sent from: London, UK. destination: Gloucestershire, UK

Living away from home across the world, I found it as isolating and lonely as much as it was freeing and exhilarating. People who talked of seeing their parents or having their siblings help them out with this or that, I quietly resented them and having family and support nearby. I became acutely aware of the million ways in which I had come to rely on them to be close by and how much I missed them. Now I’m living back home and the danger is of taking it for granted; and as I hang out with friends who are themselves living away from home, I can see in their eyes some of what I used to feel ~ not the resentment perhaps, but certainly something of the loneliness and isolation. I do not want to take anything for granted.