AWAY FROM HOME?  FEELING HOMESICK?  YOU'RE NOT ALONE:
People with Moebius Syndrome love the familiar; they love what they know.  Change, as those with Moebius and as family members of those with it know, can be hard.  But know this:  you're not alone.  A lot of people feel homesick, as CNN reports:
"There was nothing but excitement for Keila Pena-Hernandez when she first stepped onto the grounds of the University of Missouri.  New school. New city. A new phase of her life. "It's just like wow, wow, wow! I was just excited that I'm in new surroundings," she said.  By the third week, the novelty of her new surroundings had worn off. The then 27-year-old health informatics doctoral student from Puerto Rico found herself lying on her bed after classes with the lights turned off and gazing out the window into the sky. All she could think of were the faces of friends and family.  "I started feeling homesick," she recalled. "This is nice, but this is not really home. The gym is awesome, but I didn't know anyone here"...This month, as thousands of freshmen and graduate students flock to colleges to begin a new academic year, many will be leaving home, some for the first time.  As routines are replaced with new social and academic pressures, and home by a dormitory full of strangers, homesickness -- the longing ache for the familiar, friends or grandma's cooking -- sets in. Pena-Hernandez knows all about that; she's felt it since she left home in 2004.
Even so, only lately has there emerged a clearer sense of what homesickness is -- a distinct adjustment disorder with identifiable symptoms -- and what causes it.  In a paper co-written by Chris Thurber and Edward Walton published in Pediatrics, the journal of the American Academy of Pediatrics, homesickness is defined as "distress and functional impairment caused by an actual or anticipated separation from home and attachment objects such as parents".....Those who suffer from the condition feel some form of anxiety, sadness and nervousness, and most distinctly, obsessive preoccupation with thoughts of home, Thurber said.despite the way it's coined, homesickness isn't necessarily about home. And neither is it exactly an illness, experts said.  Instead, it stems from our instinctive need for love, protection and security -- feelings and qualities usually associated with home, said Josh Klapow, a clinical psychologist and associate professor at the University of Alabama's School of Public Health. When these qualities aren't present in a new environment, we begin to long for them -- and hence home.  "You're not literally just missing your house. You're missing what's normal, what is routine, the larger sense of social space, because those are the things that help us survive," Klapow said."

So you're not weird for feeling homesick.  You're not strange for disliking change.  But remember there are ways to deal with it, and to overcome it.

MORE BRAIN STUDIES:
Naturally people with Moebius are always interested to learn about what scientists are studying concerning the brain these days...and what they're learning from it.  Today's news?  Some scientists wonder what effect it has on the brain if we take away all our current technological toys--cell phones, e-mail, laptops, etc:
"Mr. Braver, a psychology professor at Washington University in St. Louis, was one of five neuroscientists on an unusual journey. They spent a week in late May in this remote area of southern Utah, rafting the San Juan River, camping on the soft banks and hiking the tributary canyons.  It was a primitive trip with a sophisticated goal: to understand how heavy use of digital devices and other technology changes how we think and behave, and how a retreat into nature might reverse those effects.  Cellphones do not work here, e-mail is inaccessible and laptops have been left behind. It is a trip into the heart of silence — increasingly rare now that people can get online even in far-flung vacation spots.  As they head down the tight curves the San Juan has carved from ancient sandstone, the travelers will, not surprisingly, unwind, sleep better and lose the nagging feeling to check for a phone in the pocket. But the significance of such changes is a matter of debate for them...the trip’s organizer, David Strayer, a psychology professor at the University of Utah, says that studying what happens when we step away from our devices and rest our brains — in particular, how attention, memory and learning are affected — is important science.  “Attention is the holy grail,” Mr. Strayer says.  “Everything that you’re conscious of, everything you let in, everything you remember and you forget, depends on it.”  Echoing other researchers, Mr. Strayer says that understanding how attention works could help in the treatment of a host of maladies, like attention deficit disorder, schizophrenia and depression. And he says that on a day-to-day basis, too much digital stimulation can “take people who would be functioning O.K. and put them in a range where they’re not psychologically healthy.”

Note however that other scientists are skeptical.  And no one has reached, yet, any hard and fast conclusions...


"Making mistakes is how most everybody learns about relationships and the full range of human behavior.  I was learning.  No miracles, but grace--grace in my mistakes.  You can look for the grace years after making the mistake.  It is still fresh, growing from the ground nearby, waiting for you to notice."--David Roche, THE CHURCH OF 80% SINCERITY.