Home: A place or a feeling?
I recently celebrated a milestone - I’ve now lived in the UK as long as I lived in my homeland of Aotearoa New Zealand. It got me thinking about the nature of belonging and authenticity.
One of my pieces from “Facing & Embracing¨
A couple of years ago I wrote a poem (info on that book at the end of this piece). It was part of a workshop exercise technique called “I Come From…”. As I wrote it, I felt very connected to the country of my birth and those feelings all came rushing back when celebrating my half-life milestone.
I call it that because it feels sometimes like I belong in both places and neither - kind of half and half, all at once. One place formed who I am and the other has shaped my adulthood.
But is it the place that’s done that? Or the experiences and people? Are the experiences and people driven by a sense of place? Surely someone’s sense of belonging and owning their space effect how they behave in that space?
I ask these questions not because I have any answers, but because I think they raise interesting conversations.
I recall a time when I first moved to the UK. I was so busy trying to fit in that I transformed my accent, I changed my manner of speaking and I actively avoided making friendships with new New Zealanders. Anyone who knows London knows it’s teeming with New Zealanders! [Please understand, I didn’t avoid those New Zealand friends I already had - I’m not heartless.]
And yet, with all of these adjustments, I still didn’t fit in.
I’m ashamed to admit, it took me a number of years to work out that faking it wasn’t making it. So, I stopped trying and allowed my authentic self to surface. Guess what? Suddenly things began to fall into place. I started to form lasting relationships, those I had became deeper, and my work was more meaningful.
I’d done lots of travelling, seen a lot, had loads of photos but my real-life experiences became more powerful once I allowed my authenticity to shine.
I realise that just being myself is kind of messy. I have a weird accent (married a Welshman which mashed it up even more). I sometimes have to explain my language because there are only New Zealand words for some experiences. But in taking the time to bring my UK friends into my NZ experience, their world is opened and mine is not reduced to one place or one dimension.
I’m a massive contradiction. I miss “home” and my whanau every day. And when I’m there I miss my UK home and people. I hunger viscerally for my visits back to NZ but always leave a piece of myself in the UK to return to.
If I’d never left New Zealand, I don’t know if I would have these massive feelings. I wouldn’t belong to two places and no place. I wouldn’t be this walking contradiction.
I hope I would have made it to the grand age of X and have learnt to be unapologetically my authentic self and I’m very pleased to be this version of myself.
Those of you who work with me, I hope, see this authenticity in everything I do and offer. If you ever think I’ve reverted to “faking it”, please just say.
Home for me is a feeling, a sense of self.
Postscript:
More about the book, “Facing & Embracing¨. This was a collaboration of musings and reflections on the vulnerabilities and joys faced by those of us who have formed our families by adoption. The other women I shared this experience with are truly inspirational. The project was spear-headed by the super-talented Jeni Neill and run through an amazing organisation my children and I are lucky enough to benefit from, Sensi Treatment. If you want a copy of the book, you can get it by contacting Sensi Treatment.
Thank you all.