Now that it seems we are likely to be moving again, I’ve been thinking a lot about houses, and about the notion of home. About the strange concoction of objects and circumstances which conspire to make us feel at home – or not. I’ve written about this before, most notably in
I grew up in a home that my father built. Youngest of seven, I watched on at the antics of my siblings. I had no voice in that place, but I could hear with my eyes and what I saw was family. And I felt love. Mum and Dad stayed in that home until we had all left. My Mum is 96 and when I go to her small unit now to visit, I feel as if it could be my home too. My home was my family. Now, I have just returned from the central desert, where I spent life with 2 of my daughters and my grandson. I am now back in my 'home', which I own and have made the space I want it to be. But I feel alone after that connection of life with my descendants over the past 8 months. I feel alone in my 'home'. So I reflect that perhaps for me, home is connection with those who hold me close. In a Heart space where I can feel safe and supported and included. Home must be a place to feel safe - and I am only too aware that for many it is not. Once again, reminded of my privilege. Thanks Sharon for igniting my thoughts on this.
We are all gypsies and I have often envied the “townies” and even tried to be one, you know that sense of place “ownership” that people have when generational occupancy occurs. There is always pain and joy in all place history. The building, the home is where the heart is they say. Well a heart beats and it moves wherever the body takes it. It seems to me that your great adventures feed your heart and mind. Keep beating on Sharon, your writing helps me dream about possibilities and shatters some limiting thoughts. You must go where you are called!
‘When it comes time to move north again’ – these are fine words to read Sharon, I had little doubt that the north would call you home before too long.
My somewhat rootless childhood (a consequence of my father’s career) included a couple of years or so in Northumberland. It wasn’t the happiest of times at school – I was the new kid with the southern accent! – but I have some memories which have stayed with me over 50 years on. The view from my bedroom window with the Cheviot hills in the distance, the trout stream in the field next to the house, days out to Hadrian’s Wall, Kielder forest, Otterburn and more. But above all, the wild and windy coastline – Seahouses, Bamburgh, Lindisfarne – and of the course, the Borderlands.
Little did I know that the pull north would bring me to these wild and windy islands in the north-east Atlantic, just about as far north as you can be from those Borderlands and still be in Scotland!
Your home in the North will find you, that’s for sure.
Hi, I've been married for 50 years (51 actually) and here near Skye we're in our 19th house. I don't know how that compares with your history but close perhaps. My story is so different to yours but I can utterly comprehend yours. With thanks and wishing you good fortune.
I have always been on the move, not able to settle. Yet, in the early nineties I was propelled to the UK from Ireland in an effort to finally break free from an unhealthy relationship which nearly wiped me out. I was given a council house and have been here for thirty years, but I have never felt like this is home. It has always been an effort to stay here, to 'own' the place and I have always felt a huge need to run away from it. I did manage that for a while but retained my house and went to live in Egypt for ten years. And even though life there is infinitely harder, I am unable to settle back here into this world of 'too much stuff', too much food, too little connection to the earth.
I am far too anchored in this house I never chose but which was chosen for me, so I am now searching for a place of my own choosing; a place from where I can create and grow into my crone years, while still being able to travel. I'll probably never achieve complete stability, it's not in my nature.
Your early experiences, of being too scared to return home, were also mine, which is probably why if something 'feels' the same, on some deep level, I don't want to be 'home' either. But I can remember, walking home on dark, wet Irish evenings, towards home that I learned how to create dialogue. I talked to myself all the slow way home, imagining conversations with people, going over real conversations, until they felt right. That has helped me now in my own writing, so I guess, nothing is ever wasted.
Thank you for your very poignant piece of writing and I hope your new home brings joy and creative wonders. You deserve it!
Thank you, Ann, and I hope you find your elder-place too. I'm finding it interesting to discover how many elder women feel that urge to up sticks and look for something that more clearly defines them in their last decades.
We are fortunate to have two very different homes at this point in our lives, but are also fortunate indeed, to have had what we call "feel-good" homes in our adult lives in the past, too.
Returning to the Southern Appalachians several days ago, to our soft mountains and tourist city, our house welcomed us, even as we had to rearrange things back, post renters. It was a curiously odd experience to need to rearrange everything back to "normal." All of my favorite objects needed to be re-positioned; the textiles draped over the railings replaced, and the kitchen things brought back to normal.
Our historic cottage in the Northern Appalachians is full of vintage Quebecois pine pieces, collected by the previous owner, an antique dealer. We've added personal choices, but mostly the house reflects the historic inclinations of Daniel. We love it, so it's home there.
As I try to become comfortable again in our vibrant tourist city, I'm mindful of what you write about. And think about again what it's like to be at home.
I so hope that you'll find a good place to move to: sending all good energy for that.
Thanks, Lisa. The idea of splitting myself between two homes has always been a hard sell for me (and I've never had the resources to do it, anyway) but it reads as if you've learned to navigate it beautifully.
thanks so much Sharon for letting us share in your emotions and to awaken our own. For me they are strange times where I too find myself moving from two homes at the same time; boxing books and things and giving away much more than I am hanging on to. During Covid time I got stuck in Italy and reflected on how a home is where my heart was and that even though I occasionally missed a book or two or some shoes or some other little thing, I realised that I didn't reply need the things I had collected to me.
Now that I am back face to face with them my mind wants me to take them with me this time.
Reading the replies of others here and their heart-felt stories, I feel that the Earth needs people to move around and to love it and to leave it, just as most wild animals do. For sure we think of ourselves and our homes, while the Earth calls out to some of us.
Do we choose or does something greater happen ? where growth and relationship may blossom ?
Love to you Sharon and a good warm fireplace with a chimney that's clean.
Thanks, Peter. I've always believed there is no one way to do 'homing' properly. Each of us with our own thread to follow, and our own lessons to learn that sometimes only moving around can properly teach, and sometimes only staying. The trick, I think, is to be listening for the call. Best of luck with your own rearrangings.
Oct 23, 2022·edited Oct 24, 2022Liked by Dr Sharon Blackie
What you wrote struck me like a temple bell.. full of longing and searingly truthful. Your photo broke my heart, with your description. The song which came to me was 'The Gypsy Rover', do you know that song?
I have always been fascinated with spaces and the sense of belonging. No wonder I eventually found your beautiful work, Sharon. As a child my family also moved every 18 months wherever my father’s military career took us - Newfoundland (where I was born), England, France and many states in the U.S. As a child I didn’t realize that some children actually grow up in only one home. My husband did; a house his father built himself. Staying in one home was all ever wanted as an adult. We have done 10 years in one home, 15 in another and we are in our 8th year in our current home, which is truly a lovely home on an island in the Pacific Northwest. Yet I am restless here, especially after the last two years, and no longer sure I want to live here at all. I feel I am being tugged in another direction and this surprises even me. As if there is another place I’m suppose to be. We all have our process of belonging somewhere. May we all travel well to find it.
Yes. There's no great virtue in staying if leaving will help you grow, I think. Every place I've lived has taught me something remarkable. And so, although I'd really like to be able to settle again for longer, I'm open to that call.
I have shared your search for my place in the world for many years, starting as I did as an army child who moved with her fathers regiment every 18 months. Somehow as an adult that need to move on to a new place and new experiences continued, and I have lived in so many places.
Having been born in Scotland I always felt a yearning to return here, which was a leap of faith at the age of 58 when we bought the croft and moved to the Isle of Skye. A land of stone and sea, not quite as extreme as Lewis but still an island hewn of ancient rocks that call to you.
The call from the land is still strong every day when you find your place. Life here isn’t easy but we are building a home here, and you will, I hope, find your place too.
I've loved watching your island home grow in Instagram. Brings back many memories! I do think the leaps of faith sometimes are harder as we age and grow a little more tired. But the land never fails us, it just gives us what we need at the time, and then gently lets us go.
What an extraordinarily beautiful and strangely moving piece this is. It makes us all think hard about our emotional ties to place and to buildings. Of the many houses I’ve lived in I still dream about my grandparents’ home which was a troubling and often hugely distressing place and yet also one in which I found safe haven in the unlikeliest of homes, the dog kennel. Thank you Sharon for this and for letting me share it with so many friends and family
Thank you for this! It really resonates with me....
I started thinking more about PLACE and connection to place and home and landscape a lot more when I went to Ireland the first time. It sung to me in a way that my physical home and landscape didn't. I've moved over 20 times in my life, searching for something I felt in Ireland, but couldn't reach here in the Pacific Northwest. A connection to the ancestors of the land; attuned to the vibration of lives lived and living, small and large, plant and not plant. A resting place for eyes and soul.
Eight years later, we have moved to a forested piece of land less than 10 miles from where I lived my entire childhood. It is silent except for clack of leaves spinning to the ground. The light hits me just right, my eyes and heart resting in the deep green of cedar, fir, alder and maple.
It wasn't the area didn't feel like home. It was the city I lived in, the perpetual noise of humanity. Home for me is sense of being held in time, of age and wisdom in the dirt, the smells of leaf rot and rain and moss and the nearby sea. The language of home is the calling of the owls and ravens and the wind shivering branches overhead. It is stones and sea and mist and hills both rounded and jagged not cement and sirens and yellow light.
We've only been here a few months and we've been swamped with rebuilding the house that came with the land. That too ripens this connection as we find ways to work with what we have, moulding this house and the land like potters at a wheel. I can't wait to grow older here, becoming intimate with this place. It's not Ireland, but it is home for this lifetime, and it finally feels so good.
Simply, I love this! Thank you for sharing such intimate and precious reflections of your soul. My soul resonates with gratitude, a soft smile and deep knowing. xo
This spoke to me on so many levels as I sit here in this townhouse that I’ve rented for the last three years. I remember being so excited to move to a new county and settle in. But I’ve never truly felt “at home” here. I’ve redecorated, reorganized and all the things. But it still doesn’t feel the way I think “home” should feel. Financially, I’m unable to pack up my kids and move just yet. So in the meantime, I’ve created a dream journal specifically for my new home. I’ve been writing, glueing in stickers and photos, making lists of all the things I want. It’s been nourishing and helpful as now I know what’s truly important to me. I look forward to reading about your new home in the future.
People are so honest and open here and it strikes me how home and a sense of place can mean so many different things and change in unexpected ways. I grew up in a volatile, unpredictable home which formed an intuitive sense of how a home "feels." I too remember looking into homes during early evening walks in my university days knowing that the one thing I really wanted to create in my life was a stable, loving home - a place that felt like refuge and was safe. Fortunately, I have had this experience in the same home of 900 square feet for over 30 years. I am beginning to consider that one day we may have to leave this nest and how could I possibly say goodbye to the home that has held us and knows us so intimately? I so appreciate reading others experiences as it opens my mind especially for someone who has stayed in one place for a very long time.
I grew up in a home that my father built. Youngest of seven, I watched on at the antics of my siblings. I had no voice in that place, but I could hear with my eyes and what I saw was family. And I felt love. Mum and Dad stayed in that home until we had all left. My Mum is 96 and when I go to her small unit now to visit, I feel as if it could be my home too. My home was my family. Now, I have just returned from the central desert, where I spent life with 2 of my daughters and my grandson. I am now back in my 'home', which I own and have made the space I want it to be. But I feel alone after that connection of life with my descendants over the past 8 months. I feel alone in my 'home'. So I reflect that perhaps for me, home is connection with those who hold me close. In a Heart space where I can feel safe and supported and included. Home must be a place to feel safe - and I am only too aware that for many it is not. Once again, reminded of my privilege. Thanks Sharon for igniting my thoughts on this.
My next book will be about home, so I'm thinking about that a lot, too.
We are all gypsies and I have often envied the “townies” and even tried to be one, you know that sense of place “ownership” that people have when generational occupancy occurs. There is always pain and joy in all place history. The building, the home is where the heart is they say. Well a heart beats and it moves wherever the body takes it. It seems to me that your great adventures feed your heart and mind. Keep beating on Sharon, your writing helps me dream about possibilities and shatters some limiting thoughts. You must go where you are called!
‘When it comes time to move north again’ – these are fine words to read Sharon, I had little doubt that the north would call you home before too long.
My somewhat rootless childhood (a consequence of my father’s career) included a couple of years or so in Northumberland. It wasn’t the happiest of times at school – I was the new kid with the southern accent! – but I have some memories which have stayed with me over 50 years on. The view from my bedroom window with the Cheviot hills in the distance, the trout stream in the field next to the house, days out to Hadrian’s Wall, Kielder forest, Otterburn and more. But above all, the wild and windy coastline – Seahouses, Bamburgh, Lindisfarne – and of the course, the Borderlands.
Little did I know that the pull north would bring me to these wild and windy islands in the north-east Atlantic, just about as far north as you can be from those Borderlands and still be in Scotland!
Your home in the North will find you, that’s for sure.
Thanks, Denise – and lovely to know you spent even a short time there. Just reading those place-names gives me the shivers :-)
Hi, I've been married for 50 years (51 actually) and here near Skye we're in our 19th house. I don't know how that compares with your history but close perhaps. My story is so different to yours but I can utterly comprehend yours. With thanks and wishing you good fortune.
I have always been on the move, not able to settle. Yet, in the early nineties I was propelled to the UK from Ireland in an effort to finally break free from an unhealthy relationship which nearly wiped me out. I was given a council house and have been here for thirty years, but I have never felt like this is home. It has always been an effort to stay here, to 'own' the place and I have always felt a huge need to run away from it. I did manage that for a while but retained my house and went to live in Egypt for ten years. And even though life there is infinitely harder, I am unable to settle back here into this world of 'too much stuff', too much food, too little connection to the earth.
I am far too anchored in this house I never chose but which was chosen for me, so I am now searching for a place of my own choosing; a place from where I can create and grow into my crone years, while still being able to travel. I'll probably never achieve complete stability, it's not in my nature.
Your early experiences, of being too scared to return home, were also mine, which is probably why if something 'feels' the same, on some deep level, I don't want to be 'home' either. But I can remember, walking home on dark, wet Irish evenings, towards home that I learned how to create dialogue. I talked to myself all the slow way home, imagining conversations with people, going over real conversations, until they felt right. That has helped me now in my own writing, so I guess, nothing is ever wasted.
Thank you for your very poignant piece of writing and I hope your new home brings joy and creative wonders. You deserve it!
Thank you, Ann, and I hope you find your elder-place too. I'm finding it interesting to discover how many elder women feel that urge to up sticks and look for something that more clearly defines them in their last decades.
A place where you can invite… where you can be and let others come to you. Where you pull us to your center… to our center…
Thank you for this piece, Sharon.
We are fortunate to have two very different homes at this point in our lives, but are also fortunate indeed, to have had what we call "feel-good" homes in our adult lives in the past, too.
Returning to the Southern Appalachians several days ago, to our soft mountains and tourist city, our house welcomed us, even as we had to rearrange things back, post renters. It was a curiously odd experience to need to rearrange everything back to "normal." All of my favorite objects needed to be re-positioned; the textiles draped over the railings replaced, and the kitchen things brought back to normal.
Our historic cottage in the Northern Appalachians is full of vintage Quebecois pine pieces, collected by the previous owner, an antique dealer. We've added personal choices, but mostly the house reflects the historic inclinations of Daniel. We love it, so it's home there.
As I try to become comfortable again in our vibrant tourist city, I'm mindful of what you write about. And think about again what it's like to be at home.
I so hope that you'll find a good place to move to: sending all good energy for that.
Thanks, Lisa. The idea of splitting myself between two homes has always been a hard sell for me (and I've never had the resources to do it, anyway) but it reads as if you've learned to navigate it beautifully.
thanks so much Sharon for letting us share in your emotions and to awaken our own. For me they are strange times where I too find myself moving from two homes at the same time; boxing books and things and giving away much more than I am hanging on to. During Covid time I got stuck in Italy and reflected on how a home is where my heart was and that even though I occasionally missed a book or two or some shoes or some other little thing, I realised that I didn't reply need the things I had collected to me.
Now that I am back face to face with them my mind wants me to take them with me this time.
Reading the replies of others here and their heart-felt stories, I feel that the Earth needs people to move around and to love it and to leave it, just as most wild animals do. For sure we think of ourselves and our homes, while the Earth calls out to some of us.
Do we choose or does something greater happen ? where growth and relationship may blossom ?
Love to you Sharon and a good warm fireplace with a chimney that's clean.
Thanks, Peter. I've always believed there is no one way to do 'homing' properly. Each of us with our own thread to follow, and our own lessons to learn that sometimes only moving around can properly teach, and sometimes only staying. The trick, I think, is to be listening for the call. Best of luck with your own rearrangings.
What you wrote struck me like a temple bell.. full of longing and searingly truthful. Your photo broke my heart, with your description. The song which came to me was 'The Gypsy Rover', do you know that song?
I have always been fascinated with spaces and the sense of belonging. No wonder I eventually found your beautiful work, Sharon. As a child my family also moved every 18 months wherever my father’s military career took us - Newfoundland (where I was born), England, France and many states in the U.S. As a child I didn’t realize that some children actually grow up in only one home. My husband did; a house his father built himself. Staying in one home was all ever wanted as an adult. We have done 10 years in one home, 15 in another and we are in our 8th year in our current home, which is truly a lovely home on an island in the Pacific Northwest. Yet I am restless here, especially after the last two years, and no longer sure I want to live here at all. I feel I am being tugged in another direction and this surprises even me. As if there is another place I’m suppose to be. We all have our process of belonging somewhere. May we all travel well to find it.
Yes. There's no great virtue in staying if leaving will help you grow, I think. Every place I've lived has taught me something remarkable. And so, although I'd really like to be able to settle again for longer, I'm open to that call.
Hello Sharon. As always, beautifully written.
I have shared your search for my place in the world for many years, starting as I did as an army child who moved with her fathers regiment every 18 months. Somehow as an adult that need to move on to a new place and new experiences continued, and I have lived in so many places.
Having been born in Scotland I always felt a yearning to return here, which was a leap of faith at the age of 58 when we bought the croft and moved to the Isle of Skye. A land of stone and sea, not quite as extreme as Lewis but still an island hewn of ancient rocks that call to you.
The call from the land is still strong every day when you find your place. Life here isn’t easy but we are building a home here, and you will, I hope, find your place too.
I've loved watching your island home grow in Instagram. Brings back many memories! I do think the leaps of faith sometimes are harder as we age and grow a little more tired. But the land never fails us, it just gives us what we need at the time, and then gently lets us go.
What an extraordinarily beautiful and strangely moving piece this is. It makes us all think hard about our emotional ties to place and to buildings. Of the many houses I’ve lived in I still dream about my grandparents’ home which was a troubling and often hugely distressing place and yet also one in which I found safe haven in the unlikeliest of homes, the dog kennel. Thank you Sharon for this and for letting me share it with so many friends and family
Oh a dog kennel. Yes, dogs always representing the safest of places for me. I love that, thank you.
Thank you for this! It really resonates with me....
I started thinking more about PLACE and connection to place and home and landscape a lot more when I went to Ireland the first time. It sung to me in a way that my physical home and landscape didn't. I've moved over 20 times in my life, searching for something I felt in Ireland, but couldn't reach here in the Pacific Northwest. A connection to the ancestors of the land; attuned to the vibration of lives lived and living, small and large, plant and not plant. A resting place for eyes and soul.
Eight years later, we have moved to a forested piece of land less than 10 miles from where I lived my entire childhood. It is silent except for clack of leaves spinning to the ground. The light hits me just right, my eyes and heart resting in the deep green of cedar, fir, alder and maple.
It wasn't the area didn't feel like home. It was the city I lived in, the perpetual noise of humanity. Home for me is sense of being held in time, of age and wisdom in the dirt, the smells of leaf rot and rain and moss and the nearby sea. The language of home is the calling of the owls and ravens and the wind shivering branches overhead. It is stones and sea and mist and hills both rounded and jagged not cement and sirens and yellow light.
We've only been here a few months and we've been swamped with rebuilding the house that came with the land. That too ripens this connection as we find ways to work with what we have, moulding this house and the land like potters at a wheel. I can't wait to grow older here, becoming intimate with this place. It's not Ireland, but it is home for this lifetime, and it finally feels so good.
I wish you well!! ❤️❤️
Thank you, Robyn, and that sounds like a beautiful and perfect place for you.
Simply, I love this! Thank you for sharing such intimate and precious reflections of your soul. My soul resonates with gratitude, a soft smile and deep knowing. xo
This spoke to me on so many levels as I sit here in this townhouse that I’ve rented for the last three years. I remember being so excited to move to a new county and settle in. But I’ve never truly felt “at home” here. I’ve redecorated, reorganized and all the things. But it still doesn’t feel the way I think “home” should feel. Financially, I’m unable to pack up my kids and move just yet. So in the meantime, I’ve created a dream journal specifically for my new home. I’ve been writing, glueing in stickers and photos, making lists of all the things I want. It’s been nourishing and helpful as now I know what’s truly important to me. I look forward to reading about your new home in the future.
People are so honest and open here and it strikes me how home and a sense of place can mean so many different things and change in unexpected ways. I grew up in a volatile, unpredictable home which formed an intuitive sense of how a home "feels." I too remember looking into homes during early evening walks in my university days knowing that the one thing I really wanted to create in my life was a stable, loving home - a place that felt like refuge and was safe. Fortunately, I have had this experience in the same home of 900 square feet for over 30 years. I am beginning to consider that one day we may have to leave this nest and how could I possibly say goodbye to the home that has held us and knows us so intimately? I so appreciate reading others experiences as it opens my mind especially for someone who has stayed in one place for a very long time.