The Poet's Daughter: 🌿 "The Journey Itself Is Home"
Leaving My Mother in Iowa After Her Stroke To Return To My Sons In Turkiye
Welcome
Hello! I’m Emily Lupita. I’m a travel writer & artist from rural Iowa currently living between my hometown south of Des Moines - and Ankara, the capital of Turkiye. I’m also an English teacher & editor.
The Poet’s Daughter is a nonfiction project (in progress) on - Emily Lupita Explores - acreativity journal where I share explorations from my art desk & cultural travels, as well as motherhood with my two Autistic sons. You can read more about my father and his bardic poetry + creative work on - American Bardic Poet.
🌸 The First Post
This is the first post on my new nonfiction project (in progress), The Poet’s Daughter. Well, to say it is new - that’s not quite right.
This is a new start at writing a manuscript that’s been part of my creative life for as long as I can remember. In middle school I wrote a story that allowed me to go to my very first writer’s conference - and that story - revised over the years - is in The Poet’s Daughter manuscript. Then again in high school and college. Then again during my MFA graduate program. Then again now. That’s how long I’ve been working on it.
Good journey,
"The Journey Itself Is Home"
Emily Lupita
The Poet’s Daughter
WIP 2024
The Journey Itself Is Home
”Over the years, I worked on accepting that you may not return. And in that acceptance, I found a greater love than ever before. Because it made each homecoming such a precious gift,” my father, a poet, told me once, handing me a white feather he picked up as we walked on the shore of a man-made Iowa lake.
There is a gift that only travel can give. And that’s the sweetness of homecoming. Without leaving, there is no coming home again. There is no realization that home is where you began and where you picked up the burdens you carry with you around the world. Without leaving, there is no realization that you can put these burdens down and leave them on a giant boulder leaning toward the cliffs falling into the sea.
Without leaving, there is no look of complete love on your mother’s face, the kind you’ve always dreamed of your whole young life, when you finally return in one piece, glowing and radiant with the sunrise light.
And there’s a bitterness that only travel can give - that swift punch to the chest that
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