Where do you call ‘home’?

I left home at 18, to study at university a couple of hours’ drive away. As was expected for a single young woman from a Nigerian home, I returned to live with my mother and siblings after my degree and moved out again when I got married a few years later. 

After the divorce, I moved out of our marital home and into a flat share in London. I left there temporarily to live in the French Alps for a ski season and returned six months later. I later moved to my own place in London but left the capital after the first year of the pandemic and moved in with my aunt in Oxfordshire before heading to the Cotswolds where I have now lived in four different homes. 

In my childhood we moved from a flat to a house as our family got bigger and I spent months at a time in the home of one of our paid nannies. After my parents’ divorce, we moved again when our family home was sold. That’s a lot of moving and I often feel keenly the absence of a place to truly call ‘home’ in adulthood. 

This issue we’re talking about the concept of ‘home’ and what that means to each one of us. We spoke with an interior designer and a garden designer about their thoughts on this and our regular contributors cover the topic from different angles. Dr Belle Tindall asks if we still need the ‘domestic goddess’, Elaine Storkey considers how pregnant cousins Elizabeth and Mary became ‘home’ for each other and Veronica Zundel wonders whether a tidy house is important for your guests. 

What does ‘home’ mean for you? Email me at womanalive@premier.org.uk 

Love and blessings,

Editor + Creative Director

Doll

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