Home at Last: Freedom from Boarding School Pain by Mark Stibbe

by Mark Stibbe

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 he calls his ‘boarded heart’. In this ground breaking book, Mark argues that there are many thousands of wounded people just like him, 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.Home at Last tells a poignant story and offers a unique model of healing. It provides psychological insights, yes, but it also delivers the blueprint for a spiritual homecoming. Arguing that boarding schools are orphanages for the privileged, Mark shows how we can only truly find healing in the perfect Father’s love. Home At Last is split into two parts. The first part looks the cycle of pain created by the boarding school wound. This involves four deep impacts to the desertion, deprivation, disengagement and dependency. The second part, the cycle of healing, embraces the four stages of the healing revelation, restoration, reconnection and recovery. These exactly correspond to the four deep impacts to the soul. They are four steps towards the Father’s house. They must be experienced if former boarders are to enjoy the long-awaited end to their spiritual winter.

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Reviews

[Mark · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was given this book by a friend who thought it might be helpful. And to be honest, I wasn't quite sure what to expect. But he had also given me Nick Duffell's remarkable and salutary The Making Of Them: The British Attitude To Children And The Boarding School SystemThe Making Of Them, which I had benefited from immensely, so gave this a go.

In a way, Stibbe goes to the next level from Duffell's book (which he's clearly been influenced and helped by), to see the spiritual/soul dimension of what happens to so many who have boarded at school from an early age. The consequences can be serious - not for all, by any stretch, but for many. I think what was most powerful about this book was Stibbe's openness to what remains (for so many of us) hidden in the darkest recesses of heart and memory. There is such shame, confusion, and hurt deep down there. Tragically, too many don't even begin to delve into it (for fear of what might be found, perhaps). It's no easy matter. But it's crucial, nonetheless.

There is a danger in victimhood that it leads to justifications and excuses for subsequent behaviour - that doesn't seem apparent here. There is an important acknowledgement of the effects on those closest to us, especially. Yet I know well the temptations towards that line of thinking.

But it was so helpful to find the resolutions to, and refuge from, the pain in the adopting fatherhood of God - who truly offers a home. So this really is a good book to lend/give to the spiritual seeker with deep-rooted scars from being boarding-orphaned at an early age.

[Amanda Lannon · Rating 5 out of 5]

Reading this as a fellow boarder, homeless and abandoned, seeking healing and peace in my lot.