As I sit here aboard the Spirit of Tasmania heading for home, I find myself reflecting on the path that lead me back. I left Tasmania on the Spirit on the 26th of December 2023, intending to settle and create a life for myself in ‘big Australia.’ My dog Luna and I drove from Hobart, through Victoria and NSW, into QLD, to live in Hervey Bay. And we were building a life for ourselves – I had a steady job that was challenging, rewarding and enjoyable and I was in the midst of applying for my own rental property. But things steadily started to change for me.

I returned from a retreat in Fiji, feeling restless and unsettled. I put it down to transition. I had learnt a lot in Fiji and had released a lot of emotion. I had returned with a sense of finally feeling like I was enough, and a drive to protect my new found self-value. This came with a sense of change and transition – things around me started to change and my relationships with people started to change. So, it made sense that my restlessness was the natural consequence of all of the changes and the period of transition.

I did reach out. I asked a friend, who is a Reiki pracitioner, sound practitioner, Medium and healer, for help. I booked a session with her and she set me a series of homework, or ‘play work,’ as she called it. Little did I know that this would lead me on the path home. I needed to create a timeline, mapping out the good things, the happy times in my life. This activity alone, lead me to see a pattern – the good things, the happy things were all moments with friends and family, moments of celebration such as Christmas and New Year, moments of connection and time spent with people who meant the world to me.

Within that, I began to see just how much I actually missed my home. I missed Tasmania itself – its damp, green rainforests, its beautiful beaches, its refreshingly clean, cool air. I missed my favourite places in Tasmania; places such as Willow Court, Mount Field National Park and Port Arthur. I missed living in a place where you can feel the deep history underneath your feet, where it surrounds you and the voices from its rich past demand to be felt, understood and told. I hadn’t realised that those good things along my timeline had created a bond, a connection with the places they occurred.

Another activity I was asked to complete involved writing letters to the people who have hurt me along the way, and burning them. Three letters in and I realised I was writing the story of the good times, of the love and the connection we’d had, instead of telling the story of the disconnection. I was writing about the love, not the pain. Both of these activities shifted my mindset from healing the hurt and patching the wounds, to focusing on the light.

I’d spent twelve months fighting against the voice in my head that popped up every time some small emotional trigger started the cycle again. That voice was relentless and it carried the same message every time, “I want to go home.” Truth be told, I didn’t just miss home and the people in my life who are home, but my home was missing from me.

When I weighed up the choices (settle in Hervey Bay, move elsewhere, or go home) going home was the only one that sat right within my heart and soul, it was the only thread that lead me to a place of peace. I decided to give in to the voice in my head, to listen to my sense of what home is for me and follow the path back to Tasmania, back to my friends and family and the places that I love.

Home is more than just a roof over your head – home is an emotional place, a state of well being, a connection that runs deep. Home is the people, the places and the things that you love. My family is home, my friends are home, Luna (my dog) is home, but Tasmania itself is home too. It’s the little things like the way my Dad always smells like meat (he’s a butcher, retired now but the smell has seeped into his skin, into who he is), like the fresh breath of air in the morning. It’s the sound of water rushing down the rocks of a waterfall, the moss on the trees, the feeling of wanting to sit and invite all of the lives of the past to speak to me, to tell me their stories. It’s the little voices of my nieces and my nephew that speak to me over the phone, it’s the people on the bowls green, the way the food tastes.

Home is a complex state. It’s a complex feeling, and I can’t wait to re-connect with my home.