The Habit

This week’s episode features Jennifer Degani, Tania Gutting, and Pam Kiper. They’ll read two stories about frequent home-leavings, and one story about one big move after a long time in the same place.

"Leaving Home Stories,” is a special summer series in which writers from The Habit Membership read personal narratives on the theme of leaving home, literally or metaphorically, temporarily or permanently.

Sponsored by The Habit Membership for Writers.

Support the show: https://therabbitroom.givingfuel.com/member

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This week’s episode, featuring Mariam Matossian, George Price, and Frank McCormack, will swing from the hilarious to the poignant. Expect door-to-door sales, a road trip in a hearse, and a hallucinated raptor. 

"Leaving Home Stories,” is a special summer series in which writers from The Habit Membership read personal narratives on the theme of leaving home, literally or metaphorically, temporarily or permanently.

Sponsored by The Habit Membership for Writers.

Support the show: https://therabbitroom.givingfuel.com/member

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In this episode, Sara Bannerman, Jan Cooper, and Mandy Link read personal narratives in which they leave home and find themselves in situations where the stakes were higher than they realized. Sara Bannerman recalls being a young girl put in an unsettled and unsettling situation. Jan Cooper wins a writing prize and has reason to wish she hadn't won. And Mandy Link tells of a time when an incident on a familiar running trail gave her reason to reassess many areas of her life.

"Leaving Home Stories,” is a special summer series in which writers from The Habit Membership read personal narratives on the theme of leaving home, literally or metaphorically, temporarily or permanently.

Sponsored by The Habit Membership.

Support the show: https://therabbitroom.givingfuel.com/member

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In this  episode, Jaclyn Hoselton, Kate Pocklington, and Cara Peregrino read personal essays in which they leave home and cross international borders. Jaclyn Hoselton reflects on what it means to be a Mexican-American who speaks German but not Spanish. Kate Pocklington leaves a temporary but beloved home in India to return to her homeland of Australia. And Cara Peregrino leaves Scotland for the United States, where she has to learn new birds—and finds a few of her old favorite birds waiting for her. 

"Leaving Home Stories,” is a special summer series in which writers from The Habit Membership read personal narratives on the theme of leaving home, literally or metaphorically, temporarily or permanently.

Sponsored by The Habit Membership.

Support the show: https://therabbitroom.givingfuel.com/member

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In this especially wistful episode, S.D.G. Morgan tells about returning to a childhood home that has been condemned since he lived there, Heather Cadenhead remembers one of her childhood homes with mixed feelings, and Karen Wells tells about her senior year of high school, when it was time to leave her childhood home and she wasn't able to.

"Leaving Home Stories,” is a special summer series in which writers from The Habit Membership read personal narratives on the theme of leaving home, literally or metaphorically, temporarily or permanently.

Sponsored by The Habit Membership.

Support the show: https://therabbitroom.givingfuel.com/member

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In this episode, Reagan Dregge gets congratulated for her beautiful Midwestern accent, a taxi driver teaches Rachael Watson about hospitality, and Michelle Watson misbehaves in Italy.

"Leaving Home Stories,” is a special summer series in which writers from The Habit Membership read personal narratives on the theme of leaving home, literally or metaphorically, temporarily or permanently.

Sponsored by The Habit Membership.

Support the show: https://therabbitroom.givingfuel.com/member

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In this episode, Beth Matheson leaves home fifty times, Jamie Vanbiber has reason to wish she had stayed home, and Greg Finley leaves for college in an especially vulnerable moment in his life.

"Leaving Home Stories,” is a special summer series in which writers from The Habit Membership read personal narratives on the theme of leaving home, literally or metaphorically, temporarily or permanently.

Sponsored by The Habit Membership.

Support the show: https://therabbitroom.givingfuel.com/member

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In this special Fourth of July episode, Irish writer Judith McQuoid reads a story of her first arrival in the United States, in the summer of 1976. This beautiful reflection is a love letter to America, and a reminder of what this country can still mean to people from around the world.  

This episode is part of a special summer series called “Leaving Home Stories,” in which writers from The Habit Membership will read personal narratives on the theme of leaving home, literally or metaphorically, temporarily or permanently.

Judith McQuoid is the author of Giant, a fictional retelling of CS Lewis’s boyhood in Belfast, Northern Ireland.

Sponsored by The Habit Membership.

Support the show: https://therabbitroom.givingfuel.com/member

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Andrew Wilson is Teaching Pastor at King’s Church London, and has degrees in history and theology from Cambridge (MA) and King’s College London (PhD). He is a columnist for Christianity Today, and has written several books. The most recent is Remaking the World: How 1776 Created the Post-Christian West. Historian Mark Noll wrote, “Andrew Wilson’s book is extraordinary in every way: extraordinary in the breadth of research; extraordinary in the multitude of world-significant events that Wilson identifies for 1776; extraordinary in the depth of his insight on what those events meant (and continue to mean); extraordinary in the verve with which he makes his arguments; and, not least, extraordinary in the persuasive Christian framework in which he sets the book. Remaking the World is a triumph of both creative historical analysis and winsome Christian interpretation.”

Support the show: https://therabbitroom.givingfuel.com/member

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Dr. Warren Kinghorn is a psychiatrist and theologian at Duke University, where he holds joint appointments at Duke Divinity School and the Duke University Medical Center. Warren’s work focuses on the intersection of theology, mental health, and human flourishing—and he brings an integrated, humane perspective to questions that too often get reduced to biology or technique.

His new book is Wayfaring: A Christian Approach to Mental Health Care. In this episode, Warren Kinghorn and Jonathan Rogers discuss how the metaphor of the human being as a machine has shaped mental health care—and what is gained by reclaiming the older metaphor of the human as wayfarer; they talk about the ways that Thomas Aquinas’s teleological vision of human behavior opens up a richer account of freedom, agency, and virtue; and they talk about the possibility that the meaning of life is an active participation in blessing.

This episode, brought to you by The Habit's Writer Development Cohorts, first ran in 2025.

Support the show: https://therabbitroom.givingfuel.com/member

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.