Finding My Odyssey

When the search for home becomes an epic journey

Jul 03, 2025

Dear Friend

How are you feeling today? If you’re living in the UK, I hope you’ve survived the mini heatwave of recent. Love a bit of sunshine me, but it’s much more enjoyable when my toes are firmly planted in the sand than indoors. As my thoughts and soul are by the ocean, I’m sat in bed writing this essay, a realisation came over me like a gentle wave… what if my journey to find home in Cartrefle, my deep dive into understanding cynefin, isn’t just a personal quest, what if it’s actually my odyssey?

I’ve been thinking, or rather daydreaming, about the meaning of the word, odyssey. I know we use it casually to describe any long journey, but Homer’s original story tells me something profound about what it means to truly come home. There seems to be many tales about Homer, was it just one man, or was it a group of people? And how about reading a translation of Homer’s Odyssey from a woman’s perspective, as Emily Wilson has done so brilliantly in bringing an ancient epic to new life. But, I’m more curious about the story that Odysseus didn’t just travel from Troy to Ithaca; he was transformed by the journey itself. The man who finally walked up the beach to his homeland was not the same warrior who had left years before. As though his story is about the map he wasn’t given.

You see, I began this journey of seeking home without a map for the territory I was entering. The traditional scripts for finding home - buy a house, refurbish the house, put down roots, accumulate the right stuff, to then rinse and repeat the process. But this, over time became more hollow, impossible and ultimately unaffordable. I found myself displaced not just geographically, but from the very concept of home itself.

Perhaps you know this feeling. That sense of being between places, between identities, between the home you left and the home you haven’t yet found. It’s a peculiar kind of homesickness - not for a specific place, but for the feeling of belonging somewhere. But for me personally, it’s so about a specific place, but one that will never be mine.

I also wanted to mention that I’ve loved engaging with some of you over the past few days about cynefin. I especially love reading essays by

Anne Boyd

who writes beautifully and shares her candid story about pursuing her dream of travel, searching for a place of home and leaning into her creativity in her fifties.

“What I’ve really been yearning for is a cottage or a little house with a patch of garden to sit in and to grow a few plants. I won’t go all out like Gilbert (her obsession led to The Signature of All Things). But I will enjoy settling down to earth again—partially for my happiness but also for the sake of the novel I’m trying to write.

When the question of where you will live next is hanging over your head, it’s difficult to embark on a creative venture—because writing or creating is itself so full of uncertainty. It’s as if you need a container for all of that exploration” Anne Boyd

My research into Cynefin - that beautiful Welsh word meaning your place of belonging, your habitat in the deepest sense - became more than just another shiny new writing project. It has become my compass. Cynefin isn’t just where you live; it’s where you feel the deep recognition of being exactly where you belong, where the landscape and more importantly, your inner landscape somehow align.

The more I learn about cynefin, which is actually taking up my every waking moment, I think my past essays could be the start of something, dare I say it… a memoir. The more I’m beginning to understand that I’m on the quest that countless others are undertaking, which is a burning desire, a craving, an itch I can’t quite scratch - to write my story about what home and belonging means. I realise that maybe I’m late to the party, as I’m learning that home isn’t something you necessarily inherit or purchase in midlife. It’s something I’ve had to discover, create and recognise in the most unexpected places, due to rather extraordinary experiences with house ownership and big life wobbles (or should I say big f*&k ups) during my thirties and forties.

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When I found my sense of home in Cartrefle, a place I’ll never own, a place that doesn’t fit any conventional definition of “mine”, I realised I had discovered something pretty damn epic. Not in the modern sense of epic, but in an ancient sense, a transformative journey that revealed truths I could’t have accessed by another way. It’s due to serendipity, a huge amount of good luck, of being in the right place at the right time and sheer determination to get what I want.

Like Odysseus recognising Ithaca not by its appearance but by how it felt to walk on its shores, I recognise my cynefin not through ownership contracts or mortgage statements, but through that unmistakeable feeling of “yes” this is where I belong.

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If you’re still reading this and something resonates, if you’re in your own season of seeking home and belonging, I want to offer you this reframe: what if what you’re going through isn’t just difficulty or transition? What if it’s your odyssey?

The classical odyssey has structure, departure from the familiar, wandering through unknown territories, facing the unknown that test and teach, and finally, recognition and return. But the return, as I see it isn’t where you started, it’s to a new understanding of home itself.

Maybe your flat never felt quite right, maybe your hometown grew too small, perhaps your sense of belonging, anywhere, was relentless - but these aren’t failures. They could just be the departure phase of your odyssey. The searching, the false starts, the places that almost worked but didn’t quite, this is could be your wandering phase, and trust me it’s sacred work.

The trials you face, maybe financial uncertainty, or social displacement, or the well meaning, but painful question “where are you really from?” - these are teaching you something essential about what home actually means to you, and it certainly has for me.

I’ll wrap up this essay shortly, but I wanted to share what I’ve learnt from claiming my journey as an odyssey: it has given me permission to see my displacement as movement toward something, not just away from something. It has transformed my search from desperation into a quest. It has reminded me that the greatest journeys in storytelling are precisely about people like me and you, who’ve had to find new ways home.

Your odyssey might lead you to a place you never expected. It might teach you that home is not a location but a feeling, not ownership but belonging, not where you’re from but where you’re going. It might show you, as it showed me, that you can find your cynefin in the most unlikely places.

I’ll leave you with some prompts, ones that I myself are working through this week, please help yourself…

Describe a time when a place or situation that once felt like home began to feel too small, wrong or limiting. What changed, the place, you, or both? How did you know it was time to move on?
Write about a place that felt promising but ultimately wasn’t your home. What did you learn from this near-miss? How did you clarify what you were actually seeking?
Write about a time when you found something you were looking for in a completely unexpected place. What did this teach you about the difference between what you thought you wanted and what you actually needed?

Remember that journalling is a practice, not a performance. Some days the words will flow easily; other days they might feel stuck. Both experiences are valid and valuable. Go gently and enjoy the process.

Until next time

Take care and stay safe xx

PS. I’m on the search for books, both fiction and non-fiction, that focus on the topics of finding home, a sense of belonging and sacred spaces, so if you have any recommendations, please leave them in the comments section. Thank you so much.

Finding My Odyssey

When the search for home becomes an epic journey

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