Gemma Spake

And it's such a powerful urge because of course it is, but you have to deliberately try and break that if you want to be able to form a new attachment with this new city that you're in.

I've been doing this as of a couple of weeks ago.

It's been really hard, but it's forced me to rely on new friends in the city and my boyfriend who lives here.

And also it's forced me to rely on myself and to just be like, hey, I can actually handle this.

And part of homesickness, again, is I think just being able to say to yourself, I can handle this and I can do hard things.

I will also, this is like not really a tip, it's just advice.

It's a movie recommendation, randomly.

Watch the movie Brooklyn.

If you are feeling intense homesickness right now, sometimes I think, or any feeling, sometimes I think one of the greatest things we can do is

Seeing somebody else's story of enduring that and seeing that they turned out okay, it's basically like vicarious learning or like vicarious modeling, we would call it in psychology.

Basically seeing an example and knowing it's possible for us.

But this movie is incredible.

It's with Saoirse Ronan.

I think it's based in New York, based in Ireland, about this young woman who moves from Ireland to Brooklyn.

I'm not going to spoil it anymore.

I feel like that's kind of a generic migration story.

But it is so profoundly beautiful.

And there is this quote in it that I think is –

The best quote about homesickness, which is like, homesickness is like any other sickness.

It's really annoying and it makes you feel wretched when you've got it and then pretty soon it will move on to somebody else and you won't be able to remember what it felt like.