Coming Home to Yourself: An Invitation to Return

The Broken & Beautiful
Apr 19
3 min read

Updated: May 14

Patria Rector, Founder of The Broken & Beautiful Collective

I am a dreamer.

Not every night, and not even that often. But a few of the dreams I remember have felt like beacons of sanity—like a lighthouse calling me home.

One such dream came many years ago.

Everything was in black and white.

I was standing in a wide-open field that, in color, would have been golden, ripe wheat. There were no trees—just miles of open field stretching in every direction.

In the distance, I saw a house.

It was ramshackle. The door had been blown off. The windows were dark. There were no lights.

It was daylight, but the kind of daylight that comes just before a storm.

The wind was rushing through the wheat, violent and loud. My hair was whipping around me. My dress was caught in the wind.

And yet—I stood completely still. Trying to understand the scene before me.

To my right, I saw my dog, Lea, running hard toward me.

I remember wondering:

Why is she coming to me… and not the house?

To the left of the house, my husband was standing, motioning urgently for me to go inside.

But when I tried to move toward the house—something blocked the entrance.

A snarling, lizard-like, dust-covered creature.

And I couldn’t get past it.

I was frozen.

As I began to wake—still in that in-between place—my eyes lifted.

And across the horizon, beyond the wheat field…

the sky was a soft, beautiful cornflower blue.

Coming Home to Yourself

I’ve spent more than fifteen years learning from that dream.

And what I’ve come to understand is this:

The house… was me.

Across cultures, theology, and story, the image of a house often represents the self—our inner world.

And what was true in that moment of my life was this:

I did not feel safe enough to enter my own self.

That may sound strange.

Especially if you come from a background where the focus has been on serving others, loving others, caring for others.

Where “self” can feel… selfish.

But I’ve learned that you cannot offer love, presence, or connection to others from a place you are not willing to enter yourself.

For much of my life, I was living outside of myself.

Functioning. Performing. Showing up.

But not truly at home.

And while I’ve learned many tools over the years—through study, training, and working with others—the most important thing I’ve learned is that I had to find a way to return to myself.

Not in isolation. Not in self-absorption.

But in honesty.

In presence.

In learning how to be with myself in a way that felt safe enough to stay.

It hasn’t been fast.

And it hasn’t been easy.

But it has been life-changing.

I’ve experienced a freedom I didn’t know I was missing.

A deeper capacity for love. More grounded relationships.

A growing trust in others—and in God—that feels real, not forced.

And because this has been so transformative for me…

it is the most natural thing in the world to offer it to others.