It’s Here
My travel memoir, Circling Home: What I Learned By Living Elsewhere, is available now, published by She Writes Press.
Visit the Circling Home page for reviews and news about Circling Home. Visit Events for upcoming appearances and readings.
Here are some excerpts from Circling Home …
On Home
“Some of us could only come to know ourselves by moving far from home. Once I did, I didn’t yearn to be in a certain city or house as much as I longed for the sense of being at home; of being grounded and connected to those around me. The challenge was to find stability and a sense of ‘home’ inside myself instead of in a physical place; and the trick was to transform nostalgia about ‘home’ from wistful yearning for the past into understanding it.”
On Self-Discovery
“When I was young, I wanted to leave home and learn by living elsewhere. It was less about re-inventing myself and more about exploring different aspects of the self, i.e., discovering who I was in relation to others and in unfamiliar settings. … For our children, discovering who they were meant having to accept the discomfort of feeling foreign. There was only so much we could do to protect them from the sense of alienation and rootlessness that accompanies relocation and change. The best thing we could do—and did—was to give them a safe place to land and open arms when they needed them.”
On Perspective
“Our children gained what my husband and I did while living overseas: perspective. They came to view themselves as part of a larger world after living in other countries and discovering stunning landscapes alongside poverty and disease. They witnessed the daily struggle to survive in places like Ivory Coast and Tanzania by coming to know and love Ousmane, Nestor, Gladys and Wilfred. We may have deprived our kids of a fixed sense of home, but they gained perspective and learned how to navigate the world with confidence; and how to connect with people of other cultures after embracing individuals who were unlike them.”
“... I didn’t yearn to be in a certain city or house as much as I longed for the sense of being at home; of being grounded and connected to those around me.”
