For the Honored Guest, For the New Ancestor
By Lisa R. Conner
Before you reach the front door,
I want you to know this:
I have never been able to look at anything at face value.
Everything means something.
The path means something.
The threshold means something.
The mask means something.
The rooms we avoid mean something.
The stories we inherited, inhabited, and confused for identity
mean something.
This house was built from that knowing.
From the life beneath the life.
From the way survival built itself inside us.
From the parts of us that learned to adapt so well,
we forgot adaptation was not the same thing as truth.
You survived.
You adapted.
Now you get to choose.
That is the deeper invitation of Casa Renae.
To outgrow the story that kept you alive
but no longer fits.
To remove the mask
with tenderness, not force.
To step toward the squishy, honest center of yourself—
the real middle,
the place underneath the performance,
the place where your humanity touches mine.
Some people may come because I have guarded my privacy like a mama bear
and am finally willing to be seen.
Let them come.
Curiosity is a threshold, too.
But if this house does what it came here to do,
you will forget about me
and begin remembering yourself.
That is the alchemy.
That is the sovereignty.
To walk through the front door
as an honored guest.
To ascend the spiral staircase
toward a more conscious life.
To meet yourself there—
not as broken,
but as someone who learned to survive
and is finally ready to choose what comes next.
Maybe even as a new ancestor.
This house was built for that kind of courage.
Not the loud kind.
The honest kind.
The kind that comes shaking.
The kind that says,
I cannot keep living this way.
The kind that knows
the life I built to survive
is not the same thing
as the life that will let me belong.
So, come in.
Bring the grief.
Bring the longing.
Bring the old roles,
the old names,
the old stories
that once protected you
but no longer fit.
Bring the silence.
Bring the ache.
Bring the version of you
who has been hiding in plain sight.
This house can hold it.
And when you are ready,
ascend the spiral staircase.
Come up slowly.
Meet me there.
Not as the expert of you.
Not as a woman who has figured it all out.
But as someone who has walked these rooms,
listened for meaning,
named the wounds,
and kept the light on
for your arrival.
By the time you reach the top,
something will have shifted.
The mask will loosen.
The breath will deepen.
The silence will begin to tell the truth.
You will remember
that you were never broken.
You adapted.
And now you get to choose.
That is the promise of Casa Renae.
Not perfection.
Not performance.
Not polished.
A return.
A remembering.
A way back
to the center of yourself.
Home is not just a place.
It is the moment
you stop abandoning yourself.
So before you even reach the door,
know this:
You belong here.
You are remembered here.
You are welcome here.
And if this book does what it’s meant to do,
you will not leave this house
the way you entered it.
You will leave more honest.
More whole.
More sovereign in your own life.
More able to recognize
your own front door
when you finally arrive.
Living in curiosity,
Lisa
Lisa R. Conner is a writer, coach, REALTOR, and entrepreneur based in Alaska. She is the author of Casa Renae: Outgrowing Your Story & Coming Home to Yourself and writes Fireweed & Flannel as a place for honest reflections on reinvention, courage, identity, grief, real estate, and the wild beauty of becoming.
You can submit a preorder for Casa Renae here: Casa Renae Preorder
