
“I too have known the inward disturbance of exile,
The great peril of being at home nowhere,
The dispersed center, the dividing love;
Not here, nor there …”
– May Sarton, From All Our Journeys
In Plant Dreaming Deep, Sarton writes that, despite teaching at various American universities and living in university towns, she still didn’t feel rooted where she was.
“What I meant by “life” was still rooted in Europe,” she writes. “During those years I went back whenever I could to the strong ties in England, France, Belgium, and Switzerland. I had not yet cut the umbilical cord.”
Then she asks the essential questions:
“And how long would the life in me stay alive if it did not find new roots?”
“If ‘home’ can be anywhere, how is one to look for it, where is one to find it?”

I know that feeling, too, of being uprooted and feeling the exile, and the disturbance and deep longing inherent in that uprootedness.
First, and significantly, from childhood experience when my own sense and experience of home was shattered; and again when I uprooted in 2008 from my long-time home in San Francisco, a place that I love and for which I felt a deep, almost ancient connection.
Though I ‘came East’, returning to the Northeastern U.S., where I grew up and many generations of ancestors had lived, I still felt uprooted, unmoored, and rootless for the years following my return, and perhaps even still.
As Sarton suggests, having lived ‘out West’ for twenty years, I had not cut the umbilical cord to that place, San Francisco, and all of the living that it held and what it symbolized for me.

Neither here, nor there …
Many of us have ancestors who knew that disorienting exile, who had the experience of being torn out by the roots from the place that generations had called home, and of the culture and its deep-rooted knowing, too, whether through diaspora, circumstance-forced migration, invasions, wars, and so on.
Their exile and longing for home lives in our very cells and bones, and we hear those voices like a Siren Song, calling us to remembrance, to piece together again the fabric of that ancestral tapestry that was torn or shredded.
It’s true though, what Sarton also knew: That our life, just like the plants, requires that we sink our roots deep — with source, within ourselves, with the place we find ourselves, and with our ancestral roots.
So we return to the questions that Sarton, too, asks as she reflects on this feeling of exile:
“And how long would the life in me stay alive if it did not find new roots?”
“If ‘home’ can be anywhere, how is one to look for it, where is one to find it?”
More on these and other Home & Exile themes coming up — it’s a rich area of exploration and reflection, and key to “dreaming deep” and re-rooting from right where we stand.
Big Love,
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July 19, 2014 at 12:14 pm
I can most certainly relate to this Jamie, thank you! 🙂 I have not heard of May Sarton and now that I have, and again, thanks to you, I’m drawn to read her writing. I checked amazon but the “From All Our Journeys” isn’t listed. 🙁
July 19, 2014 at 2:08 pm
Thank you, Nadine Marie. There is a lot to appreciate in May Sarton’s writings. All Our Journeys is a poem; it’s included in a collection of Sarton’s poems: Collected poems (1930-1973), and that stanza is included in her memoir, Plant Dreaming Deep. Another of her memoirs, Journal of a Solitude, is wonderful, too. Find these and others on the May Sarton page at Amazon. Love, Jamie
July 19, 2014 at 2:29 pm
Got that, thanks Jamie! 🙂
July 19, 2014 at 12:15 pm
I also look forward to reading more of your “home and exile” themed posts, as I’m sure to, once again, relate to and resonate with them! 🙂
July 19, 2014 at 2:09 pm
Oh, they’ve been brewing for awhile now, so I’ll continue to share a musing on these themes every so often. 🙂 I’m glad you resonate with them! Love, Jamie
July 19, 2014 at 2:30 pm
🙂 🙂 🙂
July 6, 2015 at 3:15 pm
Reblogged this on Sophia's Children and commented:
Since I’m in the midst of ‘moving house’ as some of my friends say, and thus only marginally ‘plugged in’ for another week or so, it seemed appropriate to share this Sophia’s Children post from a year ago.
Musings on ‘home and exile’ include a few of my favorite insights from May Sarton and John O’Donohue, though they also connect in to the long tendrils and whispers of ancestral memory and voices, too.
While I’m ‘shifting roots’ and moving into my new flat, I’m wishing you the blessings and inspirations of your own deep-rootedness (and also the heart-yearnings that sometimes lead us into new growing grounds!).
Big Love,
Jamie
July 11, 2015 at 7:48 pm
Good luck with your current move Jamie, I loved this meditation of rootedness.
July 14, 2015 at 2:35 pm
Thank you, Andrea. I so appreciate that! I’m glad you enjoyed the musing/meditation on rootedness. It’s one of those topics I return to and reflect on, ask into, live into a lot … home, exile, etc. I think there’s definitely an ancestral connection to that as well; the question and experience lives in the bones and cells. 🙂
Love,
Jamie