Week 41 - ending 10/14: Home

Throughout life home can change from being a person, place, feeling or object. Sometimes we spend years trying to find a home. Sometimes we can identify multiple homes and some are least expected.

I was recently visiting a friend in Northern California. While I lived in Northern California for 11 years, I was always across the bay from where she lives. Nonetheless, there is a feeling of home in that part of the world for me. While this was my first time seeing her new house, there was a feeling of comfort and home there too. In fact, all of her houses and herself, fall in my category of home. Even though we don't see each other often, or even talk every week or month, when I am around her, I feel at home.

While I was there her husband was in New Zealand for a reunion. He was not born in New Zealand, is not Māori, and only spent less than 1 year living there. Yet, that is his home. That is the place he feels the most connected, whole, safe, secure and authentic.

The older I get and the more people change or leave I am realizing the importance of identifying who, where and what makes me feel like home. I am realizing people I known the longest, the ones I spend the most amount of time with, are not necessarily the ones I consider home.

As a child home was always where my parents were, the house I grew up in, the food my mom would cook. As I get older and see how carelessly people can leave I am realizing home will never be the same again. As people leave and take parts of me with them, I have to cling to what is left and make that my home. I must identify the pieces of myself that I will never give away and they will become home.