What is "home"?

Thoughts on what makes a person feel they're home.

Photo by Luke Stackpoole on Unsplash

What is home? Where is it for us?

Much of the travel that we have done around the United States has been a part of trying to find an answer to that, even if it’s just pretending. In every town Mike and I visit, we like to imagine ourselves living there. 

We peruse the free real estate magazines, we pick up the Weekly Trader classifieds and old newspapers, and wonder if this is the next place for us. My writer mind spins yarns about the people who live behind lighted windows as I walk by; it's a constant fascination.

As a child who grew up with food and housing insecurity, bouncing from tent to rental to tent to van, never in one place for more than a year or two, my adult life has been an attempt to heal that insecure place inside of me. 

I know this. 

I own it.

I first came across the problem of needing an ongoing sense of “home” while traveling, in the first two road National Parks trips we took that are documented in Open Road. During both of those extended trips, I experienced profound, free-floating anxiety after too much time spent traveling and using tents and motel rooms for lodging.

I hoped we could cure this strange agoraphobia by trailer camping. And to a degree, that has worked. 

I felt much more grounded, for lack of a better term, by having the trailer: a predictable place in which to retreat to rest, rejuvenate, eat, use a familiar bathroom, sit on my beanbag, and all the other tiny and unique but universal things that make a certain place called “home.“

I put a LOT of stock in whatever house I currently call home, wherever it might be. Much effort is spent on fluffing that nest, tilling that soil, claiming that space.

And yet I keep getting itchy feet and wanting something different; the challenge of reinvention, the adventure of the new and novel.

Mike and I share this trait, and the result has been a series of bigger and smaller moves as a family: great big continental moves, from one end of Hawaii to the other end of the Midwest, and back again, which is a lot if you’re non-military. 

We’ve had one lengthy stop in the middle of our lives, a whole fifteen years at one address on Maui when our young children asked us to stop moving and stay put so they could finish school in one place.

So we stopped.

And then they grew up and left Maui, as so many young people do. 

So did we, after that; first to help with Mike’s mom’s end of life in California, and then to find a spot for our own next chapter. 

Around every bend in the road, we look for somewhere that feels like a fit, like “home.”

This brings up a deeper question.

What is HOME, exactly?

In need of more perspectives, I polled my reader fan group. 

The top answer to the What is HOME? Poll was:

Home is where I live. 

This not only makes sense but is the healthiest answer from a mental health perspective. 

Why? Because there are many times in the course of life when we may not, for whatever reason, be residing where we’d ideally want to be. Constantly hankering to be somewhere else is no way to spend precious time, our only resource.

Secondary top answers were:

HOME IS WHERE FAMILY IS, and HOME IS WHERE I’m IN COMMUNITY.

Some of the comments readers made were deeply insightful and are included with their permission:

Julie said, “As a Wet’suwet’en woman, home is the yintah (territory) where my female ancestors lived and had the responsibility for keeping the land, water and people healthy & thriving. A house is a house and not necessarily home. Like the Hawaiians - we may be houseless but never homeless.”

Emily said, “When I lived away from my parents, home was my apartment. But when I flew back to Hawaii to visit them I was “going home,” even though Hawaii hadn’t been my home for a long time. While there with my parents I felt home but it was always comfortably similar yet different and I longed for my apartment home. So there is a practical animal-burrowing-brain home where my stuff is, and then there’s a character-origin-story nostalgic home that probably not everyone has, and probably exists more as a feeling than a place anyway since you can never revisit it the way it is in your memory.”

Bonnie said, “Home is where I feel anchored and secure, a place that I can come back to when I've wandered off. An anchorage.”

Raven said, “Home is the place where I feel safe to be myself! A place where I can walk around naked, and not feel judged! A place where I can lay my head down whenever I want, whenever I want! A place where I’m not required to speak, cook, or clean at the whims of others. A place where I can be me!”

Robert said, “Home is where I feel safe and content.”

Kathy said, “Home is more than a house. It's where you can go and feel peace, belonging and connection. My daughter calls it my Scarlett O'Hara syndrome; the need to feel connected to the land deep within your roots. It's more of a spiritual thing than a physical thing. I also think sometimes it's not necessarily a physical house, but a place, a piece of music, a photograph or piece of art, a book; anything that takes you to that spiritual "home." Surround yourself with those things that bring that feeling into your life; that feeling that you're home.”

Dawn said, “Home is a state of mind to me. I've been in limbo since last June and live with my sister currently while we wait for my place to be ready. But "home" is that place I feel safe, secure, loved and at peace.”

All of these thoughts elaborate on the conclusion that home is a major touchstone in life, a multidimensional experience rich with memory, personal story, family, connections, and above all shelter, comfort and safety. 

This is totally possible while trailer camping, though not a long-term solution for us. We just aren’t long-termers. We ARE still looking for our next “home.” 😁

What is home to you?