Practicing Homebase Without a Home

I'm currently sitting in what I'm calling “home” on the South Island of New Zealand, rewriting the Dance Facilitator Manual. I'm working on Module 3: Homebase—which feels ironic, because right now, I don't actually have one.

Last August, I sold my house in the small mountain town I had called home for eighteen years. Our belongings went into storage, and since then, my daughter and I have been moving between countries—Ireland, Portugal, Turkey, and now New Zealand—finding temporary homes as we go.

From the outside, it can look adventurous and romantic — and sometimes it is. It's also tiring and quietly terrifying. The hardest moments come when I remember there's no fixed place to return to. For most of my life, no matter how much I travelled, there was always a home waiting — a cat, plants, a wardrobe, a sense of return. Now those things are scattered: rehomed, sold, stored, or living with family. When that reality lands in my body, it can bring panic and grief long before my mind has a chance to remind me that this is temporary.

So, as I revise the Homebase module, I find myself having to practise what I teach. 

In the manual, Homebase is described as both the foundation we stand on as facilitators and what we return to when things get shaky. It's made up of five attributes — the minimum required, and enough on their own:

Guidance · Awareness · Dance · Belonging · Integration

(GADBI, for short)

I don't have a neat answer for how to “facilitate life” without a literal homebase. But I am trying to live inside these five principles and trust that they are enough.

I have guidance — upcoming teaching dates, people to visit, places we're curious about, and the practical boundaries of visas and time. It's not a map, but it's a compass.

I practise awareness of the inside and the outside — staying connected to myself, my daughter, my team, and the wider community, even while everything remains in motion.

I keep choosing dance, in the broadest sense. I keep moving, staying curious, and living each moment as fully as I can, rather than stewing in the uncertainty of the future or the loss of the past.

I prioritise belonging wherever we land — through dance floors, worldschooling hubs, beach days, farmers markets, and shared meals. Community doesn't have to be permanent to be real.

And integration — the hardest one — has become a daily practice. There's no clear endpoint to this chapter, so integration can't be about resolution. It has to be about meeting each day as it is, without needing to know what it's all leading to.

If you're waiting for a tidy epiphany, I don't have one. I'm just here — breathing, trusting, and dancing with what's in front of me, waiting for the next song.

I don't know where or when we'll find our next home, the place where we can unpack our things for good. I do know that returning to these five simple principles helps me stay regulated, present, and human.

And for now, that is enough.