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My mother’s journal entries during a period in January 1960 when my father went to work out of town and we had to leave the homestead and stay in the rented log house in Eagle River during the time he was gone.  She is missing her husband, and the mountain.

I know the feeling she is talking about in the January 23rd entry.  I used to call it my ‘wild’ feeling, like the wind could blow right through me.  But it’s a longing, a certain inexplicable kind of longing in the soul……

Have you ever felt it?

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January 10, 1960

We had to leave homestead.

January 11, 1960

Baths and children rested and got ready to return to school.

January 12, 1960

Children returned to school.  Bill left for [work in] Paxson.  Sub-zero weather all week 20 to 25° below – good thing we came down.

January 13, 1959

I’m lost without Bill and children.  Jeep won’t start so every day Sharon and I walk to store [staying at log house in Eagle River], mail box etc. – Cold – Br-r – but nice.  We bundle up and except for our face we don’t mind.  I put a scarf over Sharon’s mouth and we don’t talk – it’s too cold.

January 21, 1960

Cold weather ended days ago!  Now between 15° and 20° above.  Children – Cindy and John got report cards – Cindy all s’s and John all B’s.  I’m pleased.

January 22, 1960

Be so glad when Bill gets home.  I miss him terribly.  I plan to go to homestead on Monday with Bockstahlers.

January 23, 1960

I can’t explain it to anyone, least of all to myself – this burning aching inside of me that seeks fulfillment – and I only find this peace and serenity and wonder – on our homestead.  There I’m happy and here  I’m lost – it’s as if I’m meant to be there – high in the mountains – alone with Alaska’s beauty all around me –

Today – I’m going through the motions of keeping house and all but inside I feel as if I want to free myself from bondage – I feel held and I yearn to be loose – free –

Schools, close to stores and all – still not worth it to me [to be in Eagle River] – I yearn to be home – next winter I wish I could stay.

John is uneasy here – he wishes he were home –

Oh, how I miss Bill – I feel he probably doesn’t miss me in the same way – one letter, only one – oh how I wish he were here with me now –

I wish, I want – WHAT?

I wish I could write – really write – and paint, really paint – like the Goodalls – oh, how great that would be —

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I wrote this note to myself when I transcribed these journal entries a few years ago:

That’s scary that I know this feeling also.  James Hillman writes in ‘The Soul’s Code’ about the longing of the soul.  He writes about it in reference to loneliness and longing.

Is this longing especially connected to the experience of a soul that, in childhood, did not get to “grown down into the world” or into the child’s body/brain/self correctly?

In a way when this book is published my mother’s words will be published with it, and her wish will become a reality.  It is as if the healing had to come first, and the waiting had to happen before that – so that I, her daughter, could commingle my words with hers.

Too bad she was a witch to me!  But, then, this book sure wouldn’t be being written if she hadn’t been – all things necessary, as Hillman says.

Some of us are literally lost souls, very lost souls without a home.  If we are meant to come to earth and become integrated into a world and into our bodies, and trauma inhibits that process, we are never truly at home in this world.  I am almost 56 years old now, and I still am not at home here.  Just barely here.

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