Prompt
Read at least 6 students blog short stories about ‘home’ and make a list of the common shared assumptions, values and stories that you find. Post this list on your blog with some commentary about what you discovered.
Our class is full of unique and exciting people. Their experiences are rich and varied. I feel truly honoured to be allowed to glimpse into the unique lives and experiences of these wonderful people. As we can see from reading each other’s blogs, we all come from different places and different cultures, but similarities remain. Here is a list of a few similarities I’ve noticed on our thoughts about home. A special thank you to Ross Hilliam, Andrea Melton, Kristen Boyd, Marianne Browning, Alexis Long and Georgina Wilkins for allowing me to glimpse into your lives.
- Memory. It appears that home is a place of memory. What makes a home feel like home are all the wonderful (and sometimes not so wonderful) memories associated with that place. Memory enriches a place and gives it some importance in our minds. Memory of a place allows us to dissect who we are and who we were, at any given time in our lives. The memories associated with a place tends to (not always) give us comfort.
- Belonging. Home is a place of belonging. It is important for us to feel as if we are a part of something greater. Whether that belonging is a part of a city, or a province or a country or a people, it is that sense of belonging that we crave, and that ultimately gives us that feeling of safety and of comfort. We want to feel as if we are included, accepted and integral. I have attached a wonderful article on what belonging is and how it relates to story telling, and to stress and to happiness. As the article statesBelonging is primal, fundamental to our sense of happiness and well-being.” (CNN The importance of belonging) Our sense of home fosters this sense of belonging and allows us to relax and grow.
- Home is Malleable. Home can take many different forms, for some home is a place, a particular space, for others it is a culture, some is a family. Home can grow. Home can be one or more of these things and we can feel “at home” in more than one instance. One can have more than one home. Home is partly this is associated with memory, and partly associated with people and connections.
There is a wonderful quote by William Shakespeare pictured below. This quote is from As You Like it. Taken out of the context of the play, it seems more applicable to me now. Travellers can be at home anywhere, where memory grasps their attention. Where we were born may have been a special place, but home can be anywhere.
I do not own this picture
- Culture. Culture relates to belonging. It is important to feel where one belongs. Culture is a way to make people feel at ease. Culture does not just relate to social culture, but racial culture as well. This is not to say that the company of mixed race culture is bad in anyway, and no blog I have read has even implied this, but culture provokes questions about what belonging is.
Economic status is something that wasn’t touched on much, but was a vital part of some classmates sense of what home is. This difference is a part of everyone’s home life whether it is noticed or not. It is a very important factor on what determines a home.In conclusion, It seems that home is a way to define yourself. A place to be safe and comfortable. This is accomplished through many ways and no one home is the same as another. They can be exactly the same in many ways, but it is the emotional connection and how that place has contributed to the growth of the person who considers it home.
Here is an article on “The psychology of home” . This article seems to sum up the importances of memory, and economy in how it relates to humans’ feeling of what home is. It is consistent with what we’ve told each other, and told ourselves.
This exercise was initially very difficult for me. I had no idea what home meant. I thought about what home could mean and took several days to process and had several anxiety attacks thinking, perhaps I had no home.
It was after reading several of my classmates blogs, posting questions on facebook and reading articles about home that I realized what home meant to me. This assignment was not only useful in contextualizing what home means its relationship to First Nation’s relations and history, but allowing me to identify what home means to me personally, on an emotional level.
Works cited
The blogs of : Ross Hilliam, Andrea Melton, Kristen Boyd, Marianne Browning, Alexis Long and Georgina Wilkins.
Beck, Julie. “The Psychology Of Home: Why Where You Live Means So Much”. The Atlantic, 2019, https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2011/12/the-psychology-of-home-why-where-you-live-means-so-much/249800/.
Amanda Enayati, Special to CNN. “The Importance Of Belonging – CNN”. CNN, 2019, https://www.cnn.com/2012/06/01/health/enayati-importance-of-belonging/index.html.