Homing by Alice Irene Whittaker

A memoir about abandoning an exhausting commuter lifestyle to move to a cabin in the woods, embracing imperfection while cultivating a life of care for self and nature.

Alice Irene Whittaker was addicted to productivity, perfectionism, and discipline. She was used to rushing between multiple jobs, her demanding ballet training, and volunteering for social justice causes, making sure that every single moment of her day was accounted for. But then she finds herself as a new mother, commuting four hours a day into the city and exhausted by the state of the world and paralyzed by climate guilt and anxiety. Something has got to give. Overnight, Alice Irene and her husband decide to retreat to a cabin in the woods, in search of a new kind of life.

Surrounded by creek, meadow, and forest, Alice Irene begins a new lifelong journey of repairing her fractured relationship with both herself and the natural world. Dismantling a history of anorexia, obsessiveness, and workaholism, she decides to stop taking and start caretaking. But how can she take care of nature if she cannot treat herself with care?

Braiding together her personal journey with the stories of others who are tending to the Earth, Alice Irene Whittaker has crafted a lyrical, relatable memoir about regeneration and moving from a life of despair to a life of care. Searching for the spaces between the sorrow of wildfires and the beauty of wildflowers, Homing is about returning home to our bodies, geographies, communities, and place, all as a part of nature. (From Freehand Books)

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Alice Irene Whittaker is a writer and environmental leader. She is the executive director of Ecology Ottawaand the creator and host ofReseed, a podcast about repairing our relationship to nature. She has been published in national and international publications. Whittakerlives with her family in a cabin in the woods in Qubec.

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Whittakerhas longlisted for all threeCBC Literary Prizes. She was on the2022 CBC Poetry Prize longlist, the2021 CBC Nonfiction Prize longlistand was on the longlist of the 2012CBC Short Story Prize.