Returning home

Home is not a place

Ask anyone who has moved as a child – to another house – another town, or all the way to the next village.
How about moving to a different part of the country entirely where there is no connection at all with the past?
or
Moving to another country altogether, one that is completely different from the one you lived in before – so far removed from what you knew – that everything is different, the people, the weather, the buildings, the language. Say it has a totally different climate – cold instead of warm, wet instead of dry, clouds instead of sun.
What if the rules of behavior in that country were completely different to where you lived before? Where you have to stay indoors all the time instead of playing outside, Where you must wear different clothes and not your favourite dress, where play was different because there was no one to play with – all your friends were gone and there were only toys – and the rain outside the barred window.

Is this home?

And, what if – your school was changed over and over again too – so you had new schoolfriends again and again. What if you were always the new girl, and had to make friends again, and again – which, as a small child is very hard to do –  being dropped into a group of children who already have their friends and groups and cliques and have their own power struggles and hierarchy, because they do – and not only that but you didn’t know the teacher or the school rules.

And on top of all of this it was all in a language you didn’t understand.

Is this home?

How did you deal with it when everyone made fun of you because you didn’t know how to write and read – when you knew you did – because you had learned it at the last school – but the words were different and you didn’t know how to read or write these ones here.

Is this home?

The new house was so large it felt bare and echoed – or the new house was so small it was cramped and dark – and nothing worked like you knew before.

Is this home?

No

Home, is a state of mind. Home is the people who are there with you, home is your family, your parents, your brother, your sister, your mother and father, your grandparents.
Home is the toy you still have, home is the book you still own with the pictures you like, home is the feeling you have when you are safe and warm, home is your bed with your favourite cover and your happy blanket.

The people that feel like home change over time, but what you feel for them doesn’t. The objects nearly all change too, (though I am now retired – I still have my favourite teddy).
The contact and context changes – but the feeling stays.
This feeling that is home – mummy giving you your favourite food, daddy reading you a story, playing with your brother whom you trust because he looks after you, playing with your little sister who is your best friend in the whole world. And most of all – home is being in your own imagination, your own world – that is where home is.

No matter how old you get – or how your life changes or even who enters or leaves it – one thing is true.

Home is a feeling – home is where the heart lies, where your heart is safe and can blossom and shine.

Home is inside of you.

Home is in the centre of your heart.