Welcome to the Gathering Pod, the audio version of my weekly gathering room broadcast.

I'm Martha Beck.

This is kind of, you know, this is called your forever home, this version of the gathering

room because I love the image that, excuse me, I'm fixing my Facebook, I love the image of pets that go

into shelters and they're homeless on the streets and then, you know, people come and maybe,

maybe they get fostered for a while or even more poignantly children may get fostered for

a while, kicked around from foster

home to foster home. And then one day, if they're lucky, every foster child dreams that

somebody's going to adopt them and they will have a forever home. And that always, whenever I see

those words online, in a book, on the television, I tear up hard

because home is a concept that really alluded me for a lot of my life.

I think like three of my books end with the word home.

Like everything is about bringing it back home because I never

really felt like I was home. And it's gotten a lot better in recent years, but I have to say,

hang on, I'm going to move this up because I can't see the top of my head. Yeah. So lately I was

traveling. It's like we can travel again, which is like, yay. And yet, ooh, it reminded me, I'm a homebody. I actually, whatever the evils the pandemic rot, it sure let us homebodies stay home, didn't it? And I had a wonderful time just being home with my

loved ones and with you guys. I mean, it wasn't like I didn't get to gather with my best friends every

week. So I was great. And then people started asking me to travel places. And I remembered what

it's like to be in a hotel room after doing some sort of publicity thing.

And it's not really you doing the publicity.

And everybody's very like, there's a kind of energy around doing broadcasty things where it's not easygoing.

I mean, it can look easygoing.

...