The November Migration

The start of November is when hearts begin their migration home, pulled by the same mysterious geometry that draws sea turtles back to their birth beaches, our bodies remembering before our minds catch up.

The heart doesn’t ask permission, it just leans homeward like geese forming their V. Something in us knows which way to point. Except some of us are migrating toward places that don’t exist anymore, or tables where we were never really welcomed in the first place, or chairs that hold only absence now.

Christmas time is always a marker for the tables that provide welcome and those that don’t, for the chairs that will be filled and those that will remain forever empty. Home is more than a place, it is a people.

For those who have no home, there is a living grief to hold through this season. The cruel part is the internal compass still spinning, reaching toward something that might not reach back. It’s the weight of walking past windows full of family dinners you’re not part of, hearing laughter from tables you’ll never sit at. The world gets smaller when you’re alone, even as it fills up with tinsel and noise.

One of the roles that someone in my position finds themselves regularly through this season, and they never really prepare you for, is that of being a grief-bearer. One who can bear the sorrows as they flow. Occasionally this is done with eloquence – usually it is a lot messier than that as pain is projected outwards. Tis the season to hold the hurt, not to be vicarious. To be a bearer also of hope and to not judge.

This is where Wayside becomes something more than the clothes and showers and meals we provide. It’s a place where hearts can gather without pretending they’re whole, where the migration can pause even if there’s nowhere specific to land, and admission doesn’t require you to be grateful or healed. We don’t ask people to perform joy they don’t feel, making loneliness lonelier by pretending it isn’t there.

So we will keep the doors open right up until Christmas Day. We keep bearing what needs to be borne. We keep being a place where hearts can migrate to feel a sense of home.

If you’ve been reading the Inner Circle awhile, you know that it’s rare that I ask for anything here (apart from forgiveness for my dad jokes). Today is one of the rare exceptions where I break the fourth wall and ask of you directly: please consider making a donation to Wayside Chapel this Christmas.

For the hearts that seek solace here, your support is the kindness that will meet them.

Thank you for being part of the Inner Circle, and thank you for your vital support,