Homecoming

Homecoming: Summary

The man who blew up on every vacation

A forty-year-old man sits alone in a Texas motel room. A few hours ago he was screaming. His wife, his stepchildren, and his own son stared at him in terror while he raged at them over some trifle. Then he got in the car, drove off, and now he sits here in the dark, not understanding what happened. This is the third year running that something inside him slips loose in the middle of the family vacation. And he is, fundamentally, a kind man. The nicest daddy you could imagine. Right up until the moment he turns into Ivan the Terrible.

As he sits there, an image from his childhood surfaces. It is Christmas Eve, he is eleven, lying in his darkened room with the covers pulled over his head, refusing to speak. His father came home late, mildly drunk, the way he always did. The little boy is shaking with rage, but he does not dare make a sound, because he was taught that to voice anger, especially toward a parent, is a deadly sin. So the anger stays inside him and ferments for decades. This man's name is John Bradshaw, and he wrote this book after he realized that the raging forty-year-old was not really him. It was a repressed little boy inside him who had finally broken free.

Bradshaw's book, Homecoming, is built on a single bold claim: there is a child living inside all of us. Not metaphorically, but very literally. The old, wounded, abandoned child you once were lives inside you still, quietly running your adult life. He decides for you when you blow up for no apparent reason. He speaks for you when you cannot bring yourself to say what you want. And until you find him, until you come home to him, you will keep running the same circles over and over. This book is about how to find that child, how to heal him, and how to let the wonder you once were come alive again.