I don’t think I’ve written about it much (ever?) here, but when I first moved to North Carolina, I was miserable. Actually, just to make you feel better about yourself if you’re currently suffering from a severe case of homesickness, let me be clear: every day when I came home from work, I would cry through dinner. For a month. The only thing I wanted to discuss on our evening walks was our plan for moving back to Connecticut — how, and how quickly it could happen. I hated NC and the town we lived in, I missed my family and my friends horribly, I found starting a new job ridiculously stressful, I couldn’t stand the July heat… the list goes on. A lovely reader emailed me last fall to ask if I could write a post about how I got over my homesickness. I feel badly that it’s taken me so long to do so, but the truth is that even now, after almost five years, the memory is still a bit raw. Thankfully, it has much, much softer edges, and I hope this post might be an encouragement to any of you who are going through something similar. My best tips for curing homesickness, accompanied by pictures of our cats, because everything is better with cats: 1. Have a support system. I almost feel bad for writing this one, because if I hadn’t had John by my side, I don’t think any of these other tips would have done the trick. But, it needs to be said. Keeping in mind that it was MY job opportunity we had uprooted and moved for, it’s nearly unbelievable to me how kindly and stoic-ly he tolerated my complaining and wailing, commiserating without joining in on my NC-bashing fests. He fed me