03. Learning to Stay
For ten full years, I believed I was searching for who I was. Then one day, a different thought surfaced. Maybe what I had been looking for wasn't myself at all — maybe it was the feeling of having somewhere to return to. An inner home.
Eight years ago, when I moved to Ireland alone. Two years ago, when I came to Vancouver on my own. When I went to live in a temple deep in the mountains. People always asked me the same thing: where did you find that kind of courage? I never had an answer. Because leaving, for me, never required courage.
When people asked how long I planned to stay in Vancouver, my answer was always the same. "As long as I want to. The moment I feel I've had enough, I'll leave. The reason I'm here today is simply that being here today makes me happy." I lived like someone who could put everything down and walk away at any moment. The freedom to leave whenever I wanted — to know when it was time and go without looking back — felt like my most essential desire. I didn't know why. Not yet.
My body felt safe when it was able to leave.
That's why leaving came so easily. Because I had never known what safety felt like, staying had never registered as stability. It had registered as threat. I lived in a constant state of alert — always sensing an exit, always ready to move. My body had learned, somewhere along the way, that staying was dangerous.
Leaving was a survival pattern.
Once I understood that, I began — slowly — to practice something different. Daily meditation. Yoga on the mat. The quiet work of building a home inside myself. A space that is safe, and full of warmth. So that I no longer have to look for safety somewhere outside. So that wherever I am, I can be home. Not leaving. Staying.
I think about the person who is on their own path right now — doubting, feeling lost — the way I once did. Having walked through it myself, I know how luminous that path actually is. And that is why I want to walk alongside others on theirs.
A space to set down every role, every expectation, and meet yourself — safely, honestly. That is what Awaremember is. A place where awareness becomes recognition. A sanctuary.