Sent away to boarding school on his eighth birthday, Mark Stibbe watched his adoptive parents drive down a gravel road, leaving him standing in front of a huge country house with his trunk and his teddy.
That night, already confused and frightened, he was given the first of four beatings in his first two weeks. This trauma of abandonment and abuse was to scar Mark’s life until his fifties, when divorce forced him to deal with what he calls his “boarded heart”. In this ground-breaking book, Mark argues that there are many thousands of wounded people, men and women who suffer throughout their lives with homesick souls. This often leads to them being driven to succeed in their work while failing to engage emotionally at home.
Arguing that boarding schools are orphanages for the privileged, Home At Last is split into two parts. The first part looks at four deep impacts to the soul: desertion, deprivation, disengagement and dependency. The second part embraces the four corresponding stages of the healing journey: revelation, restoration, re-connection and recovery. They must be experienced if former boarders are to enjoy the long-awaited end to their spiritual winter.
While the author interprets this reclamation religiously as a return to the Father, it does not have to be seen this way – whatever the reader’s beliefs, it is a homecoming.
Available here.