I’m not sure home is in the past. Or even that it is meant to feel safe. Or that it’s a good thing or should be something that defines us. I know this is an unfashionable view but I worry the mythical ideal of home brings many of us less pleasure than pain.
Yes I do wonder if it is something that has been defined by a conventional lifestyle, designed to make us crave a certain way of life. For me I think it is fluid and about growth and perhaps that is what I need to make peace with.
i never felt like i belonged in ireland growing up. i'd a funny name and my parents weren't like all the rest. i wasn't sure i was really irish as a kid. it took moving to berlin for 8 years and developing what they call 'heimweh' or an ache for home to realise that i did have a connection and a sense of belonging in the land of my birth. But then when I came back here, I didn't feel as 'at home' as I imagined I would ... I had what the Germans call 'fernweh' - an ache for something I felt I couldn't quite reach. I'm back in Ireland now 7 years and it is only in the last 6 months I've started to really feel like I belong. Like I'm tethered and don't want to leave. I feel most of that has to do with slowly, imperfectly starting to feel more comfortable in my own physical body and self, that has somehow rippled out into a sense of interconnection with the place I now call home. (and that, amongst other things is basically what I spent 70,000 words writing about in my book!!)
Oh this is fascinating Layla. Fernweh is something I really resonate with, I want to explore that further. I do think feeling at home it tied to feeling at peace with ourselves. Maybe this is all part of the journey towards home x
yes, maybe we will discover at some point it was all about the journey after all?!
as a complete aside - I've a book I love called The Emotional Dictionary by Susie Dent of Countdown fame filled with words in different languages for very specific feelings... there are some real gems in there! . Must look up and see if Fernweh is in there... x
I often wonder how people stay in the same place all their lives. I longed to leave the place I grew up in and it still doesn't feel like home yet my sister has never left. Home for me has always been where I live at that time but its not a fixed place. I think its inside us and about feeling at peace with ourselves.
I've recently been travelling back to Worthing where I was born & raised then ran away from at 19 as fast as my legs would carry me. But lately I've been back loads, firstly to nurse my dying mum, and now to help my Dad. I hated this place for half a century, the ghosts of pain too much to bear and I migrated north via London, Liverpool, Teesside, Weardale and now Northumberland. I always said Worthing never felt like home, but now I'm not so sure. Will I miss not having to go when Dad's gone? Where do I belong? It's a great question, Caro.
So many thought provoking questions. Beyond one physical place, it is the sea, cold water, the woods that make me feel most at home - both safe and not safe, tiny and huge at the same time. My mum grew up in Northumberland and we used to go back to see her parents once a year. It’s the wild beaches that come to mind when I think of her home, the places that formed her, and they are places that I would like to visit to try and pay a kind of tribute, to connect in some way to who she was - she is non verbal now. Yet I still don’t think that she would call these places home, even though they were the places she took me when I was a child, to show me where she came from.
I have places that feel like home on the surface, because of a sense of nostalgia. Growing up in Sheffield feels a little like home until I consider I have barely no family there now and certainly no idyllic memories of my childhood home so to go back there now for anything more than a quick visit would feel strange and nothing like home. I feel a pride for my Yorkshire roots and again would call Yorkshire home but I’m not convinced I’ve found real home yet.
I think if you lived in different places as a child (and I too lived in Orkney, although only until I was 9) it can be harder to find nd a place you really belong. I’m a bit sad I sense my 12yo struggling with it too, he loves Fife, where we lived until he was 7, but he also recognises living a short distance from grandparents in Yorkshire now is great. And I would love to be back in Scotland, but I’d like to take all my family with me to live nearby too!
"Yes, I am willing to be that wild darkness, that long, blue body of light"... Caro, you share your holding of dark and light so movingly. Thank you for putting words so often to familiar glimpses I too feel, life itself.
I’ve never felt I really belonged anywhere either but I have lived where I am now for 25 years which must mean something 😊 I also spend part of the week with my partner so his place is partly home too, though like you I e yet to find it. I don’t let it trouble me though. Perhaps because I belong in whatever world I’m creating.
This has such resonance for me just now Caro. Belonging and longing are for me satisfied by being close to nature, and although I long for the wildness of Scotland, the sea and places where non-humans outnumber humans, I can take myself there through memories to feel anchored & soothed. I’ve always lived where there is one single tree, usually an oak, that feels like a guardian, and as I gradually explore a new landscape, I find others that can help locate & anchor me as my footsteps connect to all who have walked wherever I am, before me, gradually weaving myself into the landscape and becoming familiar to others who live here. So belonging isn’t fixed for me I realise or about specific people as most do come and go over time. So much is transitory; my childhood & marriage held little security and I’ve lived with a variable chronic illness since I was a teenager so I’ve comfortable with that, and know I can build a home, with my dog, notebooks & pens so I can write, plus some much loved furniture, so long as the house has a certain quality of light and trees nearby. I feel I carry belonging inside me, and so long as I maintain that connection then the longing is at peace.
I’m not sure home is in the past. Or even that it is meant to feel safe. Or that it’s a good thing or should be something that defines us. I know this is an unfashionable view but I worry the mythical ideal of home brings many of us less pleasure than pain.
Yes I do wonder if it is something that has been defined by a conventional lifestyle, designed to make us crave a certain way of life. For me I think it is fluid and about growth and perhaps that is what I need to make peace with.
i never felt like i belonged in ireland growing up. i'd a funny name and my parents weren't like all the rest. i wasn't sure i was really irish as a kid. it took moving to berlin for 8 years and developing what they call 'heimweh' or an ache for home to realise that i did have a connection and a sense of belonging in the land of my birth. But then when I came back here, I didn't feel as 'at home' as I imagined I would ... I had what the Germans call 'fernweh' - an ache for something I felt I couldn't quite reach. I'm back in Ireland now 7 years and it is only in the last 6 months I've started to really feel like I belong. Like I'm tethered and don't want to leave. I feel most of that has to do with slowly, imperfectly starting to feel more comfortable in my own physical body and self, that has somehow rippled out into a sense of interconnection with the place I now call home. (and that, amongst other things is basically what I spent 70,000 words writing about in my book!!)
Oh this is fascinating Layla. Fernweh is something I really resonate with, I want to explore that further. I do think feeling at home it tied to feeling at peace with ourselves. Maybe this is all part of the journey towards home x
yes, maybe we will discover at some point it was all about the journey after all?!
as a complete aside - I've a book I love called The Emotional Dictionary by Susie Dent of Countdown fame filled with words in different languages for very specific feelings... there are some real gems in there! . Must look up and see if Fernweh is in there... x
I often wonder how people stay in the same place all their lives. I longed to leave the place I grew up in and it still doesn't feel like home yet my sister has never left. Home for me has always been where I live at that time but its not a fixed place. I think its inside us and about feeling at peace with ourselves.
I've recently been travelling back to Worthing where I was born & raised then ran away from at 19 as fast as my legs would carry me. But lately I've been back loads, firstly to nurse my dying mum, and now to help my Dad. I hated this place for half a century, the ghosts of pain too much to bear and I migrated north via London, Liverpool, Teesside, Weardale and now Northumberland. I always said Worthing never felt like home, but now I'm not so sure. Will I miss not having to go when Dad's gone? Where do I belong? It's a great question, Caro.
So many thought provoking questions. Beyond one physical place, it is the sea, cold water, the woods that make me feel most at home - both safe and not safe, tiny and huge at the same time. My mum grew up in Northumberland and we used to go back to see her parents once a year. It’s the wild beaches that come to mind when I think of her home, the places that formed her, and they are places that I would like to visit to try and pay a kind of tribute, to connect in some way to who she was - she is non verbal now. Yet I still don’t think that she would call these places home, even though they were the places she took me when I was a child, to show me where she came from.
I have places that feel like home on the surface, because of a sense of nostalgia. Growing up in Sheffield feels a little like home until I consider I have barely no family there now and certainly no idyllic memories of my childhood home so to go back there now for anything more than a quick visit would feel strange and nothing like home. I feel a pride for my Yorkshire roots and again would call Yorkshire home but I’m not convinced I’ve found real home yet.
I think if you lived in different places as a child (and I too lived in Orkney, although only until I was 9) it can be harder to find nd a place you really belong. I’m a bit sad I sense my 12yo struggling with it too, he loves Fife, where we lived until he was 7, but he also recognises living a short distance from grandparents in Yorkshire now is great. And I would love to be back in Scotland, but I’d like to take all my family with me to live nearby too!
"Yes, I am willing to be that wild darkness, that long, blue body of light"... Caro, you share your holding of dark and light so movingly. Thank you for putting words so often to familiar glimpses I too feel, life itself.
Thank you Michele. I absolutely love that last line it’s so powerful isn’t it x
I’ve never felt I really belonged anywhere either but I have lived where I am now for 25 years which must mean something 😊 I also spend part of the week with my partner so his place is partly home too, though like you I e yet to find it. I don’t let it trouble me though. Perhaps because I belong in whatever world I’m creating.
That is a reassuring thought. Writing and other forms of creating are certainly helpful in terms of trying to discover who we are
This has such resonance for me just now Caro. Belonging and longing are for me satisfied by being close to nature, and although I long for the wildness of Scotland, the sea and places where non-humans outnumber humans, I can take myself there through memories to feel anchored & soothed. I’ve always lived where there is one single tree, usually an oak, that feels like a guardian, and as I gradually explore a new landscape, I find others that can help locate & anchor me as my footsteps connect to all who have walked wherever I am, before me, gradually weaving myself into the landscape and becoming familiar to others who live here. So belonging isn’t fixed for me I realise or about specific people as most do come and go over time. So much is transitory; my childhood & marriage held little security and I’ve lived with a variable chronic illness since I was a teenager so I’ve comfortable with that, and know I can build a home, with my dog, notebooks & pens so I can write, plus some much loved furniture, so long as the house has a certain quality of light and trees nearby. I feel I carry belonging inside me, and so long as I maintain that connection then the longing is at peace.