Faye McDonough

This article is the third in what has turned out to be an unexpected trilogy. It started with creativity, moved into connection, heavily influenced by Kae Tempest’s masterful book, On Connection and has found its way here. You don’t need to have read the others, but if you’d like to, they’re waiting for you 

I brought the same journal to this year’s yoga retreat that I took last year. I’d kept it, half-consciously, thinking I might want to track something over time.

I didn’t expect what I found when I read back my entries from twelve months ago. The writing and emotion were tentative. Careful. Searching. I could feel myself holding back on the page and in person as I greeted everyone at the retreat for the first time, not quite ready to arrive. Carrying the internal and external guilt of seven days away from my family. 

This year, I felt calm from the moment I got there. I wrote down words like grounded and safe. It was like I’d already been expected.

That contrast is the thing I kept thinking about. That feeling of coming home overseas. 

It showed me the distance I’ve travelled and I wasn’t the only one who noticed. My yoga retreat friend and sunrise swim companion, Kathy, commented on how far I’ve come in more ways than one; in my yoga practice, in the physio exercises she gave me last year (long story!) and perhaps most importantly, as a person.  

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about what it means to come home, and I don’t think it’s always about a place. Sometimes it’s a feeling. A familiar ease that tells you you’re exactly where you’re supposed to be, even if you’re somewhere you’ve never been before.

The songs that kept coming back

I caught Norah Jones’ Feels Like Home on the pool bar stereo one afternoon, an album I loved in 2004 and hadn’t thought about in years. That was the moment I realised music was going to be a thread through this trip. Music has been keeping me company a lot this year from the playlists I create to accompany my home yoga practice to the bangers I put on when I’m doing the chores.

At the WISF annual retreat earlier in May, I played my guitar live for the first time in a long time. Two songs: Blackbird and Harvest Moon.

Blackbird has been with me for over twenty years. It might even be the reason I picked up the guitar in the first place. I first learned it with my guitar teacher in the early noughties. Revisited it again in 2011 or so. Picked it up and put it down more times than I can count, never being able to put it all together from beginning to end. This year, something finally clicked and I pieced it together properly. Sitting there and playing it in front of such a generous audience felt like completing something I’d started a very, very long time ago.

Harvest Moon was the song I’d planned to play at our wedding, until a friend talked me out of it. Choosing to play it at the retreat felt significant. The moment I didn’t get to have. Not sentimental though, just right (although I still can’t manage singing along to that one – that might take me another few years).

Both songs are about resilience, both individually to overcome challenges and as a couple, weathering the storm of a long term relationship. About finding your way back to something you’d set down. I didn’t plan that theme but I do notice it now.

Recognising yourself

Coming home to things I love has been a thread through this year in ways I hadn’t expected.

Our first quarterly management accounts at work gave me a particular kind of joy. Slightly embarrassing and cringe to write that but I’m owning it! The problem-solving, the reconciliation, the satisfaction of it all adding up and telling the true story of our first few months. It took me straight back to my RBS Invoice Finance days, doing the same thing monthly with my clients and loving it. I’d forgotten how much I enjoy that kind of work.

At the yoga retreat I ended up talking for hours with people who had North West connections. There’s a shorthand with other northerners that I didn’t realise I’d been missing. Something just settles when it’s there and it was a pleasure to spend time with people who just get it – the reality of being a Northerner outside of the North. 

I don’t know exactly what coming home is made of. Psychological safety, maybe? Ease without effort. The particular comfort of not having to explain yourself. As essential at work as it is at home.

What I do know is that you can’t manufacture it. You can only notice when it arrives, and pay attention to what that tells you.

The yoga retreat journal is sitting on my desk. I’ll keep it for next year. I’m curious what I’ll read back then and which version of Faye I’ll find.

What does coming home feel like for you? Is there somewhere, or something, you’ve returned to this year that felt unexpectedly like home? I’d love to know.

One last thing. I’m taking the summer away from public writing, back in September. I want to write privately for a while, see what emerges, and use the time to rebuild this website into something that reflects where I find myself now. If you’d like to be notified when I’m back, add your email on the home page, underneath ‘Join the fun!’ I’ll look forward to sharing what the summer brought