Home is Where the Heart is
Written by Alecs Kakon
Photos by Jen Fellegi
I’ve always had trouble with the notion that biology binds us to certain people. It raised many questions throughout my own personal history of trauma and family relations. The issue extended past the idea of unconditional love and home being the place where safety resides. For me, I rejected these “facts”; I even rebelled against them. I sought new ways to define family and intervened the belief that blood-ties kept you safe while harm resided in the world at large. Incidentally, it’s only when I realized that I wasn’t stuck—that I could roam free—that I was finally able to settle into my true self and find the security and confidence that home presumably offers. I’ve met a lot of friends who have similar stories, but chatting with Alix gave me reflective insight into my past, while also providing a subtle tension that would allow for that final release.
Born in Montreal, by the age of 15, Alix would begin the first of a seven-legged travel until she would ultimately move back to Montreal and start her own family, but let’s not get ahead of ourselves. Through work opportunity, her family initially up and left for Leeds before setting up home in Connecticut just one year later. Finishing her senior year in a small wealthy bedroom town in Connecticut, Alix then left for Boston to start university. Not connecting to school, friends, or family, Alix spent most of her time isolated as her family home gave rise to her insecurities, which led to teenage angst, or what her parents would soon label as “angry.” Rather than provide her with much needed therapy and support, “I was pigeonholed as the ‘angry’ child,’ and so I spent a lot of time biding for attention and looking for love.” Up until the age of 19, Alix self-describes as a sullen teenager, isolated, and “probably very depressed on some level.” Unbeknownst to her at the time, she could be different than what she was told she was, but “when you’re always told you’re one thing, it’s hard to be anything else, and I didn’t know how to change that.” Words that marked my youth as well. It takes a ton of self-reflection and a healthy dose of confidence to know that you can go out there and be anything, and anyone you choose to be.
After less than 3 years in Boston, Alix moved back to Montreal to complete her B. Com in Marketing at Concordia University. When I asked if it felt like she had returned back “home” so to speak, Alix unflinchingly responded a firm ‘yes.’ Reconnecting with old friends gave her a newfound sense of family. Cultivating strong friendships with a small group of girlfriends was the first step in softening and opening up to the possibility of “not being who I am because of what I’d gone through.” Alix was beginning to see that there were alternatives to creating her own definition of family, and with an open-ended seat at her friends’ families’ dinner table, she was slowly chipping away at the loneliness that had once taken the colour out of her life. However, it wasn’t until Alix would go on to meet her now-husband that she would fully open up to the idea of being completely vulnerable and truly at home. “Meeting my husband, committing to him, choosing him as my life partner, having a family with him… all of these moments were pivotal in my life and shifted my inner world,” Alix described. “He impacted me greatly.” After several years of dating and moving around from London to Toronto and back to Montreal again, Alix and her husband would marry and go on to have two children, creating a family together that would change the course of Alix’s life indubitably.
Giving birth to her first child injected Alix with a sense of confidence that only becoming a parent could’ve done given her past. Abandoning old stories and resentment she may have held onto about her own past, Alix moved into a new frame-of-mind as she looked back and realized that so much had been stacked against her, “it would’ve taken extraordinary strength and self-awareness to manage the emotions I had as a child and teenager.” She all but could push through her sadness and anger because rather than bolster her up, her surroundings etched her out. But now, with her rediscovered sense of self, Alix has been able to deal with the things that kept her down and has moved into a new place where her life would be set on her own terms; a life of fulfillment and positivity. “My life wasn’t pretty, and that made people uncomfortable, but rather than trying to make it pretty to ease those around me, I started taking care of me,” Alix explains. With much self-reflection, Alix focuses on the positive as she gives gratitude and checks in: “I always remind myself that I am happy.”
Perhaps it’s the strength we gathered in becoming mothers that connects us, but listening to Alix’s tear-filled story shed a light on what becoming a mother did for my own constitution. I became confident in myself and rallied all of my strength to protect my children from potential (and unforeseen) dangers that lurk both inside and outside the family home. Striving at all times to foster a home built on stability, love, and mutual respect, we don’t take our roles as mothers as a biological right, but rather as a role that is earned. We’ve taken what could’ve broken us and transformed it into what has saved us. It’s empowering to know that our past does not define us, yet like a little stone kept in our pocket, it serves to remind us of all we’ve gone through and all we broke free from. Life could’ve gone a completely different way, “I am grateful for my life. Now I know to be true to myself, practice self-care, and be open and vulnerable.” Words to live by.
