Clare is looking back on a life-changing event from over 25years ago. Bravely, all those years ago she activated the plan to migrate to new country. Not to the other side of the world, just down towards the end of the continent of Africa. How hard could it be, right?

Inspired to build a better life for her children and to findnew opportunities for her and her partner’s career, Clare drove the migration forward with checklists and tick boxes that controlled the minutia of details and foresaw potential dangers everywhere. In Clare’s indomitable style mitigants were always at the ready, even the plans had plans. However, having an emotional breakdown in a supermarket wasn’t on the checklist.

When we take on dramatic changes to our lives (or have themthrust upon us), we become acutely aware of how we no longer belong in the world. The German term Carl Jung referred to when discussing this deep sense of alienation or not feeling "at home" in the world is "Unheimlich." It describes something that is both familiar and strange at the same time — creatingdiscomfort, eeriness, or psychological disturbance. This aligns with the un-homed state: a disconnection not just fromexternal belonging, but from inner harmony.

Clare’s un-homing is filled with trials and triumphs, andshe has distilled her learning down into some delicious wisdoms that she shares with us. When we see that the stories of our life are no longer mapping to the reality in which we find ourselves its time to build some new stories and refresh some of the old ones. This remapping of our lives takes us to some very vulnerable places and the emotional load we end up carrying cause fault lines to appear in marriages, relationships and within our minds and bodies too. Loss evokes grief and grief needs to be metabolised and there are no short cutsthrough this.

“You may not control all the events that happen to you, but you can decide not to be reduced by them.”  

Maya Angelou

Clare defies reduction and instead rises like a proverbial phoenix from the fires of adversity. From her defiant reinvention and her perseverance through the adversity Clare knows that with the massive changes activated by migration there will be tears and there will be challenges. With a community supporting you from the side, a bit of counselling to give succour and the ability to see a future you discover a whole new level of capability just waiting inside you. Please enjoy meeting Clare and her story of migration.