What is Home?

Not your dictionary definition

On the front porch of my childhood home near Bogota, Colombia last month

In the dictionary, “home” is defined as a place of residence. As the place one resides permanently. But is that all it is?

As I’ve been writing my book, Long Way Home, I realized “home” is a tricky thing to define. Over the past weeks I’ve been thinking about what home means to me and diving into conversations with friends about how they define home.

Is it the house you grew up in? Is it where your family is? Is it a moment in your past? Is it a city? Is it a place you can be yourself at? Or is it something you create inside of you?

But it was while listening to Taylor Swift’s new album, that a line struck. (Yes I’ve been listening to her music since I was 10, thank you very much).

“Little did you know your home’s really only a town you’re just a guest in.”

Maybe she has a point. Maybe home is something transient and impermanent. Something we can weave in and out of. Sometimes it’s a physical place, other times it’s an emotional place. There times when home is a memory we can visit, and other times it’s a future we are working toward creating.

Away from Home

For example for the past year, I spent three months completely away from my “residential home.” But while I was traveling, I did experience a feeling of home in a few of the cities I visited such as Paris. Places where I sensed feelings of belonging, routine, community, and where I could be myself.

The more I traveled, everywhere from Istanbul to Florence or Tokyo, realized I started to find home within myself. Whether it was through my actions of finding a routine— going on a run, going to a coffee shop— these little things that helped ground me wherever I went.

So perhaps home is about feeling safe enough to show up as your true self.

Sure, there are some places with certain energy that will make it easier for us to feel at home. But there are also times that no matter where we are in the world, we can find peace within ourselves and cultivate the feeling of home inside us.

View from my Paris “home” last year

Returning Home

After an extended time traveling abroad, it feels strange to return to our physical home. It’s a wonderful feeling to not live out of a suitcase, to sleep in your own bed, and have your kitchen and books back. But as we return home, we may realize home isn’t the same place we remember.

While we travel and explore the world, we experience life-changing emotions. We grow and transform as people. So when we come back to our home, of course it’s going to feel different.

Our old routine might feel a little boring and stale. We can feel restless and long for for the excitement of life on the road we once had. Suddenly home doesn’t feel like home anymore. We have to create it ourselves again, this time with the new version of ourselves.

We Can Have Multiple Homes

But what if we flip the at the idea of home in a different way?

For example for me there are a few “homes”. I was born in Bogota, Colombia so of course Colombia has a feeling of home. Then I spent almost 20 years in Florida and although I don’t have a house or family there anymore, it still has a feeling of home and familiarity. Now in Texas where I’ve called home for the past 9 years feels like home because it’s where my parents, friends, and routines are.

So many of us, especially if we moved from another country, have the sense that we have multiple homes. Maybe not feeling like we entirely belong to one place, but we somewhat belong to multiple places.

But I also consider my house in Austin— the one I pay rent on, to be my home because it’s my own space with my things, privacy, neighborhood, and where I feel comfortable and can just exist with my own energy.

So maybe home is a place we are a guest in. Maybe home transforms with whatever our soul craves as “home” at that moment. Home becomes a place we carry within our soul and we notice we feel more at home in certain places.

Perhaps thats why a lot of us enjoy travel. Because we leave our familiar home and get lost on purpose… just so we can make our way back home. It’s why we take the long way home— to see what we can experience, who we will meet, and what we will learn along the way.

Curious to hear what you define of as “home”. Drop your comments below, would love to hear your perspective!