full of speculation. 

HOW TO USE THIS GUIDE: SAYING GRACE

May this guide serve as an open-ended source for introspection and reflection guiding you to your own truths. Let it serve as a garden for self-discovery, here may you sow seeds and gather harvests you need. It is my hope, my prayer that you find seeds of wisdom sown into the braided patterns of your heart and that you will be able to reach for when you find yourself in wild lands without company or sustenance. I pray these words begin to take root and uproot ideas, rituals, and practices that no longer serve you. May you begin to find radical hospitality and become more hospitable, more welcoming to yourself and invite others into the beauty that is you. I pray that you find yourself on the journey back to self, and if you get lost, I invite you to commune with me. I promise to see you, to share in your care and to use my hands tenderly, tending to weeds and gathering fruit. 

May you find home, soon. 

Self portrait. Healing in the sunshine on generational land in South Boston, VA circa 2021.

On Table Manners: IF YOU HAVE FOUND MY WORK TO BE NOURISHING PLEASE CONSIDER SHARING IT WITH OTHERS. I LOVE YOU THE MOST.