The Relentless Seeker

Can you find "home" when you crave movement?

My longing for a "home" by the sea

Dear Friend 

How are you today?

I’ve had calmer starts to the day. Let’s not mention the British weather or having to deal with Ridgebacks that love to roll in fox shit before 8am! And breathe…

Last night I attended my favourite book club hosted by

sam baker

, if you’re not yet a member, I highly recommend you join.  Plus, you might be one of the lucky 20 that wins a copy of "book of the month".  I was thrilled when Sam announced the book for June was “The Giant On The Skyline” written by the brilliant memoirist

Clover Stroud

Clover’s exquisite, and at times brutal writing, evokes the complexities of belonging and feeling at home - how it extends beyond four walls into an intangible sense of connection, roots, family and self.  Through hosting writing retreats with Clover, sometimes in her own home or in residences hidden in the Oxfordshire countryside, I’ve noticed how on the page and in real life, her words capture the paradox that while home can ground us, it can also confine and contract our yearning souls.

I see myself reflected in her musings, my “homesick” heart pulled between domesticity’s warm embrace and the wild call of the West Wales coastline.

Across five decades I’ve lived in 26 houses, but the concept of “home” still eludes me in so many ways. Over the years of constant upheaval and relocating, I’ve grasped at the concept of “home” like trying to catch smoke between my fingers.  Sweet memories of past abodes mingle with the bittersweet of having to let them go. Like a bookshelf says a lot about a person, I believe the same goes for a house.  I could write about my feelings towards every property I’ve ever lived in, as though it were 26 chapters of a memoir (now that’s a thought). I’ve memories of a beloved book-nook, a barn filled with hay bales, a bedroom in the eves and the fragments of “homeyness” as though I’ve scattered and left them behind, like breadcrumbs on my endless trail.

These days my own vision of home manifests most vividly in the majestic beach house I’m blessed to occasionally house-sit and host “digital detox” retreats in.  With its salty air and soothing rhythm of crashing waves, it stirs a deep inner peace and belonging I’ve seldom felt elsewhere.  Yet it’s not mine to permanently inhabit, and probably never will be, yet the lovely owners kindly share it with me, in-between returning each summer like shorebirds reclaiming their nest.

So I’m left to ponder is “home” something we craft and carry within ourselves?  An embodied essence we simply recreate anew with each relocation?  Or is it a mythical promised land to keep seeking, taunting our nomadic souls until we finally stumble upon that elusive spot where our restlessness finds resolution?

My story with houses does weigh heavy on my heart. I’ve owned large Victorian ones with so many rooms I never had the time to embrace them. I’ve lived in century old farmhouses with walls so thick all you can do is hug them, I’ve felt ashamed to walk through the doors of the modern boxed type with no carpets or soul, and I’ve my lost my most cherished homes through divorce and bankruptcy, ending up a mere statistic in an extremely volatile UK rental market. However, I’ve learnt to accept that owning a home isn’t what truly makes a good woman, and there is no shame in being a tenant if anything it’s a liberating feeling which brings with it a sense of freedom and wanderlust. But that’s another story for another day.  If reading about belonging and the UK housing crisis if of interest to you, I highly recommend “Homesick" by Catrina Davies and “Undercurrent" by Natasha Carthew both memoirs cut to the core of what it means to own your own home.

I may never arrive at a definitive answer for my longing for “home”, for never quite feeling settled. But in exploring the question through my therapeutic journaling practice, I’m starting to reshape my perspective.  To borrow a line from Amanda Penner, “Home is not something you find, but something you cultivate along the way”. Even if the roots don’t go as deep as I’d like, I’m learning to bloom where I’m planted, to make pockets of home in the journey itself.

Because perhaps that’s the heart of it - cherishing the quest, the space between arrival and departure, that artistic act of essence-making no matter for my surroundings.  Maybe “home” to me, in its purest form, will be an inside job after all.

If you’ve enjoyed following where my mind has wandered today, I’ve curated a few journaling prompts around the topic of “home” if you’d care to join me to pause for thought for 10 minutes…

1. What does “home” mean to you?  How has your definition of “home” evolved?

2. Think of all the homes you’ve lived in.  What made certain the ones that felt most like “home”?

3. Where do you currently call home?  Where do you feel most at home in the world?

4. Is the quest for home an inner or outer journey for you?  Where does the feeling truly come from?

5. How could you cultivate more of a “sense of home” and belonging in your current circumstances?

If you are still searching for a place called “home” hopefully some of my words and prompts have provided some solace, inspiration and a new lens for your own path to creating the simple, yet profound “home” you envision with ease.

Until the next time

Take care and stay safe xx

Just a few of the books I love to read about "home"