Homesick – A Journey

Home is wherever I’m with you.

~Edward Sharpe & the Magnetic Zeros

Note:  First, a shout out to my dearest Kristen who sent us a beautiful handwritten note with this quote on the front – it’s my new favorite!  Bless you, friend.  Oh, and a shout out to Niyah for her artistic contributions to the card!  Next, this is long, a work in progress AND it is MY side of the story, not Alan’s.  His story will sound much different – I am hoping he shares it someday soon.  My story is not complete (and may never be), but I thought I would release it, for a while, to the great big world.  Sometimes it is in the release that we learn the most.  Peace.

Traveling with children is hard.  Don’t get me wrong – it is exciting and filled with wonder, but sooo exhausting for this mama.  Change of location, change of pace, and change of what is known, all of which can alter the way children view the world around them.  These changes can give them a new-found, exciting perspective or it can give them anxiety – or a little of both!   If you are anything like me, I carry the weight of my family on my shoulders – every tear, every joy, every frustration, every pain, every wish, every disappointment, every hope, every new bit of knowledge, every change, every worry, and every ounce of longing they have for home.  This is what makes traveling with children difficult, for me.  When they are happy, I can enjoy the sights and sounds of wherever we are.  When they are longing for home, I find myself longing too.  This post is about that longing and what we (I) have learned through it.

Recently, Eliana was playing cheerfully with her cousins and siblings while we were staying at Alan’s parents’ home for a few nights.  Everything was going smoothly, so I stepped outside to join the adult conversation for a bit.  After 5 minutes of bliss, I heard sobbing and looked up to see my little E painfully crying big crocodile tears (which were fitting being in Australia).  Through her tears, she mustered up enough courage to say “I miss home.”  Saying those three powerful words took everything out of her and she collapsed in my lap, continuing to sob.  Tears welled up in my eyes, knowing exactly how she felt – that silly thing called homesickness snuck out from behind the walls of excitement and wonder and stole a few moments of her joy.  It happens less and less the longer we are away from home, but when it happens, it is a deep hurt and longing for what we know and love and hold dear to our hearts.  Yes, we are creating a new adventure as a tribe here in Australia for a year, but home still exists back in the States.  The people, the places, the things that make up our daily comings and goings feel very far from where we are now. I ached to carry her up to her bedroom in Grand Rapids and snuggle her on her top bunk.  Instead, I hugged her tightly, told her I loved her and that she was brave.  I let her cry.  She needed it and I knew it wouldn’t last very long.  As she started to calm, I held my sweet E and whispered “You are home, right here in my arms baby.  This is home.”

Homesickness is a funny thing.  I believe it is always there.  It must hide behind walls of excitement and new wonders and then creep out once in a while as a reminder ‘this’ isn’t normal – ‘this’ isn’t home.  In those moments when homesickness rears its ugly side, I find myself trying to remember that home doesn’t have to be a physical location, but instead wherever I am with the ones I love most, my tribe.  Although this is a fairly easy (figurative) idea for me to wrap my head and emotions around, this is not an easy idea for our kiddos.  Home is physical.  Home is a location, a place.  Home is where they were born, where they have been raised, where they have slept since their first breaths, where they go to school, where their friends live, where their neighbors are ready and waiting to play, where we snuggle together when they are feeling sad, and where we have our favorites & traditions (restaurants, beaches, stores, parks, activities, events, etc).  Home for our four children is our actual house in Grand Rapids AND it is Grand Rapids/West Michigan itself.  If I am honest and push away the figurative thinking, this is home for me too.

Preparing for our year away was a task that began a year in advance when we had visited Alan’s family in Australia (summer 2016).  It was during that 3-week trip that we decided it was time for our tribe to take a leap of faith and do a year abroad to be closer to Alan’s family.  Even during those 3 weeks away, our kids experienced homesickness – the loss of familiar and the longing for known.  This was probably the one thing that kept coming to mind when we chatted about the possibilities of packing life up in the States for a year – How will our children handle being away from home for a year if they struggle with being away for 3 weeks?  How will their emotions hold up with so much change?  Even then homesickness was on the forefront of our minds.

As time got closer for us to actually move, there were a LOT (understatement) of emotions involved – the kids all had to pack up every last item (clothes, toys, books) they own and decide which items were most important/special to bring along to Australia, what was worth keeping in storage, and what could be given/thrown away.  Having a 9, 6, 4, and under 2-year-old learn the importance of purging and organizing and the lesson of WORTH was so empowering…and so, so, so hard!  These were the first steps in coming face-to-face with homesickness as we prepped for our adventure.  I did not know it was possible to long for home while being home.  But man, it’s so possible, especially for children!  The tears, the longing, the sadness, the internal struggle of what to keep and what to release was painstakingly awful.  There were moments all three of the eldest wept for home, and the youngest simply cried because she did not want to be left out.  I cried because my babies were feeling things that were big and scary.  I needed them to feel those things, but it was hard to watch.

As we packed up each room and packed our bags, I found myself longing for home with every touch of a blanket, shoe, and plastic toy I would usually be cursing.  Our kiddos were champions most days, but there were more emotions than just sadness that showed up often – we had anger, doubt, fear, moments of being withdrawn, depression, anxiety, and luckily, we also experienced some excitement and joy.  When it finally came time to say goodbye to our house, our home, we stood in each room, shared memories we cherish, and hugged each other tightly.  We each shared one thing we were looking forward to for our adventure abroad – cousins, Oma/Opa, time to reset as a family, more cousins, to create lasting memories, and, you may have guessed it, cousins.  This positivity helped ease the wounds, momentarily.  We blew kisses toward the house as we drove away and cried all the way to our dear friends’ house where we would be staying for the next few weeks – it was only an 8-minute drive, but it felt like forever.

The unfortunate part of our story, in one sense, was that we were still living in Grand Rapids for 3 weeks, but had to get out of the house for our renter to move in – each time we came back into the neighborhood to see friends, our children were forced to experience every emotion connected to leaving home – and it usually ended with wailing and begging to ‘just go home’ to ‘sleep in my bed’ or ‘to snuggle on our couch and watch a movie’.  We are good parents.  Really. [insert eye roll] The three weeks leading up to our Michigan departure (we still had stops in Denver for two weeks, Los Angeles for three days, and Fiji for two days – goodness, what were we thinking?) were filled with one of the most involved “good-bye tours” anyone has ever experienced – more about this in another post that will be titled “An Extroverted Extrovert’s Guide to Saying Goodbye for a Year”.  This ‘good-bye’ tour was fuel to the flame of homesickness – seeing SO MANY people (we love you all and sorry to those we missed) before we left was exhausting and overwhelming for most of our tribe when it was supposed to be life-giving (you can probably guess who was full of life and love by the end, although exhausted).  Homesickness showed up in the goodbyes – it showed up in feelings of loss and missing out and jealousy.  Do not get me wrong, we felt LOVED over and over and over again.  But, with each playdate, party, and get-together, we were reminded of what we were leaving, which made us miss home desperately.  And we hadn’t even left yet!

By the time we finally pulled away from our gracious hosts, we were a bit ready, all things sad, and a tad anxious to see what the next year would hold for our tribe.  Even getting into the car was agony – tears, like really ugly cry tears, ensued for all 12 of us.  Yes, 12 – our tribe of six had moved into another tribe of 6’s house for those three weeks (more on this in another post as well).  Then came relief – we had actually done what we said we would do, despite the struggle, sadness, and the homesickness – we had begun our journey away from home for a year.

We were bombarded with a deep sense of community, support, and love as we drove away.  This is something we are holding close to our hearts as we continue our adventures.  We miss our people.  We miss our home.  We miss our beds.  We miss our space.  We miss our favorites and traditions that can only be continued in our West Michigan home.  BUT we are learning that home really IS more than a place or a location.  Home truly IS wherever and whenever we are with those we love the most.  For me, I am home when I am with my tribe of four little ones and hubby.  We can be hiking in the Rocky Mountain National Park or jumping into a pool of cool fresh Fijian water or exploring the shores of the South Pacific or riding bikes along Kent Trails in Grand Rapids or snuggling on the couch in our new unit in Australia – and in all of those places, as long as we are together, we are HOME.

This was a realization that was necessary for all six of us to acknowledge (well, the littlest probably already figured it out since home for her has always been with Mommy and Daddy) in order to receive the blessing of this year’s adventure abroad.  We all continue to have moments where we acknowledge that we miss home, the physical home, but we are getting better at recognizing that home is wherever we are together.  It has taken a few weeks with a few reminders for all of the kiddos to embrace this idea, but now that they have, we are all able to take deeper breaths and enjoy the adventure instead of longing for something we just couldn’t obtain or provide.  We now get to create new traditions, new favorites, spend time with new friends and family.  The constant that remains is US, our tribe.  Our home.