You were given the keys to a house you inherited.

The house is yours by birthright. But you’ve never been to the house, yet you dream about the house and you have an emptiness that pulls you to the house nevertheless. But you’re not the only one with keys to the house because while you are the owner, you’re only the partial owner and the people inside said you cannot come in.

What do you do? You have every right to be there. Though they grew up in the house and you didn’t, you have ownership just as much as they do — remember, you inherited this house too.

Do you stand outside, broken because you don’t have a home, nowhere to create traditions and lay down roots, hang photos or gather with family?

When you attempted to build your own home with others who have also been told they can’t come in — but not locked out because remember, you have the key — you found your traditions don’t match and the only thing you have in common is skin deep. Yet that calling to your house won’t stop.

You get angry and try and fill your plot, right outside the front door of your house, with other people’s things, desperately trying to make it resemble your house — the house you should be inside. You grab everything not nailed down, stealing from neighbors to fill your flimsy walls in a desperate attempt to catch the fleeting feeling of home.

But the items fall off the wall, and the food you stole sours because it was never supposed to be in your temporary home.

Now you’ve developed a jealousy for your neighbors able to walk into their own front door. The front door they had to protect with their lives. The decorated homes they had put centuries into, that your kin tried to burn down because they too have gotten locked out over time, or simply decided someone else’s house should be their home too.

But maybe one day, you get tired of being without a home. No house full of history, antiquities, and memories.

You get tired of being cold and detached from the community inside your house and you finally decide to try your key in the door.

You walk in and remind yourself: you’re allowed to be here. You inherited this house along with the people who live here.

So you walk past their gazes of disdain, and you sit down.

Some furrowed eyebrows soften when they realize you’ve inherited this house too. And you realize that if you are to live here, the polite thing to do is learn the language, learn the traditions, learn the history of the house.

Eventually you are provided a seat at the table, and you look around and see people who look similar to yourself, and some that look very different from yourself, and you realize you’ve all inherited keys to this house. You all fit inside of it and you’re all able to share in the same language, traditions, and history.

You eventually realize you’ve found your home. The one filled with all the things you tried to steal from others, you already had on the other side of that door. The door that was closed but can never lock because you have the key.

And this is the moment you realize: all the richness you seek, all the shelter you need for your identity to feel safe, protected, and to stop from harming and stealing from others, is to find the house you have inherited the keys to — and then be brave enough to use them.

Connecting to your precolonial roots, cultures, and traditions is how you return yourself home.

It’s time to go home.