Crossroads with Renée Cheréz: Sanctuary: Home—Part 1

“I couldn’t become a sanctuary until I had a sanctuary.” The words escaped my lips effortlessly and a knowing smile spread across my face. I was upright on my bed’s edge, bug-eyed and mesmerized by my own medicine in the dark belly of a Sunday morning. Not wanting the pop of clarity to disappear, I let my senses wander around my bedroom, soaking in the golden-orange shapes and lines flickering across the bare walls from nearby candles. Smokey copal incense danced around the room, sweetening my nostrils as it wrapped around my just-showered skin before disappearing out of a cracked window. Sanctuary.

In 2020, for the first time in my adult life, I signed a one-year lease for an apartment. Not only did I sign a lease, but this apartment was also in a new-to-me city in the heart of Mexico. For most of my twenties, I shamelessly clutched onto dreamy fantasies of calling a Brooklyn or Harlem brownstone home. I wanted to live out the big-city pipe dreams that I had absorbed over the years from sitcoms with the Sex and the City franchise doing the most to support that vision. It didn’t help that I had nannied for families who lived in million-dollar homes that overlooked the concrete jungle’s legendary skyline, which only further fueled my yearning for this life. Before signing my lease or even before I found a realtor, there were neon pink post-its covered in black Sharpie plastered on my planner: ‘big windows,’ ‘feels clean,’ ‘two beds/two bathrooms,’ ‘bright, natural light,’ ‘four-burner gas stove.’

My search proved particularly difficult for the first three weeks, until I viewed an apartment in a complex that fulfilled most of my non-negotiables. A second viewing within the same week solidified my decision, and I expressed relief and sought out a celebratory drink to toast my accomplishment. So, imagine my slight confusion when the complex’s maintenance personnel offered to show us another available apartment. This one was separate from the rest, tucked away and marked with the number nine. Unbeknownst to me, as the glossy white door opened, I was making my way into what would become my sanctuary, my home — a space that would cradle me through some of my life’s biggest transitions over the next two years.

For what felt like hours, I floated and twirled through the open floor plan in awe of the living room and dining room’s 15-foot, milk-colored walls and ceiling. My voice echoed down from the loft-style bedroom upstairs, questioning whoever was listening as to why this? I was convinced it was out of reach financially. The lustrous, afternoon beams spilled through the multiple bronze-paneled windows, including a double sliding window in the living room that soon housed my emerald green sofa — also a non-negotiable.

Accompanying the sharpness in clarity that night were also twinges of guilt, which I now recognize as the crafty tendrils of scarcity. The life I’ve chosen, created and willed into existence for myself was not the life of my foremothers and my ancestors. And yet, I feel them cheering me on and rooting for me at every juncture. They, too, want me to have every detail of what I desire. Taking care of this space has been a masterclass in how to care for me. It has revealed my needs, boundaries and desires. I have been showered in goodness in this space, and in turn, I adorn her with plants, the booms of afrobeats and the savory smells of habanero peppers in sizzling oil. She’s armored me, illustrating that if I choose to move on from her comforts, I’m ready. But only because I had her — a sanctuary, which taught me how to be a sanctuary.

Renée Cheréz, also known as the Travel Liberationist is a writer who expresses her thoughts, experiences, and stories at the intersections of joy, travel, Black liberation, and the pursuit of more life. She is a mermaid, child, storyteller, adventurer, and lover of mountain gorillas. Her work has been published in The Huffington Post, Geez Magazine, Sister Letter, Lonely Planet, and more. You can find her come up to the surface from her living on IG: reneecherez.

This story was originally published October 14, 2022 at 9:00 AM.