Felicia Murrell is an author based in Woodbury, MN. She is a spiritual companion, speaker, certified master life coach and former ordained pastor with over twenty years of church leadership experience. 

A couple of weeks ago I pointed to an essay by Garett Bucks. He has a simple answer to the polarization we all feel today: I'm Gonna Love the Hell Out of You. He crystalized some thinking for me, and today I'm finding Love, with a capital L, to be a really useful lens to focus on the world I want to help create.

This led me to Felicia Murrell. I began her book And: The Restorative Power of Love in an Either/Or World, and I stumbled upon this provocative essay. This line stopped me cold: "Broken people who, in their unhealed state, project their brokenness onto others equates to dysfunctional families and messy institutions. Unsafe spaces that lead us far from home."

"Establishing home," she writes, "begins with being honest about what we do not know. From a posture of humility, we can see what we need to un-learn and where our actions have been harmful and our words have erected barriers to establishing a welcoming home for ourselves and other bodies.

"Establishing home begins with inner work, healing our inner child. The wounded inner child who fights with such ferocity to protect and defend herself. The one whose natural inclination is to choose right over relationship, to guard her heart with anger and rage. To choose retribution as a form of protection.

"How do I come home to her? How do we come home to ourselves?"

Essay: How Do We Come Home To One Another?

Video: Felicia Murrell / And: The Restorative Power Of Love In An Either/Or World