Welcome home, I'm Dr. Tamer, a minister, licensed psychologist and sacred artist.

And this is Homecoming, a podcast to facilitate your journey home to yourself.

While I will provide weekly inspiration and mental health tips, this podcast is not the same

as personalized therapy. I'm so excited you're on the journey. If you want to request specific

topics or to submit a poem for me to read on the podcast, email me at homecomingpodcastsatgmail.com.

Also to build our community, don't forget to like, subscribe and share. Let's begin.

Welcome home co-journers. I'm glad you're here for another episode and I'm excited we have a

poem for this week. The poem comes from Lauren Rudd and it reads, She and I. I was 19 when she

went away. By the time I realized something was wrong, it was far too late. It was a gradual

boil, the slowest burn, a candle with dwindling down, down, down. Until I was enveloped alone

in a pitch darkness, I did not recognize as my own skin. The flowers once abundant in my

heart garden were replaced with weeds and thorns. She was gone. I realized and I was left in

the insufferable place of being her. Something like her face was reflected back to me in the mirror

and there was the same unruly red hair on her or was it my head in the photos that covered the

walls. I'm not really in charge here. I wanted to tell scream at everyone. Come back! I pleaded to her.

There was no answer. I searched everywhere for her, lurching from one crisis to the next as I

looked for anything to fill her void. How could a self-split in two like that? I feared the chasm

between my halves was too big, permanent, gaping, to ever fully unite again. Fear and loneliness

consumed me. I could feel the strands of thread holding me to the ground, slowly breaking one by one.

And eventually I figured I would just float away. What if she never comes back?

The words caught like a boulder in my throat. I feared if I spoke them aloud, crunched them out.

My tongue would be sliced by the shards of rock. I refused to accept it as truth.

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