As part of this series, I conduct interviews with fascinating people who have resided all over the country and the globe. These occasional interviews appear as podcast episodes (available through your browser or on various podcast apps) and while the starting place for these interviews are questions about physical “homes”, we get to talk about all sorts of other things that are (or are not) “home” in their lives.
Please be advised: in this conversation, Katie shares (in general terms) her experience with sexual abuse from a childhood peer. This portion of the conversation runs from the 23:00-30:00 minute mark.
The first podcast episode of 2023 is here! The laughter always ensues when I get to talk with my friend Katie Hemel from Knoxville, Tennessee. Katie and I met at summer camp when we were 13 years old, but we didn’t become friends until the following summer (I share our “meet cute”, though there was nothing cute about it, not at first)! Along with our friends Laurie and Betsy, we were a force to be reckoned with—it's a good thing our teenage girl judginess is a thing of the past….
Katie now lives within a 10-mile radius of where she grew up in Knoxville, so I was interested in hearing her perspective of “home” and why she ended up so close–but not too close–to the house where she spent her childhood (and where her parents still live). In between that time and now, Katie lived in other places (most significantly, Cary, North Carolina), and found that she had to have those experiences away in order to be ready to settle down back near her roots. There are many of us who can relate to this—you have to leave to come back, but when you’re back, you’re not the same person.
There’s plenty of laughter and absurdity, but it’s also worth noting that there was a time when home wasn’t the safe and comfortable place she thought it would be. While her story is her own, that absence of safety rings true for so many people. And yet, for Katie, there is still the hope that people and places that do feel like “home” can fill the void that a traditional image of home may lack.
It’s just an incredible joy to have these conversations with some of my closest friends and favorite people. Listen to how Katie tries (and fails) to remember a notorious historical figure (to be fair, I failed, too) and when she pressures me to sing Alice Cooper’s song “I’m Eighteen” (I didn’t do it—my Alice Cooper frame of reference is very, very limited).
Finally, the sweet, dreamy ways that “home” is manifested in her life remind me why I started this newsletter in the first place: to deeply explore all the people and places and things that mean something to me, and, I hope, inspire you to do the same.
Reflection questions:
Is there a special meal that has meaning for you? What is it, and why?
If you’ve experienced home as being uncomfortable, sad, or scary, are there ways that you were able to find comfort in the midst of uncertainty? How has that influenced your view of what constitutes a “happy home”? (Remember, you don’t have to share your answers with anyone)!
Image: Hanging out on some railroad tracks alongside the French Broad River in western North Carolina, Summer 1996. Photo by Laurie Rhoney.
KT