home

Behind the four walls that make up your house, there are so many stories. Tragic, beautiful, happy, incredible, life changing stories. The stories that make you who you are… the building blocks that created you. Moments that turned you into the person you are and set you on your path to be the one you will become.

It’s strange to think that every house you drive by holds so many stories, so many family dinners, so many arguments, so many hugs and kisses. Each house is a home to those who occupy it, when they move on those stories are carried on in their memories. When you move on and leave your home, leaving that chapter. It becomes someone else’s chapter. It becomes someone else’s future. The world keeps turning.

The house that I spent 14 years calling home, is becoming someone else’s next chapter. It’s opening it’s doors for new love, a new family and new memories together. They won’t know my families memories, the holidays spent around the table laughing… the Sanctuary from a broken heart… the people who entered the house as friends and left as family… even those they have since passed on. Those thoughts now only exist in my mind and on my levels I am sad that I won’t be able to open that door and see those memories in front of my eyes.

Although my parents haven’t lived there for a few years, it still smelt like home, up until the last night I locked the door. I will miss that smell. There was a comfort in the house, entering it felt like I was being held by my parents. I miss them.

I know home is where you make it, where you feel it within your heart. Home is where you can be yourself and feel loved, safe and comfortable. I am determined that my home will be that for many friends, even ones who don’t know they need it.

My original home in the US is gone. But those memories are not. I have to focus on that.

Going home…a two way trip

Late last week i boarded an 8 hour night flight from Orlando to Manchester… it has been 3 years since I had been back to England and a lot of things in my life have changed.

My dad met me at the airport, I haven’t seen my parents in almost 2 years. I was stressing my self out the entire flight… my excitement/anxiety levels were all over the place and I couldn’t settle down enough to sleep. So needless to say when I walked out of the airport at 8:30am… I was exhausted.

Walking into my parents house and getting a hug was like a miracle cure for any illness. The comfort that lies in a simple family embrace is incredible. Now I didn’t grow up in this part of England, I didn’t visit it when I was a child… but it still felt like home. I have spent the week with my parents for every second of the day and it has been wonderful.

I almost cried in sainsburys (a super market) because the price of the food was so cheap and the quality was great… all the food that I grew up taking for granted was sitting there waiting for me to consume. All the chocolate, the fresh pastries, the sandwiches and biscuits and crips. My mum told me she did the same thing when they first arrived back.

I have eaten every stereotypical English food you could imagine… fish and chips, kebab, pasties, sausage rolls, pork pies, a carvery, an Indian and many other random treats. My diet doesn’t count this week because I am basically eating happiness.

I have two days left here with my parents and that makes me sadder than I realized it would. I don’t know when they will be back in the US, or when I will be back in England… my dad and I had a conversation where he asked me if I would move back to England… I told him yes, but it would be an adjustment. I explained how every trip back to England tells me that I am home both here in England and back in Florida. It’s like two different versions of my life…. both places have good things and bad. I finally settled on telling him, I have two homes but don’t feel i belong in either… and that’s not a bad thing.

I cannot wait to get home to my loving partner and my adorable pup. It will be the only thing keeping me sane through the 9 hour flight back. But there are things that I learnt that I missed on this trip that I do want to try and bring into my lifestyle back in the US to maybe feel a bit more “at home”.

There are traditions and things from our childhood that we forget as we grow up… those things we look back at now and smile… those are the parts of ourselves that we need to hold on to. Because home isn’t really a physical place but a feeling inside us… a feeling of being safe and loved. Home can be more than one place. It just means home is sometimes a two way trip.

Home.

That four letter word has so many meanings tied to it. Is it a physical house? A town? A country? Or just that feeling of knowing you are where you are supposed to be… knowing that you are loved and supported for being you.

People often wish to go back home… but what does that really mean? Can you ever really go back? Or are you trying to go back to that feeling of “home”, the memories of “home”.

For me personally home is where I feel loved, safe and valued. My family is spread across the world but home is the word I use to describe where I live but also where my parents live…. I have never actually spent a night in the house with them but because that is where they live that is my home.

I know for some, Home is just a memory… something they can’t touch anymore but those memories still count, that smell of fresh baked bread, your mums perfume or that smell of engine dirt that your dad’s jacket smelt like, no matter how often it was washed. I have had many houses that we lived in that I considered home, but really home shouldn’t be attached to a physical building, it should be something you can carry with you, because what ever your age is, what ever you have been through… you still need that feeling of coming home.

If you can close your eyes and imagine a family dinner, cooking in the kitchen with loved ones or just movie nights with friends on the sofa… that feeling is home.

Home is where you matter, where your voice matters and where you are welcome with a hug. Home doesn’t have to be something tied to blood relatives, home is what you make it. Never forget that.