Returning Home is an emotional experience. Whether it is a house, flat, town, city or country. Once you have left can you ever go back? You have changed with the impact of what has happened to you away from home.
You return home a different person. You can see home differently returning home after a long time. Has it changed or is it you?

If home for you is the place you were brought up in, it has a strong feeling of the past, of nostalgia particularly if you have been away. Nostalgia taken from the Greek algos “pain, grief, distress” and nostos “homecoming,” Literally a pain from homecoming. Those who have never left their home town seem not to notice the past so much, as they have never been without it.

To be away from home and to return to it is a poignant experience of happiness and sadness. Sometimes we stay away not to return home, sensing that the return will be harder than the struggles of being away from home.

Adjusting to a return home is a challenge. People you know from home who have never left, don’t know what to say and feel betrayed that you did not find it good enough to stay like they did. You might have gained education, qualifications, or money. This makes it difficult to feel equal and connected to a return home.

Family and parents particularly seem unchanged by the years of being away. Interested in where you have been, you try to explain it to them but it sounds different at home. Like the wine bought on summer holidays never tasting like it did in the sun.

And to the latest version of the refugee being forced to flee from home – longing to return. When the home country has calmed – do they go back or has the place of home changed?

Copyright Adrian Scott North London Counsellor Blog 2015
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Disclaimer: This weblog is the view of the writer and for general information only.
This article is designed to provoke argument and critique