"Where is home...?"

...Asked a close friend when she returned from a two-month trip around the UK. Some people would unequivocally answer that it is where they were born, where they grew up, where their family is, the house they live in...I couldn't give such a simple answer. In our transient communities in an era of globalisation, it's becoming harder to define where "home" might be.

Personally, I feel no connection with the place in which I grew up. It was a small town containing lots of unhappy people, and I found it stifling from a young age. The pressure to conform suffocated me, so I worked hard at school with the knowlege that it would provide my ticket out of there - to go to university; to find my place in the world. I visited my mum occasionally but preferred her to come and stay with me. Then when she passed away I had no connection with the town at all. I reflected that perhaps home is formed through memory. I didn't have many happy memories of my time there.

Places we return to are always filled with memories, even if it's just that there was a cafe around the corner from the train station. Sometimes however, these memories are powerful and can be evoked merely by seeing pictures of a place. For me, the North Yorkshire Moors at the end of August, swathed in purple heather and sunshine, smelling of honey...that is a powerful memory - I felt at home for the first time in my life. I felt I belonged to that place. I still do, although I have never lived there, only nearby and I have only visited for short periods. Does that sense of belonging make it my home?

I have never been enough of a free spirit to be able to travel the world in a "wherever I lay my hat..." style of living, but I can understand those who do. However, when does the journey end and what does "coming home" mean? For me, I come home every day to my lovely house which I am blessed to share with my partner and my dog. It is a good space, with nice energy and a feeling of sanctuary from the world. But it is bricks and mortar, the previous house we shared was equally "home" at the time. Which makes me question can home really be just a place, a geographical spot?

People with a strong national or regional identity have argued that home will always be part of their identity, be that Scottish, Cornish, American, English or other. However, such identity and sense of home was tested when I went to New York for the first time some years ago. Within hours of arriving at Grand Central station, I got into a short argument with a taxi driver, came out with what I wanted, no hard feelings, we enjoyed a joke afterwards. My fellow travellers suggested I had found my spiritual home! Maybe they were right. I felt I could totally be myself in that city, I was at one with the space, it was exciting! Then my trip was over, my visa expired, I came home. So, is our home actually dictated by political, legal and sociological boundaries?

The UK press have been fascinated recently by the story of a local council who wanted to evict travellers from a "permanent site". This has caused much debate and contributed to my contemplation about "home" and the desire to have one. Surely the essence of being a traveller was to travel? Yet there appears to be an innate desire for permanence. A societal requirement that we all have a sense of place - to "know your place" can be instilled in us from a young age. So those of us who wish to transgress class, educational and geographical boundaries, can end up displaced and confused. On the flip side, we can also look for and find our sense of place, our home within the people around us, the view of the moon, making a meal, the smell of cut grass...Something familiar.

Losing touch

In this crazy world of endless opportunities to communicate and keep in touch, I have still been through a period in my life during which I lost touch with people who had been very important to me. Thankfully, I have some wonderful friends and have been able to pick up the phone and chat with these people as if we only spoke last week.

When I reflected on my period of self-imposed exile, I realised I had seriously struggled with my sense of self throughout that time. I forgot who I was and what I liked to do. Somebody asked me recently, what really made me "buzz" or got me excited. I couldn't answer, and I felt really bemused by that - how had that happened? I used to have lots of hobbies, interests and opinions (that I wasn't afraid to voice). So whilst time apart from some friends can be freeing particularly if we have associates who coerce us into being something we don't want to be, for me this had a devastating effect. I became a shell of my former self. I like to consider myself as an autonomous being, but this started me thinking, how much of "being me" is dependent on my relationships with others? Now I'm ashamed to say that my contact with philosophy and psychology has been only fleeting, so I didn't plan to analyse myself in light of any particular school of thought, rather muse upon my experiences.

I thought back to friends I've loved and lost, and realised that over the years I perfected the art of gathering people close to me who were good for me. I'm sure I'm not alone in noting that during my younger years I kept in touch with people who had a toxic influence on my life. People who were overly critical, belittled my interests of values, and crippled me with self-doubt. However, once I got over 30, I started to have some confidence in my own values so that rather than ditch my beliefs to fit in, I'd ditch the "friends". This has led to an eclectic mix of people being counted amongst by greatest friends. This doesn't mean I avoid people who challenge me - what fun would that be?! I quite enjoy some lively debates with people I care about very much, but these days I agree to disagree when we reach an impasse.

However, it wouldn't work to have all my friends in one place at once. Most are very different from each other, and I realised I can be very different when I'm with each of them. I started to question whether I was still so desperate to please people and be liked, that maybe I didn't have any integrity as a person at all! Perhaps that's why it all fell apart when I lost touch with people? So my aims at the moment are to keep in touch with my wonderful friends, but schedule in some time for me too, doing things just for me. Coffee on my own, lunch out, swimming, writing. I don't want to lose touch with myself again, and next time somebody asks me what makes me buzz I want to be able to give them a happy, long list.