The Wandering FamiLee

This post is all about feeling homesick; what it feels like, what to do when it arrives and how it might impact your trip or even your lifestyle.

Why do I feel homesick?

Like with all feelings that arrive at your personal door, you have a choice; to keep the door firmly shut, allow the visiting feeling to take up all your space and take over your life, or you can allow the visiting feeling to come… and then go again, when it’s ready.

Being honest, in the past, if a faint figure of home-sickness passed my door, I would firmly lock the door and put all energies into keeping that Debbie-downer firmly out! There was no way that I was going to allow that feeling to come by and make me doubt myself, my life-choices and cause havoc with whatever I was doing. No no, best to ignore that one, even if it comes back and knocks louder!

But here’s the beautiful thing about love: When someone you love feels those feelings, you’ll do whatever is best for them. And of course, ignoring those feels are never the answer and definitely not what’s best.

Love is showing up. Love is doing it together. Love it allowing what needs to come. Love is feeling the fear and doing it anyway.

Our little Sagittarius power house of a female takes travelling in her stride. She absolutely knows what she wants, doesn’t care about who knows it and is often not willing to settle for anything else. That, most of the time is me (her mum) and her family; dad, brother and 3 dogs.

She’s sassy and confident and will take on most challenges. Living 90% in her body, she is tough as an ox and can run, climb, dance, swim and swing harder and for longer than the rest of us put together.

She’ll make friends wherever she goes. These friends will be from 1 to 100 years old and will speak a multitude of languages. They’ll often say to us “she’s so confident” or “she’s so chatty” and has often been described as a “wise old soul” and “solar”. She is indeed like the sun, a marvel: beautiful and life-giving, direct and fiery all at the same time.

So, out of all of us, she has taken travelling most in her stride. Home is wherever her family is.

That was until her family were not all together, splintering the feeling of ‘home is where my family is’. This minor earthquake in her normal solid land made large cracks, and from those cracks; homesickness appeared.

We always travel as a unit, that includes our three springer spaniels; Barney, Lola and Lenny. I used to describe them as lively, but to be honest they’re just not any more (accept Lenny – he’s still a crazed ball obsessed vibration of spaniel energy turned up to the max). Barney; nearly 14 is deaf, almost blind and undoubtedly now has doggy dementia. Lola at 10 has heart disease and a tumour the size of a cantaloupe melon that cannot be operated on (because of the heart disease). Don’t get me wrong, these two are still happy as spaniels rolling in a cow pat and are living the doggy dream, but can definitely be described as less lively than they once were.

Anyway, they’re our everything. They’re as much of The FamiLee as any one of us humans so going away somewhere without them was a huge decision. Luckily we found an amazing couple via Trusted House sitters to look after them with the same love and care that they were used to. They were fine but it was a huge change for us to not have them around. We had 1 month to travel in Asia without them. How would it be?

Just like when you go on a couples date for the first time in years and end up spending the night talking about the kids; we found ourselves constantly talking about the dogs. We’d laugh about what they would like and wouldn’t, how they would react to the strays and where they would sleep in our backpackers accommodation.

We missed them massively but it was so much easier!

We were footloose and fancy free, enjoying full days out and hopping here and there on different transport.

It turns out that ‘hopping’ was the trigger for her homesickness.

Triggers for homesickness

Island hopping in Thailand is amazing and it’s so easy with the various passenger ferries and speedboats now available to get you to and from each island. We boarded a passenger ferry from Koh Tao following a monsoon winter storm back to the mainland. To say it was a bumpy ride would be an understatement. The catamaran wallowed and rose, went left and right with a stomach churning rhythm that literally had the whole boat of passengers throwing up. As well as feeling pretty nauseous ourselves, we had a Birds Eye view of a lady that was not dealing with the whole sea-sickness thing well at all.

Remi was worried. This was something that she had never experienced before and could not quite understand. She remained quiet for some time afterwards.

She wouldn’t eat and didn’t want to go anywhere. We tried to take her out for food but she said if she ate it would make her sick. I took her back to our accommodation, worried and wondering what was going on. This carried on for a few days and when we asked her how she was feeling, she just said “I want to be back with my doggies – I’m missing them”.

After a bit of talking, I realised she was feeling homesick and it was the boat trip that had triggered this feeling. She thought that the lady on the boat had been sick because she had eaten so she was worried to eat herself in case it made her sick too.

This homesickness she attributed to missing the dogs was real but came from a feeling we have all experience before; anxiety.

So there it is, the chance to lean into love and allow the feelings of homesickness to come and go.

We talked about what she was feeling and why, but also to accept what she was feeling. It’s ok to feel homesick. It’s ok to miss the things you know and love. Instead of ignoring it, we talked even more about the dogs and used our senses to remember what they smelled like, what the looked like and the funny little things that they do. After that, while homesickness still skirted about from time to time, her energy was mainly spent enjoying her experience and time in Asia with joy and an open heart.

What to do when you’re feeling homesick

We all have reasons why we might feel homesick; whether that be on a holiday, after a substantial move, leaving family or going to university. Homesickness can show up in many ways. It’s perfectly natural for you to miss the things you know well and love. Sometimes it can simply be familiar scents, the food you know or the touch of a loved one. Whatever the reason, the following may help ease you through those homesick feelings:

Easing homesickness

• Recognise what you’re feeling – name it and share it with someone. If you’re on your own, tell someone in a message or write it in a journal. Don’t worry about other peoples reactions – just share your feelings.

• Accept what your feeling as completely normal and remind yourself that we all feel this way from time to time.

• Name the things you are missing; really bring them into your consciousness and use your senses to fully embody them. Sometimes that can be enough to feel as close to something or someone you’re apart from.

• Remind yourself why you’re here, and affirm to yourself the positives you’re also experiencing.

• If the homesick feeling still feels overwhelming, give yourself some boundaries to make yourself feel more secure. How long are you here for and what’s happening next – could provide those boundaries.

• Lean into love and be kind. Give yourself a treat and speak only kindly and positively to yourself.

• Make a friend or find community. The smallest interaction with someone else (like a smile or ‘good morning’) can lift your spirits.

We all have situations we’re not familiar with or don’t expect. Especially young travellers. The experience of life beyond our bubble can feel overwhelming – that’s ok. We’re all learning from the life. We can’t keep ourselves or our children from all the stuff that goes on in the world. Equally, we don’t want to expose them to all of it so it becomes overwhelming. If we allow children to live in their dream consciousness for as long as they want to and address the things that come along on the way with open communication, we can help ease them through this life with open hearted awareness and understanding for all.

So after this experience; now when the shadowed figure of homesick comes hanging round my door, I open it wide to allow it to flow freely in and just as freely out again.

Let us know your thoughts and experiences here.

Big loves to you from us xxxx