Home & belonging

View from a coffee shop of Market Square, Macclesfield

Is 'home' a place?

Perhaps a geographical spot with (sometimes unconscious) ancestral ties, an inexplicable but pervasive feeling even or a relationship with self?

This question has been stirring in me since I went along to a beautiful and thought provoking talk by coach, Liz Goodchild, at the Wellbeing Space, a sanctuary of calm and creativity nestled in the heart of Macclesfield.

We were invited to explore our personal connotations of home and 'belonging' and it got me reflecting on how loss and birth have been powerful connectors to Macclesfield, which has been my home since 2007.

We first stumbled across Macclesfield as a result of family loss. As twenty somethings, my partner and I had been renting in Chorlton and Withington and were looking to buy in South Manchester. We came to a funeral in Macclesfield and were both quite taken by this market town surrounded by hills, yet only a short train ride to Manchester. As we began to explore and, eventually settled on a cosy two-bed terrace with a lovely little garden, I immediately knew it was 'home'.

Yet the town wasn't just about its contrast of silk mill heritage, cobbles and sweeping views of the Peaks - it was in the warmth, the palpable sense of community and 'realness'. Not pretending, just being as it was - and that was a big allure. A place to raise a family, feel true connection and be enveloped by the Northern charms that are so familiar to me.

It's not always been as simple as this as life doesn't confirm to tidy narratives.

Home and belonging became elusive at times in my sense of identity and self, especially after the birth of my son and a deeply challenging experience of postnatal depression which felt like an implosion of who I knew myself to be. For a time I felt dislocated, without bearings, unmoored and lost. Hindsight has shown me there was an inevitability to this as I was recalibrating and entirely reframing my relationship with self.

In the experience of returning to a sense of belonging I also co-founded a beautiful perinatal mental health charity alongside a dear friend and together we explored birth, loss, grief and homecoming as we gradually grew the charity over 14 years and became part of a national partnership we co-created to bring coherence and belonging to the England-wide VCSE community in perinatal mental health.

It felt like birth broke me open to life and a perceived loss of identity was also a confronting prompt to take me on a long journey back to myself.

I spent years exploring Eastern philosophies, existential modalities and ways of being. In that process I trained to become an integrative wellbeing coach after beginning a therapeutic experience of CBT which left me longing for depth and self exploration.

In 2024 I stepped back from my chapter in the third sector after a strong inward pull to place my energy on growing my integrative wellbeing coaching and gently nudge others back home to themselves.

On reflection, it seems to me that 'place' and 'home' are inextricably linked in many ways. There is an irrepressible pull to lay our roots in particular geographies. Yet I also see that belonging is very much an internal reconciliation.

It is the integration of exiled parts - a return to wholeness.

A homecoming.