When Home Doesn’t Look Like Home Anymore

While i was on holiday, my heart has already travelled home and what I’m seeing is devastating.

Beautiful Mount Maunganui, the place I’ve walked countless times for grounding, clarity, and healing, now looks like a warzone. Flooding and relentless weather have caused widespread damage. A landslide wiped out the pools that had quietly become part of my therapy, part of how I regulated my nervous system, part of how I learned to breathe again in hard seasons.

Those places weren’t just locations on a map. They were anchors.
They were where my body learned safety.
Where my mind slowed.
Where healing didn’t feel so heavy.

Seeing them destroyed pulls on old strings the ones tied to loss, stability, and the fragile sense of safety we build when we’ve lived through trauma. And layered over that grief is something deeper: the knowledge that there are still people missing. Families waiting. Communities holding their breath.

I’ve never witnessed devastation like this before. It changes the energy of a place. It shifts something collective. The air feels heavier even from a distance.

Coming home knowing it will feel different. There will be a shared sadness not just for damaged buildings or lost routines, but for the sense of “before.” Before the storm. Before the landslides. Before everything changed.

Grieving places can feel strange. But when places hold our healing, losing them hurts in a very real way. We mourn not just what was destroyed, but what those spaces gave us peace, grounding, moments of relief in bodies that have known survival.

Still, I’m reminding myself of this:
Even when healing spaces are damaged, the healing they offered doesn’t disappear. What those walks taught my body, what those pools gave my nervous system, still lives inside me. The strength built there didn’t wash away.

For now, I’m holding space for my own sadness, for everyone affected, and for a community navigating collective grief. Home may not look the same, but healing has a way of finding new shapes, new spaces, new paths forward.

And when the ground feels unsteady, we return to what we know: breath, gentleness, connection, and compassion for ourselves and for each other.