Bringing Love back home

This week the news has been full of the glitz and glamour of the Oscars. I – like many others – was touched by the humility and authenticity with which Jessie Buckley received her Oscar for Best Actress. Here was a woman who had played a grieving mother, declaring her roles as wife and mother to be as important – if not more -  than her roles on film. Her realness was a refreshing change and it there was an appreciable relatability about her life and path, her supreme achievements aside.

The lure of external rewards still beckons me outwards from my centre sometimes, especially now the ‘time running out’ bucket-list of mid-life sets in. However, I have felt this path to be such an inwards dive over the years that even if I wanted to be ‘out there achieving’ or having something glitzy I wonder if it would ever give me what I really wanted. I trod the path externally for a while. I reached the peak of a conventional career, I earned a decent salary, I had some recognition.  Yet the roles my heart called in for me were always more important: being a mother and understanding myself more fully.

The inward explorations and emotions that I excavated in my personal and spiritual growth were always more compelling and transformational. In the world ‘out there’ it seemed to be about fitting in to other people’s systems, expectations and takes on reality. External events were the catalysts that served to ignite inner change.This is not to say it was not interesting ‘out there’ particularly learning about other people, their lives and stories. But when I ventured ‘out there’ too much, the heart always called me home to myself – ‘come back, come in here’ it would say; ‘there is nothing more important than in here’.

However we see our dreams, desires and external path, most of us have the same desires and needs: for connection, for appreciation, for love. The irony of the Oscar ceremony is that here is a show of celebrities and people who we all see as demi-gods whose roles are in fact to regurgitate the human experience that we all share so that we have something to connect to.

We relate to the parts they play and the emotions they convey but yet we see them as ‘stars’ - as being in some elite super world that makes us feel as though we are lesser mortals.

Being human and having needs is what we all have in common. The creation of art should be about confirming unity rather than dividing humanity into haves and have nots. The role of art is about bringing the collective psyche into awareness so as to create connection.

So home really is where the heart is. For many years now I have worked from home, which is ironic given that for many of those years I have been excavating through my inner self, perhaps to the detriment of my outer self at times. But the riches are all there. There is no greater wealth than inner peace or spontaneous joy. There is no greater gift than the gift of than self-compassion. There is no greater beauty than the beauty of just being. There is no greater accolade that can be given than love itself, whether that is the intense love of a partner, the loving smile we give to a stranger or the essence of knowing who we really are.

Ally Frazer, 18th March 2026