I am home. 

Not AT home, because of the pandemic. I mean METAPHORICALLY. Or conceptually. Or something.

I am HOME. 

I’ve talked before about how difficult it was for me to learn that you can’t build a home inside other people - especially your kids. You just won’t fit, you see. You need to be your OWN home (not least so you’ve got somewhere to live when they grow up and evict you). 

What you CAN do is invite people to make their home in YOU - but then there’s an even harder lesson to learn and it is this: How to lay down some basic house rules so you don’t end up squeezed out anyway, or living in a ruin.  

This is something of a work in progress right now...

I am home for my children. I am their ‘safe space’. 

But sometimes that doesn’t feel very safe for me. 

Sometimes it is heavy. 
Sometimes it is hard. 
And sometimes it hurts. 

Being someone’s safe space, their home, is a privilege. I know this. It’s one I’ve always craved (and is probably where I originally went wrong building my home IN them and not in myself for them to nest in). 
I have always wanted to be the one they turn to when they are hurt or confused or sad. To be their default. 

And I am. 

I am where they go to tell small secrets and big feelings, to sort through complicated thoughts and uncomfortable truths. I am where they go to feel better. 

But that also means I am the one they go to when they feel worse; when they are at their worst. 

I am the one who gets the moods and the meltdowns. I get the post-school restraint collapse, the sore-losers, the sister-abusers, the thundering anger and the roiling anxiety, the lashings out and flouncings off, the talking back and walking over. I am where they practice snark, push boundaries, and experiment with emotions. 

I am home, where they can be awful and still be awfully loved. 

Of course sometimes that means I feel like everyone else gets the good kids and I get the rubbish ones - when they’ve used up all their nice on other people and there’s none left over. 

Sometimes I ask if they would speak to their teachers or their dad in the same way, and they admit they wouldn’t. 

Sometimes I feel like I’m the doormat in my home. 
Sometimes I feel overwhelmed. 
Sometimes I am tired. 
Sometimes I am bruised. 

The worst times though, are when I am reminded...

I think if you’ve been in a place where being ‘home’ for someone meant getting hurt, where they were their most awful, where they couldn’t say a kind word or use a kind voice and everything you did was wrong and everything you tried wasn’t enough, where you got their dregs and others got their best, where you were de-humanised because you didn’t count… I think if you’ve been in that place, that un-safe home, then repeating the pattern over again with slightly smaller people is triggeringly familiar. 

And I think that if you’re then reacting to it all on red alert in fight or flight mode then you’re going to get it wrong. 

I know I am. 

My tenants are out of control and they’ve already trashed the kitchen...

The trick of course, is setting boundaries and enforcing those house rules, calmly and consistently as the homeowner and landlord. 

HA.

That’s the kind of parent I was before I was actually a parent. Before I was home. 

And it’s been even harder to get right over the last 18 months. The rules have faded, my boundaries have slipped, my walls have crumbled, subsidence has set in and the whole thing is listing precariously… 
Because it’s hard to be someone’s landlord when you’re locked and isolated in the house together for months at a time. It changes the relationship. 

It’s hard to maintain your home without a village of other homes to shield it and share the load. It changes your walls. 

The fact is my kids were the only people I saw for a good long while, and they are still the people I see the most, and the boundaries have gone all... skew-whiff.  For such a long stretch it was all about making it through as best we could, and I let too much go and too much slide because I was out of energy, and out of options - and out of bricks.

Now it means I have to do some rebuilding. 

Because safe for them has to be safe for me, too. Their home has to be MY home first. And it is high time for a Spring/Summer clean. 

So I a writing it down, here, because that’s how I process. That’s how I resolve. 

Kids, I am happy to be Home, but I will not be a doormat ever again. 

In my home, we will use nice voices.
In my home, we will use kind hands. 
In my home, we will treat each other with respect. 
In my home, love does not hurt. 

This is the sort of home you deserve, the sort of home you need to learn so you can create it for yourself and within yourself, so you know what to look for and what to look out for. 

And you need to learn all that from me, by example. 

Because home is inside you. If it’s done right, you can carry it wherever you go, seek its shelter whenever you need, invite people in when you choose. When everything else goes to crap it’s there to turn to, to remember, to fall back on and to emulate. It’s what’s UNDERNEATH. 

Home is everything. 

And I am home. 

xxx

If you are home too, if you are struggling with its double-edged sword of privilege and punch bag, let me know - #Iamhome 

And if you’ve invited someone bigger to make their home in you and they’ve made it feel un-safe, that’s not okay. Mums In Need 0800 852 7414, National Abuse Helpline 0808 2000 247.