Coming Home

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While I love to travel and see new sites and meet new-to-me people, it is so very, very good to be home. I am grateful that I am glad to be home. 


Home is the place where I know where most things are… most days. 


Home is the place where the surroundings are familiar. It is good to sit on the deck and witness the abundance of new life unfold all around - the oak buds unfurling, hostas and peonies bursting from their winter resting places, spring peepers singing their lustful cantata while tulips and daffodils bloom in all their glory. 


I always wonder - how do they know it’s spring. What are the many secret messages encoded in those lifeless bulbs I planted last fall? How do the spring peepers know to sing?


For me home is a place of safety. Where I can return, enter, close the door behind me, lean with my back against the door and sigh a sigh of relief. I am home.


Home for me was not always a safe space. There was a brief time in my life when I feared what would await me under the roof I called home. 


Which brings me to Hestia House, the women’s shelter in Saint John. Hestia means "hearth, fireplace, altar.” That is what Hestia House tries to be - a safe and warm hearth, a place of refuge. Hestia references the Greek ‘oikos,’ the basic unit of society of home and family.


Recently I joined the Heista House Board of Directors. As such I am quickly learning about this important place that serves as ‘home’ for a moment in time.  


For over 40 Years, Hestia House has been a secure-safe setting for abused women and their children in the greater Saint John area. It provides shelter and support for up to 24 women and their children.  It is open 24 hours a day, 7 days a week with full-time and part-time staff available to help. 


We know that not all homes provide a safe altar for a family to thrive as intimate partner violence continues. Indeed, research speaks of the increase in intimate partner violence in recent years, including here in New Brunswick. 


At last night’s board meeting, I heard how the NB Provincial funding for Heista House has not increased for many years. While the intimate partner violence increases, the funding has not. While the cost of everything to run a household has increased, the Provincial funding has not. 


Can’t we do better than that? We must do better.


We can say “NO’ to the evil of intimate partner violence. 


In the meantime, we can provide a safe home for women and children in their time of greatest need. We have the means. We can love our neighbour.


So I give thanks for the home where I abide. And, with others, strive to create a safe space for all, and a day when fund raising would be no more.


Imagine a day when there would be no need for Hestia House. 


May it be so.

Comments

  1. Shelley PickMay 5, 2023 at 8:14 AM

    Amen to that. I am learning more all the time about Intimate Partner Violence and the connections with Brain Injury and Incarceration... how women struggling with real symptoms are denied, dismissed and belittled again and again. Places like Hestia house are essential. Thanks for your words Elizabeth.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thoughts from Chickadee LaneMay 5, 2023 at 11:20 AM

      Thank you Shelley. I never thought of the connections. Thank you for sharing.

      Delete
  2. AnonymousMay 5, 2023 at 1:11 PM

    Amen and Amen

    ReplyDelete
  3. AnonymousMay 5, 2023 at 2:58 PM

    God bless all the people involved in Hestia House. Clients staff and administration.

    ReplyDelete

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