Can telling your story improve The Rest of Your Life? Find out by taking part in this 12-week challenge to explore what 'home' means to you, gain new insights, and write a new life story.
I love the challenge and so glad I got on to Day 1 of it (so often I don’t read my emails from Substack, just too many). I wrote with pen on paper for 5 min and boy, my hand is hurting, not used to the speed.
The topic of home gave me so much to think about. I wrote about the duality of home as the childhood place of safety and (seeming) permanence. Where you are taken care of. But then the adult home as a now single person, the first place that is in my own image and not my spouse’s. But also its impermanence and the effort involved in keeping a roof over the family’s heads.
I'm so glad you did too, Ania! Yes, amazing how much we can get hand cramp when not used to writing like this. There is so much to unpack in our experiences of home, but I love that you hit on the duality right away.
I noticed that you are halfway through this Challenge now and had the impulse to climb aboard, so I'm aiming to do 1 prompt a day between now and next week!
For some reason I'm quite resistant to freewriting as a practice, I think because it brings to my awareness just how fragmented my inner life is. But for the last few weeks I've been managing to publish weekly posts that are developing a voice that feels more like "me", so with that as a container I feel more ready to embrace the unconscious messiness too.
I was a bit surprised to find that the first thing I wrote was that home means "a place where I don't know what to expect". I realised that home for me is wrapped up in relations to other people, often unpredictable ones, but that I have a fantasy about having a home where I have more control, but have mostly tried to make that home inside myself rather than as an external reality. Now I'm at a point in life (at 45!) where I might be able to afford a mortgage and have my own home within the next year or two, which feels significant.
It brought up lots of early visual memories, of my first 3 homes (up to age 4), including one that was a temporary shelter for women that my mum and I moved to when I was 4 and my dad was mentally ill and behaving dangerously. It seemed I was entering a new stage of awareness around that time - I can remember new things I noticed (like inspecting the palms of my hands in great detail) and new concepts like being told what a "skeleton key" was, which made a great impression on me for some reason. Interesting to notice the kinds of things that pop up now, and wonder why these particular memories stick when so much else must have been forgotten.
'home means "a place where I don't know what to expect"' is definitely a great insight! An early rootlessness of some kind, shifting locations, is surprisingly high (surprising to me, anyway) among the people taking part in this challenge. But maybe I shouldn't be surprised; more to process! A shelter under those circumstances is particularly disconcerting, and you can see how the pattern "a place where I don't know what to expect" was set up very early. It can be hard to discover our inner life, the reality of it (fragmented, for you) but it's also very healing as we come to terms with it. I remember when I started freewriting I was horrified by how dark it was in there, but this was rather critical self-information! I love that "skeleton key" memory, and the palms inspection.
Playing catch-up here as mail prompts aren't arriving. But this (bookmarked) web page will do nicely.
So - home - I have lived in so many places carrying the "home" label, 12+ by the time I "left home" and continuing at the same rate ever since until... I settled in a house in Hull but that's a whole other story. I'm now in a quiet village about 8 miles as the crow flies from where I was when I was seventeen and since I am now seventy, there seems to be a synergy beyond the syncopation of ages.
So free writing, home turned out to be many, many things, none of which were a specific physical place. Quel surprise. One A4 page in five non-stop minutes. And one idealet to conjure with further, perhaps: "Home is end-of-term, end of suffering, end of shame end of loneliness though there are no other children and I am alone often."
Thanks for the comment on the free writing line! I shall extract that and put it in the "one day..." notebook. (I still like pen on paper best.)
I'm way behind with this challenge. I shall do my best to catch up this week. And - I checked, no emails coming through from here. Other sites seem to be working.
It's been a while since I free-wrote to a time - mine was for seven minutes. The surprise for me was starting with writing about home as a visible tangible structure, an external reflection of me to the notion that my body is my home. And was the first home my children knew (reminded of this from a beautiful poet who showed up in this writing) I am the home for all my experiences, and memories, and that home, me, is where I am, always. It's a constant in my life.
Thanks Ros, I gave it a go. Ended up reminiscing on all the different homes I've visited when traveling around the world, and what a special thing it is when people invite others over into their homes. I feel grateful to have had that experience in so many, varied places, and enjoy inviting people around whenever the chance arises :)
I realised how lucky I am that home has always been a place of safety, both as a child and as an adult. (I knew this but hadn’t ever thought about it in that way). 67 years of knowing that, whatever life throws at me, I have a refuge to return to puts me in a very privileged position so I went off at a tangent thinking about people and places where this was not the case.
I enjoyed this Ros thank you. Home is a professional as well as a personal matter for me as I’m a property developer who makes homes for others for a living. None of that came up in what I wrote though it was all intensely personal. I didn’t hit start on my 5 minute timer and having realised at what must have been about 4 minutes I hit it and did another 5 so 9mins in total. I wrote 255 words - is that a good speed for completely free writing? I will pick one of the threads in what I wrote and develop tomorrow per your recommendation. Thanks again
Thank you, Carlo. You have another interesting layer to your explorations with your professional interest. I can touch-type at a very high speed and can do 750 in 16 minutes at max speed so you are not too far off with 255 words in 9 minutes. It's 28 words per minute, just under what I would expect for touchtyping. With real thoughtless flow speed, I would aim for your touchtyping speed as measured by an online test (it could be anything from 30-120wpm if you're not superhuman). I would even use that as a bit of self-competition and see whether, the next time you do 5 minutes, you can write as many words per minute as your touch typing speed x 5. Not because it's a speed competition but because the faster you go, the more likely you will get into a flow state connected fully to your subconscious; it's a sign you're really letting your subconscious take the wheel.
Wow, I just assumed that you must have done 'word count' rather than manually counted handwritten words! That sounds very fast for handwriting. Well done!
I love what you're doing and would dive into this head first if weren't so behind in my other projects! I will try to do at least some of the prompts. (The first one does hit home. So to speak...)
Kathi, understood! Pick up as much of it as you find useful. It doesn't need to take much time, and if something hits home, it might prove a rich seem that will feed into some writing in the future.
I love the challenge and so glad I got on to Day 1 of it (so often I don’t read my emails from Substack, just too many). I wrote with pen on paper for 5 min and boy, my hand is hurting, not used to the speed.
The topic of home gave me so much to think about. I wrote about the duality of home as the childhood place of safety and (seeming) permanence. Where you are taken care of. But then the adult home as a now single person, the first place that is in my own image and not my spouse’s. But also its impermanence and the effort involved in keeping a roof over the family’s heads.
I'm so glad you did too, Ania! Yes, amazing how much we can get hand cramp when not used to writing like this. There is so much to unpack in our experiences of home, but I love that you hit on the duality right away.
Hi Ros!
I noticed that you are halfway through this Challenge now and had the impulse to climb aboard, so I'm aiming to do 1 prompt a day between now and next week!
For some reason I'm quite resistant to freewriting as a practice, I think because it brings to my awareness just how fragmented my inner life is. But for the last few weeks I've been managing to publish weekly posts that are developing a voice that feels more like "me", so with that as a container I feel more ready to embrace the unconscious messiness too.
I was a bit surprised to find that the first thing I wrote was that home means "a place where I don't know what to expect". I realised that home for me is wrapped up in relations to other people, often unpredictable ones, but that I have a fantasy about having a home where I have more control, but have mostly tried to make that home inside myself rather than as an external reality. Now I'm at a point in life (at 45!) where I might be able to afford a mortgage and have my own home within the next year or two, which feels significant.
It brought up lots of early visual memories, of my first 3 homes (up to age 4), including one that was a temporary shelter for women that my mum and I moved to when I was 4 and my dad was mentally ill and behaving dangerously. It seemed I was entering a new stage of awareness around that time - I can remember new things I noticed (like inspecting the palms of my hands in great detail) and new concepts like being told what a "skeleton key" was, which made a great impression on me for some reason. Interesting to notice the kinds of things that pop up now, and wonder why these particular memories stick when so much else must have been forgotten.
'home means "a place where I don't know what to expect"' is definitely a great insight! An early rootlessness of some kind, shifting locations, is surprisingly high (surprising to me, anyway) among the people taking part in this challenge. But maybe I shouldn't be surprised; more to process! A shelter under those circumstances is particularly disconcerting, and you can see how the pattern "a place where I don't know what to expect" was set up very early. It can be hard to discover our inner life, the reality of it (fragmented, for you) but it's also very healing as we come to terms with it. I remember when I started freewriting I was horrified by how dark it was in there, but this was rather critical self-information! I love that "skeleton key" memory, and the palms inspection.
Playing catch-up here as mail prompts aren't arriving. But this (bookmarked) web page will do nicely.
So - home - I have lived in so many places carrying the "home" label, 12+ by the time I "left home" and continuing at the same rate ever since until... I settled in a house in Hull but that's a whole other story. I'm now in a quiet village about 8 miles as the crow flies from where I was when I was seventeen and since I am now seventy, there seems to be a synergy beyond the syncopation of ages.
So free writing, home turned out to be many, many things, none of which were a specific physical place. Quel surprise. One A4 page in five non-stop minutes. And one idealet to conjure with further, perhaps: "Home is end-of-term, end of suffering, end of shame end of loneliness though there are no other children and I am alone often."
Good start. Thanks Ros.
Wow, Matthew, that is so many childhood homes. I can't even imagine being that unsettled. I like that pattern you noticed between 17-70.
I absolutely love that sentence you came up with in the freewriting. It says so much.
I'm sorry the emails aren't getting through to you. I wonder why that is.
Thanks for the comment on the free writing line! I shall extract that and put it in the "one day..." notebook. (I still like pen on paper best.)
I'm way behind with this challenge. I shall do my best to catch up this week. And - I checked, no emails coming through from here. Other sites seem to be working.
It's been a while since I free-wrote to a time - mine was for seven minutes. The surprise for me was starting with writing about home as a visible tangible structure, an external reflection of me to the notion that my body is my home. And was the first home my children knew (reminded of this from a beautiful poet who showed up in this writing) I am the home for all my experiences, and memories, and that home, me, is where I am, always. It's a constant in my life.
Thanks for the prompt Ros
It’s a pleasure, Carol. That sounds like a very lovely writing session.
Thanks Ros, I gave it a go. Ended up reminiscing on all the different homes I've visited when traveling around the world, and what a special thing it is when people invite others over into their homes. I feel grateful to have had that experience in so many, varied places, and enjoy inviting people around whenever the chance arises :)
That’s an interesting place to go, Shoni. I, too, have been thinking and writing about all the different homes I’ve had.
I realised how lucky I am that home has always been a place of safety, both as a child and as an adult. (I knew this but hadn’t ever thought about it in that way). 67 years of knowing that, whatever life throws at me, I have a refuge to return to puts me in a very privileged position so I went off at a tangent thinking about people and places where this was not the case.
You are certainly blessed to have that refuge, Helen.
I enjoyed this Ros thank you. Home is a professional as well as a personal matter for me as I’m a property developer who makes homes for others for a living. None of that came up in what I wrote though it was all intensely personal. I didn’t hit start on my 5 minute timer and having realised at what must have been about 4 minutes I hit it and did another 5 so 9mins in total. I wrote 255 words - is that a good speed for completely free writing? I will pick one of the threads in what I wrote and develop tomorrow per your recommendation. Thanks again
Thank you, Carlo. You have another interesting layer to your explorations with your professional interest. I can touch-type at a very high speed and can do 750 in 16 minutes at max speed so you are not too far off with 255 words in 9 minutes. It's 28 words per minute, just under what I would expect for touchtyping. With real thoughtless flow speed, I would aim for your touchtyping speed as measured by an online test (it could be anything from 30-120wpm if you're not superhuman). I would even use that as a bit of self-competition and see whether, the next time you do 5 minutes, you can write as many words per minute as your touch typing speed x 5. Not because it's a speed competition but because the faster you go, the more likely you will get into a flow state connected fully to your subconscious; it's a sign you're really letting your subconscious take the wheel.
Thanks Ros. It wasn’t typed though it was handwritten!
Wow, I just assumed that you must have done 'word count' rather than manually counted handwritten words! That sounds very fast for handwriting. Well done!
I love what you're doing and would dive into this head first if weren't so behind in my other projects! I will try to do at least some of the prompts. (The first one does hit home. So to speak...)
Kathi, understood! Pick up as much of it as you find useful. It doesn't need to take much time, and if something hits home, it might prove a rich seem that will feed into some writing in the future.
That's the plan!