1. When you think of home, what does it look like? Feel like? Smell like? This is not some “ideal” in a magazine, this is your gut response.
What landscapes, surroundings, colors, furnishings, sounds, tastes, people feel most comfortable to you?
2. Think back to your childhood. Was it safe? Did you play? If so, where? What are your memories? –
When was the first time in your life that you felt free to explore your environment? Was it as a child on your bike or was it in college?
Search through your memories. Which ones stand out the most? Is there one that is unique or a general collection of similar memories? (such as, the one time you went somewhere or an annual trip to the same place)
Remember all the details that you can. Again, the surroundings, landscape, sounds, smells, people. What you were doing, how you felt, how you acted. Who are the other people in the memory? How did they act?
3. What was your mom like when you were young? Specifically when you were a child.
Did she work or stay home? Did she play with you? Was she loud or quiet, expressive or restrained? Was she energetic or angry, sick, depressed? What things did she like to do? How did she treat you? What are your childhood memories of her?
Did this relationship change with time, as you grew up and she grew older? If so, how? Does your mother feel like a different person today than she was when you were young? Again, how?
4. Remember the first time you were separated from your home and your parents.
The first time you felt homesick.
Were you at camp? On vacation? Away at school?
How long did the homesickness last? What in particular, were you missing?
What else were you doing during that time?
When did the homesickness diminish?
5. Remember the first time you really left home, when you essentially moved away from home, even if you left things there.
Was this going to college? Going into the military? Starting a new job?
How did you feel when you left?
How did you feel when you returned? Why did you return? Where did you return to? (house, school, town, or?)
Did home feel like the same place you had left? If not, what was different?
6. Consider your belongings.
What things have you kept the longest? Anything from childhood? Why? What do these things remind you of?
What belongings are most precious to you?
If you had to leave in 15 minutes, what would you take with you?
If it’s easier, consider, if you could fill your car and that’s it – what would you take?
These are just the first questions to consider, but you can learn a lot from starting here. To best understand your personal relationship with home, where to find it and how to create it, contact me for more questions.
Dr. Jan Peppler, findinghome@substack.com