Home > Resources > Meditations > A Short Meditation for Homesickness
Homesickness does not always show up as sadness. Sometimes it is irritability, a low hum of not-quite-belonging, or a sharp wave that arrives at an ordinary moment, a smell, a song, a public holiday nobody around you is marking. This meditation does not try to talk you out of missing home, it gives the feeling somewhere to sit for a few minutes.
Brief mindfulness practice has a reasonably strong evidence base for reducing the intensity of difficult emotions in the moment, even when the underlying cause, distance from home, is not something a meditation can fix. The aim here is smaller: making the feeling more bearable for the next hour, not resolving it.
This is a common experience for people building a life a long way from where they grew up, and it usually eases with time and with a life that feels rooted where you are now, even if it never fully disappears. If you are one of the South Africans living abroad I work with, the online counselling pages describe how sessions work across time zones.
This won’t resolve the distance from home, that isn’t what it’s for. The aim is smaller: making the feeling more bearable for the next hour.
Written by Storme Brand, HPCSA Registered Counsellor, Reg. PRC0023531, practising from Jeffreys Bay since 2012. Last reviewed 11 July 2026. This handout is general information and not a substitute for counselling.
If you are living outside South Africa and homesickness is a bigger, more constant weight than this practice can hold, that is a common and specific experience to work through. You can read more about life and therapy for people living abroad, or get in touch, there’s no obligation to book.
It might feel uncomfortable for a minute, but sitting with the feeling briefly, rather than pushing it down, usually makes it more bearable, not worse. It’s the same reason talking about missing home often helps more than avoiding the topic.
It varies. Bringing the feeling to the surface for a few minutes and then setting it down often eases the intensity for the rest of that day, though it may return at the next reminder.
No. It doesn’t resolve the distance from home, that isn’t something a meditation can fix. It just makes the feeling more bearable in the moment.
Read about how sessions work or what it costs — or skip straight to asking. No commitment in making contact.
References
Strohmaier, S., Jones, F.W., & Cane, J.E. (2021). Effects of length of mindfulness practice on mindfulness, depression, anxiety, and stress: A randomised controlled experiment. Mindfulness, 12, 198–214. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12671-020-01512-5
