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The AfterEllen.com Huddle: Feeling Yourself

This week’s Huddle question: Where is the place you feel most like yourself?

Bridget McManus: I find myself the most at peace and in tune with myself when cooking Italian food in my kitchen. Making my grandmother’s recipes brings me back to my core self.

Erin Faith Wilson: This is going to sound so pitiful but right now, I don’t really have a place I feel most myself. In the past two years, I have changed so much, and my life has changed so much, that I am currently trying to get back to the place of feeling like myself again. So right now, I’m actually looking for myself. If someone finds her let me know!

Dana Piccoli: On stage, in front of a microphone, singing. Doesn’t matter where.

Elaine Atwell: Singing, swimming, (really good) sex.

Valerie Anne: For me, location is less important than people. There are just some combinations of my friends who I can let all my walls down around. I spent so much of my life hiding my real self from the world, that even now I find myself hiding certain parts from this group or another. But I finally have people in my life who I can be my whole self with and it feels so freeing. Even if we’re sitting on hard wooden benches at a bar, it feels as cozy as an armchair built just for me. It’s still a relatively new thing for me, feeling so comfortable in my own skin, feeling like I can say whatever ridiculous thing that comes to my head and ask any absurd question and that it will evolve into a hilarious or thoughtful or amazing discussion.

But also New York City. It’s the only reason I know who the aforementioned person is well enough to have something to show the people I feel most comfortable with.

Kimberly Hoffman: There’s a house on a hill in a suburb of Chicago that I am pretty convinced is the happiest place on earth. It’s the house I grew up in. I have a million memories playing in that yard, on the slide, watching my dad cut down a whole apple tree, helping my mom plant radishes and chase bunnies when the sprinklers came on. There were little stone steps that went through the trees into our neighbor’s yard, and I hung out there all the time feeding Maggie the cat and playing dress-up. Our front door was always open. All of my family was together-healthy and happy. All the feels. All the me.

Emily McGaughy: My wife and I are best friends with another lesbian married couple, Jenny and Cat. On nights when we would’ve been out cocktailing six years ago, we now spend in Jenny and Cat’s kitchen eating and drinking. Jenny is Italian, and Cat is Mexican; they each cook authentic and delicious meals. We talk about politics, family, and the realities of long-term relationships like ours. These are among some of the rare occasions when I truly allow myself to relax and let my guard down. Jenny and Cat know things about us that we would never dream of sharing with anyone else. There’s a trust there that comes with years of friendship and just going through life together. I definitely feel most myself when surrounded by these women.

Lucy Hallowell: On Martha’s Vineyard. With my wife. With the few friends who know all of me and love me anyway.

Chloe: When I am all alone and have a wonderful idea.

Natasha Negovanlis: I make a point to take a trip to Montréal (where I went to university and used to live) at least once a year. Hanging out at the Montréal Improv theatre, surrounded by a bunch of goofballs, and doing a workshop or a show there always makes me feel at home.

Ali Davis: Every year, on the first new moon after the winter solstice, I know it is time to start my journey home.

The way is perilous. There are mountains to climb, rivers to ford, frost giants to evade or defeat. Sometimes brigands attempt to rob me of supplies; sometimes sorceresses try to tempt me out of my way. Always there are dragons. I grow used to the taste of blood and steel in my mouth.

When I arrive at the clearing deep in the Pennsylvania woods where I was born, I build a bonfire, drink two shots of the finest tequila I have managed to bring with me, and jump in.

I never know how I will emerge. One year I was a bear; one I was a mouse. I have been hawks and lizards, ants and camelopards. On the third day, seeing what I have seen and knowing what I have known, I find the tallest oak tree in the forest and scratch myself against its rough bark until I molt my animal skin and become myself again.

It is on that day, learning to love my fingers and toes and elbows again and drinking the second-best tequila that I have managed to bring with me, that I truly understand and appreciate what it is to be myself.

Also, I really enjoy reading a good book after a vigorous swim.

Miranda Meyer: Well, shit, I was gonna make a joke about swimming upstream to where I was hatched, but there are no mystic bonfires involved so I guess I’ll just let ALI have the THUNDER that she STOLE for HERSELF.

Anyway, I feel very myself almost everywhere I go regularly (this question actually made me realize how good I have it these days, because I was like, “When do I…not feel like myself…?”), but just now I was sitting on the roof outside my bedroom window watching the sun set and basking in the knowledge that I can see the whole street, and nobody even knows I’m up there, and that was pretty good.

Trish Bendix: My sister and I are a little less than two years apart and our relationship has changed so much over the years, but it gets stronger and stronger as it evolves. We have a connection that I will never have with anyone else, and it doesn’t matter where we are, if we’re together, we feel it because we know each other so well.

Where do you feel most yourself?

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