I’m going to Aotearoa/New Zealand in two weeks today. For about the past three months I’ve mostly been daunted by the prospect, and very occasionally excited about it. But this morning, while running, it occurred to me that I don’t have to be EITHER fearful OR fearless. I could be both. Or neither. I could be fearful and fearless, quite possibly at the same time.
I’m daunted partly to do with the schedule – not that it’s so very different to my usual work schedule at home, but there is quite a lot of extra travel AND also about 60-70 old friends and family to fit in the in-between work bits. In my 28 days (exactly) away from home I have:
- 4 x 12 hour international flights
- 5 x smaller internal NZ flights
- about 12 hours driving time
- three writing workshops for a range of abilities/interests
- three Fun Palaces workshops
- three writing panels
- two literary salons (I’m hosting)
- two student talks
- two interviews
- one three-day museums conference
- four events that are just me about my writing work
- two books meetings and two Fun Palaces meetings
- one big Fun Palaces keynote
- three festival parties (yay parties)
- AND a beach weekend (phew)
I’m meant to be doing some writing as well, because – deadlines.
But the schedule isn’t what’s scary. Going ‘home’ is scary. Because, of course, it is home/not-home*.
I haven’t lived in New Zealand since 1986. I was born and spent the first five years of my life in London. Yet I did ALL of my growing up in New Zealand, most of it in Tokoroa. And while I have left and grown and changed, it has too. There is (literally) no place like home, because home changes as well. We can never go back to the home we left because it changes while we are away, just as we do. What I once called home has changed as much as I have – and yet …
The Pacific and the Tasman still do their big, wild thing. The bush smells the same, that warm, wet, dense, rich smell of vegetation and moisture and dark green. The blue of the immensely high sky is as strong and sharply different to a London sky as it is possible to be. The brutal sun burns my freckled skin, even in winter. The volcanic plateau remains wide and open. I know the land and the sea and the rivers. They are in me, strongly in me, and they age far more slowly than we do. And so there is an added confusion because the land and the water seem to hold more, change less, while everything else changes hugely.
I’ve had cancer again since I was last in New Zealand four years ago, my body has changed again. Again. People I loved have died since I was last there. Much as New Zealand is a land of loved ones for me, it is also a place of ghosts and dead people. In my daily London life it is possible for me to sometimes feel as if those dead people still exist, confronted with their absence, their deaths are very real.
So I know that what I am going to will be a good time, an important time. I will be glad to share my new books and our Fun Palaces mission – to help people work out how they can use what we have to offer, for their communities, for their own local dreams. I will be very glad to learn from the people I meet, and bring back what they will teach me. And there will also be parts of my time away that are difficult. I will be reminded that it is my home/not-home. That it has changed, and my (living) loved ones have changed, and so have I. There is nothing like going ‘home’ after a time away to be starkly reminded of time’s passing, of mortality, my own mortality, of the clear truth that I am well into the second half of my life – if I’m lucky.
Which is why I’ve decided to approach this trip as a hero’s journey. Something I can be both fearful and fearless about – possibly at the same time. There will be lovely bits. There will be new people and old loved ones. There will be tough bits. There will be ghosts. I will no doubt stumble, and if Joseph Campbell is right, I might even find some gold when I do. I’ll be sure to share it if I can, probably here, and hopefully in my work. Acknowledging that my experience will be mixed, that it cannot all be clichéd ‘homecoming’ and easy, helps both my anxiety and my fear/experience of depression. Knowing – and noting – that there is no place like home and that it’s still worth making the journey, makes going on the journey more possible.
Here are the links to my events in Christchurch, Dunedin, Auckland, Palmerston North – Museums Aotearoa conference. The Wellington events are a workshop for the IIMl and a talk at Massey, no public events sadly.
*on the home/not-home thing, I’ve found Greg Madison’s book on existential migration The End of Belonging very useful
I was born in the UK, but lived in Australia from 7 to 40. Coming back to England was the single best thing I ever did in my life, but I still sometimes get huge waves of nostalgia – in the most powerful visceral physical sense – for the bush and the sun and riding my horse. Here is home, but I’ve left 30 years of life and 20 years of adult friends somewhere 12,000 miles away. Being a migrant (twice) is tough and no wonder you’re daunted. For me it’s partly the length of the flight down there, but other than that, I hope you have a very fulfilling time, and feel at home in your not-home-but not-not-home.
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thanks Kate, yes, my life has been a double-migration and the return (both ways) is always tricky to negotiate. It def is the visceral/physical feelings that remain.
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Returning to the town of my childhood aged 2 to 10 years old after many years away in a city and then overseas was one of the hardest and best things I have ever done. It was important to experience the changes, a positive thing in my case, and know that my bad memories of the town as a community that could neglect or ignore family violence was no longer the same. The people had changed, the ethos and values changed too. Buildings and locations as repositories of my memories had also changed, but retained essential details and small reminders. The whole experience helped to soften the sharp edges of memories that will not fade but have become transformed by the understanding of time and physical distance. I took the journey with my dear mother and we shared painful reminiscences and moments of mutual reflective silence, but most importantly made new memories of the town.
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making new memories – and making them with the awareness that we’re making them – is one of the best things we can do for ourselves I think, esp those of us with difficult/violent childhoods. xx
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Wow, Stella, what you have achieved and been through! We were at Sacred Heart together back in the day… Enjoy your trip ‘home’!
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Thank you Marie.
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Stella, great to see you are back here! I went to your talk at Victoria’s theatre department when I was an IIML student back in 2004 – or was it 2005? (gulp). Really inspiring, I really needed to hear what you had to say about not being perfect. I still remember it when I feel like I need a bit of encouragement! Thank you!
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Reblogged this on Jane Woodham and commented:
Written by a New Zealander who has made a home in the UK, and totally understood by an English person who has made a home in New Zealand.
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Ah, that’s great to hear. I say the same now – and perhaps even more forcefully!
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Home is where the heart is but that little Town in the South Waikato will always hold a special place our hearts.
I hope your journey home was everything and more than you expected.
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