Do you live in the house, the town, the landscape, the country that makes your heart sing? When you daydream about the place that feels the most like home in every way, where are you?

True home – home at a level so deep it feels right at the root of your being – can take the form of a perfect house, a type of climate, or far-away country. When being in that place feels more true and right than anywhere you’ve ever been, or feel you should be, or even reasonably can be, you experience the home you are.

Being home takes on a whole new meaning then.

If the place where I feel the most at home on a cellular level is Germany, but I’ve spent my entire life as a resident and citizen of North America, does it matter that my body – my being – knows more about my true home than my logical mind? Of course not.

What matters is that when I’m in Germany, I feel bigger to the power of ten. I feel both rooted and winged to the nth degree. I smile all through my waking hours. The air itself nourishes and heals me. Everywhere there feels like the right place to be.

In the place where my being is truly at home, I am effortlessly, joyously myself.

Where are you, when you are being home?

Flickr photo: Freiburg Münster, by krossbow.

Related reading: Why Germany is Great for HSPs, Make the Right Move Now

What a blessing it is to go to a doctor who’s a skilled listener.

As the inhabitant and owner of a highly sensitive body, I’ve amassed a great volume of wisdom about my own self. Because the mainstream medical profession has shown a consistent lack of interest in the valuable database I carry around about me and my body, I tend to seek help from the kinder, gentler types of healers, like naturopaths.

In my experience, the most effective healers listen first. They know they’re starting from scratch, they want the full update, and they know I’ve got it. No one wants to feel like they’re superfluous to their own medical treatment – just another tick mark on the mighty doctor’s daily to-do list.

When Rita Charon, a medical doctor, noticed a connection between healing and storytelling, she explored, researched, and eventually coined the term “medical narrative” to describe the profoundly positive benefits to patients when they’re allowed to tell their own stories to doctors who know how to listen.

Charon took the time to study literature and creative writing, to the point of getting another Ph.D., then went on to found The Program in Narrative Medicine at Columbia University, which trains doctors to add listening to their healing skills.

The narrative medicine movement continues to spread – maybe even to a doctor near you. Ask around. There might be someone out there who wants to help you by hearing your story.

“Narrative Medicine fortifies clinical practice with the narrative competence to recognize, absorb, metabolize, interpret, and be moved by the stories of illness.”
~ From The Program in Narrative Medicine’s Mission Statement

Further Resources

I first learned about Rita Charon and narrative medicine from this lovely article: “Story Telling and Healing,” by Heinz Insu Fenkl.

Rita Charon wrote a book called Narrative Medicine: Honoring the Stories of Illness.

The Scientific American published an article about Charon and her work in May of 2005: “When Medicine Meets Literature.”

The New York University School of Medicine medical humanities website includes their Literature, Arts, and Medicine blog and database of resources.

Flickr photo: sitting, emdot.

Related reading: Self-Care Basics, Herbal Pharmacy