Jonathan Fields

You spent about three years or so visiting, if I remember correctly, 26 different countries, participating in 100 or something different ceremonies.

But I want to start a little bit closer to home.

In the introduction of A Time Together, you write about walking through your own front door after dropping your daughters off at college and feeling – I think these are kind of your words – homesick in your own home.

And it's like I knew exactly what you meant.

Even though my circumstances are different, everyone joining us is going to have a different circumstance.

What is the thing that you discovered in those first few weeks that made you realize –

Oh, this is the feeling.

And this also is not a private problem or feeling.

This is something much bigger that's happening.

We just maybe been calling it by the wrong name.

It's an interesting word for what you just described, because when you talk about homesickness as a sort of a condition, you're not using it in the way that most of us would use it or have thought about using it.

How is it different than what people describe in 30s, 40s, 50s, calling things like empty nest, midlife crisis, just being tired after so many years?

How is this different?

I want to drop into a number of the elements of what you just said.

But I want to make sure I'm also really clear on what the dilemma is here.

Because it sounds like what you're describing is sort of an experience of relational dislocation.

The relationships that used to anchor us are getting renegotiated at the same time.

Like everything all at the same time.

And the feeling that it produces...

is us just being wildly unmoored.