Fourth of July and the Cancerian Need for Home

When I was a kid, the Fourth of July was one of my favorite holidays. It was right before my birthday, so it always felt like we were kicking off a big week of celebration. I loved going to the University of Delaware to watch the fireworks show. I loved the colors and patterns high in the night sky. I loved feeling the delayed sound waves pound against my heart as they exploded above me. I loved the sense of union and togetherness and belonging I felt with the strangers around me, all lying on their blankets, eating funnel cakes and cheering.

As a Cancerian, the need for home, belonging, and tradition has always been a primary expression for me. As I grew older and learned more, I became disenchanted with the holiday. I learned that not everyone felt at home, or a sense of belonging, or the kind of empathy and care the holiday had once represented to me. And as I became conscious of the unsafe, even violent family dynamics I'd grown up in, and lived into my gender identity and sexual orientation, I began to question if my own safe belonging to a place called home was even real, or another biased story like the ones I’d been taught in school.

Today, while holding all the grief, the healing, the complexity of these themes, I want to say this: it is our sacred and universal need to belong. To have a home and be safe there. To nurture one another. To remember our history. To pass down traditions that offer familiarity and kindness. To create havens where all beings can rest.

I pray we can find a way there. That we can acknowledge our universal need for these comforts, and account for the violence and misdeeds that have left so many spiritually or literally homeless, even nationless. And finally, that all beings who so desire have a soft, warm place to lay their weary heads, and a host of loved ones who cheer, "Welcome home," when they arrive.