Homesickness

✨ Firefly Reflection - Homesickness ✨

I wonder whether one of the hardest things we ever do is remain with discomfort.

Our own.

Or someone else's.

Everything within us wants to make it stop. To fix it. To rescue. To escape.

But perhaps there are some things we simply have to walk through, and the greatest gift another person can offer is not a way out, but their willingness to stay beside us until the fog begins to lift.

There have been times in my life when homesickness has been truly overwhelming. As a child, I ran away from a sleepover in the middle of the night because I couldn't bear being away from home. Please tell me I'm not the only one.

Then, at seventeen, I left Orange to begin my nursing training in Darlinghurst. Nothing really prepared me for the homesickness that followed. And it was severe.

After finishing my morning shifts, I'd catch a bus all the way back to Orange to be with Mum before returning to Sydney for my evening shift the following day.

I couldn't eat.

I couldn't sleep.

I cried through countless reverse-charge phonecalls home.

My supervisors became so concerned that they contacted Mum to tell her they thought it was time to pack my bags and send me home.

Every fibre of my being wanted to quit.

I remember wondering if I'd made a terrible mistake.

But... Mum didn't come and rescue me.

She listened.

She encouraged me.

She remained with me in the discomfort.

Then one day, the fog lifted. Nothing around me had changed, but I had.

Years later, I found myself living in Beijing. After a short visit home with Mum, I boarded the flight back. As we climbed up into the clouds over Sydney Harbour, the Swiss backpackers sitting beside me looked out the window and said

"How could anyone leave this beatiful place?"

I looked out at the same view.

And I cried.

Not because I was leaving a beautiful city. Because I was leaving the people who made it feel like home.

It happened again in Houston.

This time, the homesickness became so overwhelming that I sought therapy to help me through it.

Even now, there are times when I say goodbye to Mum and cry on the drive home. The passing of time hasn't made that any easier.

Looking back now, I realise resilience isn't about pretending something isn't hard. It's about never wanting to give up.

Sometimes resilience is simply remaining. Remaining with uncertainty. Remaining with loneliness. Remaining with the ache of missing the people you love. Remaining long enough for the unfamiliar to become familiar.

I wonder how many of the things that have shaped us were things we desperately wanted to run away from.

And I wonder what might have been different if someone had rescued us too soon.

Until next time...

✨Because even in the darkest places, Light Endures.

Have you ever experienced homesickness? I have, and sometimes still do!

As a child, I remember running away home in the middle of the night during a sleepover at a friend's house (tell me I'm not alone!)

As an adult, I spent 6 years away from my family and friends while living in two foreign countries, one of which was significantly different to my own cultural and language background, in a city of 25 million people (Beijing). I can tell you, for this country girl from Orange, NSW, homesickness was a regular feature, an during my time in the US, I accessed therapy to cope.

Here's what we know about homesickness:

✨ It is normal emotional distress

✨ It can be caused by being away from familiar people, places, and routines.

✨ It is often characterized by sadness, anxiety, and longing for home.

✨ It affects many, particularly students or travellers.

✨ Can lead to physical symptoms like insomnia or poor appetite.

✨ Emotional symptoms might include sadness, loneliness, anxiety, low mood, and irritability.

✨ Behaviourally, we might notice social withdrawal, isolating oneself in a room, or lack of concentration.

✨ Coping involves socialising, establishing routines, and personalising new spaces.

But the big thing for us working in aged care to remember is:

✨ It doesn't discriminate age, or cognitive function.

Does this put things into context if you think about changes in behaviour for people living with dementia in care settings - acute and longer term?

A diagnosis of dementia doesn't mean you can't experience homesickness, in fact, I wonder if it makes it worse somehow...

🍏 Food for thought  🍏

If your idea of supporting homesickness is to park someone next to a fake bus stop, to wait for a bus that never comes to take them home, how's it going for you? More importantly, how's it going for the person you keep plonking at the bust stop each day?

Maybe it's time to think about how we actually support another human being by taking a more holistic, empathetic, human, kinder approach.

There's no place like home. So be kind.