Does anyone else feel completely rootless?

[Nimchinge]

I grew up all over the place. Family scattered all over the world. Ended up choosing a job I can do from anywhere. I feel footloose, not anchored anywhere. Wherever I go I feel like I should go somewhere else. I miss the UK and want to go back to live there. But then when I'm there I feel like l would be better off elsewhere. It's like I have a permanent veil of sadness, i think from having been rootless as a child and continuing that.
Does anyone else feel this way? If you have and "solved it", how did you do that?
It's been this way for years and I've worn myself out now. I don't know where to go or what to do. Feels like an impasse.

I feel like this and I grew up in one place but in an abusive home. I just never felt like it was my “home”, if I think of my childhood home, I think of my grandparents house where we spent most of our time.

Even now I get massively homesick for my house and my area but when I am here it takes me ages to settle back. We moved out by 3 miles but it’s technically no longer London and I struggled hugely for 4 years. Just coming round to it now and feel like this is my home because I made it mine.

I do understand, it’s a longing you just can’t put your finger on and isn’t easily soothed x

I moved around loads as a child and was so envious of people whose family and friends all still lived in the same place they always had. I think there's a sense of safety with the familiarity and continuity. I vowed I would have that for my family. I travelled loads in my twenties but settled down in my thirties and am now in my forties creating the childhood I wish I'd had for my son. We still travel loads, but have our roots firmly fixed and have made good friends.

How old are you?

@Iampicklerick
it’s a longing you just can’t put your finger on and isn’t easily soothed
That's funny, we had completely different experiences but that's exactly it. It's like a homesickness that can never be cured. When I'm in the UK I miss other places. When I'm elsewhere I'm in the UK. Even within the UK, I can be in London and want to live there, but then I'll come up to my grans village and want to move there instead. Its crazy making.

@Bellabelloo
I'm 35 so feel like it's a real turning point. I cant deal with this tugging feeling anymore, it's really distracting and takes up so much headspace. I just dont know how it's possible to make peace with one place?

Can you create a community? Or join one? I don't just mean live in one. Actively contribute. I think there's a hole in modern life where church/ religion used to take up space. It's an absence of meaning/ feeling like we belong to something bigger than ourselves. Filling the hole doesn't have to be a spiritual thing. It's just about finding a community that you believe in? A sense of purpose? It's got to be about something deeper than commercial gain (work) or one member of the family (school). Something that chimes with your values? I've found it in my 40s and it's incredibly grounding. Good luck. X

I get you. I've been living abroad for a rolling 3 years, that keeps getting extended into another 3 years, and another and another. So I don't put down roots here as I keep thinking I'll move home in a few years. But when I try to plan where exactly I'd move 'back' to, I can't.

I've just started a book called Home by Mel Thompson. Only 2 chapters in, but seems to be about finding your home wherever you are. It resonates with me so far.

I used to feel this way. I'd lived in 24 different houses by the age of 26. After the pain of the very first move (when I was a child) I never properly put roots down anywhere.
One day I visited a new town and it instantly felt like home, I thought 'wow I would love to live here!'. 2 years later I bought a house there and properly integrated myself into the community. I've explored every inch of the town, I've researched the history, I've supported local businesses and events as much as possible, I've volunteered for community groups. I got married and had my children here. After so many years feeling out of place everywhere, it is so lovely to live somewhere and feel like this town is mine.

I felt like this, lived in multiple places whilst young and always felt a bit lost and without purpose and didn't understand how people made and kept these amazing friends and just bonds with people and places. Then I met "the one" settled with him in his home town, integrated with his friends and family and began our own family here. Now I feel like I've never been anywhere else and this is truly my physical and spiritual "home". If I'd stayed single I'd never have felt settled I think.

[quote Nimchinge]@Iampicklerick
it’s a longing you just can’t put your finger on and isn’t easily soothed
That's funny, we had completely different experiences but that's exactly it. It's like a homesickness that can never be cured. When I'm in the UK I miss other places. When I'm elsewhere I'm in the UK. Even within the UK, I can be in London and want to live there, but then I'll come up to my grans village and want to move there instead. Its crazy making.

@Bellabelloo
I'm 35 so feel like it's a real turning point. I cant deal with this tugging feeling anymore, it's really distracting and takes up so much headspace. I just dont know how it's possible to make peace with one place?[/quote]
There’s a Welsh word for this, it’s Hiraeth. A longing for home (even if you don’t know where it is). I do understand what you mean.

I feel sad that DD will feel like that as she gets older. I can't afford to buy a house and am being priced out of renting in the area we live in, so need to move, but I don't know anyone anywhere else, so it will just be me and her and no-one else at all. It will be strange for me, but really weird for her, as I don't think a random place we have no connection to will easily feel like home.

I sort of feel the same to some extent. I grew up in one area, although we lost our family house and had to move an hour away. This coincided with me then going off to uni. House was sold again, parents split up, my dad died suddenly, my sister had relocated to France, my mother met a man and moved to Suffolk, my grandmother died and I moved to Vancouver. Eventually, after visas ran out, I had to return to the UK but no longer had any base or connections with the place that I grew up, only a load of fairly depressing memories. I literally bought myself a let's go guide to the UK and chose a new place to move to on my own. It was hard. I still toyed with moving back to Vancouver if I could get the necessary visas etc. I felt terribly homesick for it. I felt this way for around ten years. The changing point was having a baby. Suddenly I made friends who were the sort that I'd made at school or Uni. When my baby started school, I suddenly became part of a community. My mum and her man have since relocated to be closer to my children and I feel less homesick. I haven't visited my hometown for many years. I still miss the familiarity of the landscape. I often wonder how much easier it would have been for me had my family, friends and I had just remained in the area where I grew up. I feel as though life would have been far less stressful and lonely being surrounded by people and places that I knew. I am settled now though. I don't want to ever leave the area so that I can provide that continuity and base for my children. I want them to have a choice whether they leave it and know that they can return to it in later years, or indeed stay local if that is what they want. I don't want them to feel betwixt and between like I did for so many years.

Bought a house instead of renting. Put lots of time and love into designing the garden and customising the house to reflect my personality. It’s my bolt hole, my private paradise and I feel rooted in it.

I feel rootless but it doesn't make me sad - it makes me free and independent. I don't have to stay in a location where there might not be suitable jobs/ housing etc. just because I've always lived there. When we were expecting dc2 and couldn't have afforded a bigger house where we lived, we moved to a different country where we could...

@AppleCrumbleForBreakfast

Can you create a community? Or join one? I don't just mean live in one. Actively contribute. I think there's a hole in modern life where church/ religion used to take up space. It's an absence of meaning/ feeling like we belong to something bigger than ourselves. Filling the hole doesn't have to be a spiritual thing. It's just about finding a community that you believe in? A sense of purpose? It's got to be about something deeper than commercial gain (work) or one member of the family (school). Something that chimes with your values? I've found it in my 40s and it's incredibly grounding. Good luck. X

This really interesting. But I want to understand , how did you find it? What do you do?

It's that rather depressing feeling of 'everything changes but nothing does' if that makes sense at all. Half the people from where you have grown up have moved on and left, shops, restaurants, clubs, shopping centres all changed and then, seemingly half the people and places seem unchanged. And it all seems weird and disconcerting. It's like you want to go back, but it's not the same and you have also changed/moved on. Moving back to your home town seems a bit like moving back in with your parents after 20 years and finding your adult self in your childhood bedroom. I wish that my parents had been happily married, still lived in the same home, with happy memories attached and that my Dad had't suddenly died, so that I could at least visit the area. I feel like I want to go back and visit. Maybe I'll do that and reconnect/meet up with some of my old friends who still live there. I think that I just need some sort of connection still with the place even if I no longer live there. I would say though, that as soon as I moved to the city where I live now (and have done for the last 20 years), it did feel right, even if I still felt like I hadn't put roots down.

I'm 48 and I've lived in 18 countries so far. I can commiserate with you OP. But for me, it's more of a feeling like "What's next?" As soon as I've stayed somewhere for more than a a year or so I feel like I have to uproot and move again. I live in England now, almost 20 years. And I'm desperate to move and to have a change, but my husband and kids are settled, so I will stay for the time being.

I moved around a lot as a child and honestly it has affected me my whole adult life. I now have a large family of my own but I cannot ever allow myself to completely settle anywhere .I have a lovely house I have lived in for nearly 20 yrs but I am constantly worrying it will all be taken away at any point. I cant cope with change very well either. Our brilliant neighbours who were close friends moved a couple of years ago and honestly I am still struggling with the change. I just find anything that threatens my little world completely unsettling.

So not much help to you other than to sympathise. I know that feeling of never quite feeling at home anywhere so well and would love to truly belong somewhere.

Re finding a community, for me it was about finding a group of likeminded people. I stumbled into a yoga class one day, and loved it. Started going regularly. Met people there, became familiar, though not necessarily friends. This led to other activities, all with cross overs. (Eco activism, well-being, spiritual exploration, marking seasonal celebrations, charity work, learning new skills, volunteering etc.) Eventually, prob 4 years later, my whole life revolves around this community. My kids are involved, even my skeptical husband. This isn't about friendship, it's more than that. Physically it's a bigger group than a group of friends, it's more about sharing values. It feels like church, without the god bit!

Really enjoying reading all these ideas and hearing others' experiences, makes me feel much less alone!

Really interesting to read how you are associating rootlessness in adult life with having moved a lot as a child or having a childhood 'home' that didn't feel like one. I'm the opposite - lucky to have had a happy childhood in the same house in a small village, which Mum & Dad stayed in for 55 years, so their being there continued well into adulthood for me. But I left the village to go to uni, as did all the other youngsters who took similar paths. Work then took me to a different place again. I think that the demands of study and then work, plus having a partner who is not from the same place, mean it gets impossible to feel real roots anywhere - however long you stay, you're never originally from there. And the original village hasn't got the amenities we'd all want, plus there are very few people there now who I'd still know anyway. Sorry this is a long and waffley answer, but am just wondering whether feeling rootless is a kind of human inevitability except for people who happen to be able to get what they need/want from life in their original area.

I grew up in the same place. I don't hate it, but I've always had a longing to travel (and live, not just holiday - in fact I'm rubbish at holidays), and I kept it up until I realised that my kids were unable to make lasting friendships, because we kept moving (or their friends moved - the danger of international schools). So I've picked a country, and we're stopping here until they're through school.

I have maps up, and try to get away with them to other places to keep my wanderlust under control, because I can feel myself getting restless after 3.5 years in one place, but I'll manage it for them. Then I'm bloody well buying a van and going on the road for a bit though!

Loving both your user name and your positive approach to life!

Yes, I grew up in various places around the world. I could easily go anywhere but I seriously lack deep life-long connections.

My children have roots. They have friends that they met at 2 and 3 years old who are still their friends. They have home as a place.

I work with familie who have lived in different countries.

There is a name for what you are describing, it is being a TCK. It means that you grew up in different places and don't feel ownership of any.

It is usually used for people who grew up in different cultures or countries, and the TCK stands for Third Culture Kid, but it is recognised that many of the feelings that come with it are common to anyone who has moved a lot.
The 'third culture' means that you don;t feel anchored in any one place but relate well to a 'third' culture which is the group of other people like you, even if they grew up in different places, they have similar emotional experiences.

There is a lot about it online, google TCK.
I am a TCK and so are my kids, there ar epositives and negatives, but feels much better when you understand that this is not just you!

This is exactly what I was going to say. You're not at all the only person who feels like this, and there are some upsides to it even. But it's definitely A Thing for people for whom the question "where are you from?" doesn't have a simple answer... There are some good articles and blogs around if you google third culture kids. It's something I also struggle with. The idea of building a new community sounds brilliant, and I'd never really thought of it like that. But I guess it's never too late to find a place you like and start putting down your own roots!

I feel like this too OP but it doesn't make me feel sad, it makes me feel happy. My whole family in recent generations has moved about a lot. Mother's family were from a Scottish island, and thats where all of my living relatives still live, father's mother was from north west England, his mother was from north east England, they lived there for a bit, lived there for a bit, moved to Jersey, then Oxfordshire then back to Edinburgh.

I grew up in Oxfordshire and Edinburgh, have lived in 3 different countries due to work and 3 different parts of the UK, also for work/through choice. I'm now buying a house in France. I've never felt stressed by moving, I used to get really excited and look forward to any planned move by my parents and I still do as an adult. I also settled really well when I lived abroad, made friends with the locals and just adapted my hobbies and lifestyle. When I go somewhere completely different on holiday, I feel so settled almost straight away that I can imagine myself living there. That said, there are a couple of places I have really disliked living in after a couple of years and I've changed jobs and sold houses to change that, rather than just continue to live there unhappily.

The third culture thing probably describes it well. I do have a group of sort of international friends that I met at a summer school overseas, we all keep in touch and get on very well despite living in different countries.

I can also do lots of British accents, complete with dialects.