The Magazine

The common phrase ‘home is where the heart is’ can mean our loved ones, wherever they are, or the physical family home providing a place of security, love, belonging, acceptance, trust, forgiveness, growth, encouragement, discipline, resilience and possibly faith.

Homes can also be fearful places not offering safe shelter, when there is addiction, or domestic or child sexual abuse. Broken relationships can cause people to leave home and become ‘home’less or estranged from their families; 7.1 million people in the UK live alone.

As a counsellor I work with individuals, couples and families and believe everyone has intrinsic worth. Within the therapeutic relationship counselling offers a safe non-judgemental space to explore the emotional impact of loss, illness, unemployment, disability and trauma for example. Sometimes it is easier to talk to someone outside the family. Systemic therapy, however, enables families to discuss their relationships and functioning. No family is immune from dysfunction.

Made in God’s image, we are relational beings. Attachment theory informs us that if babies form secure attachments with their caregivers, the babies will develop a sense of secure self and can explore the world from the security of that relationship. If not, s/he will develop an insecure attachment. These experiences influence how we relate to people within family and outside and what we believe about ourselves. A therapeutic space enables us to explore childhood wounds which can happen in families.

I have an adopted daughter, and children taken into care usually have insecure attachments due to birth family experiences such as mental illness, abuse, neglect or instability. Those families cannot nurture children to thrive, possibly due to their own childhood experiences. When we welcome children into our home and family we become therapeutic parents creating a secure base. For a second child placed in my family we were her 18thplacement. It was quickly obvious that her little life had been so traumatised she was unable to live in a family.

God ordained family. The roles of husband and wife and children, if there are any, are specified and a model set for Christian families. As part of our healthy development, we separate from our family. Adolescence begins that process as we can grow and develop fully into who we are.

As a Christian I joined God’s family. My then Pastor encouraged us to “go out into the mission field carrying the love of Jesus to a broken world and through a practical compassionate response”.

I sensed my personal calling was to “to bind up the broken-hearted, to proclaim freedom for the captives and release from darkness for the prisoners” (Isaiah 61). John O’Donohue wrote that our homes can “be a house of welcome for the broken and diminished”. We don’t have to be trained counsellors to listen when someone is lonely or hurting. We can all offer a sense of home.