Dislocated and misplaced: an autoethnography of moving, missing, and finding home

Frequently moving home has been linked to a full spectrum of mental health issues including depression, anorexia and schizophrenia, multiple health problems, and even premature mortality. Whilst relocation trauma, as a concept, is still incompletely understood, theories suggest it may stem from the cumulative stress of disrupted relational ties, routines, and familiar environments. With most research largely quantitative in design, nuanced light needs to be shone on the topic of moving on and settling down so that we might understand more of the ‘whys’ and ‘hows’ surrounding this subject. This research is a reflexive investigation into the author’s experiences of recurrent relocation which resulted in traumatic attachments to people and places. The project is framed within the author’s present-day context of simultaneously relocating a therapy practice whilst experiencing fledgling ‘belonging-in-place’. Its aim was to study the relational practices of one example of a ‘modern nomadic’ culture for the purposes of broadening general, psychological, and therapeutic understanding of a life without roots. Using creative means, data were gathered as a self-interview, journal extracts, poetry, letters, and other artefacts before being crafted into narratives using visual, literary, and intuitive, body-based methods. Findings are presented as a layered account setting the author’s third person narrative alongside analysed personal reflections, theory, and research. These include tentative connections between adapting to (and being separated from) home with feelings of anger, loneliness, pain, fear, trauma, dissociation, relational distress, and shame. Findings suggest these experiences were likely caused by disrupted social networks, inadequate support, insecure parental attachments, and fragmented identity formation during formative years. The author’s current sense of residential settlement appears to be due to an unexpected, burgeoning sense of trust in the unfolding emotional bond with one particular place. The study shows the author in the ‘process of figuring out what to do and how to live’ whilst exploring personal meanings of moving, missing, and finding home. Conclusions highlight elements of loss and pain whilst also illustrating possibilities for mindful movement and positive change.