Maybe you’ve been blessed with a wonderful house to call home.

Maybe you’ve never had a place to claim as your own.

Maybe you’ve left for college and created a home in two different locations.

Maybe the home you’ve called yours doesn’t feel the same anymore.

Maybe you’ve moved and see yourself with two homes: the home you’ve always known, and the new home.

Or maybe you’re in a period of transition and you’re terrified to head into this unmapped place, a place you’re for certain will never feel like the home you’ve lived in.

Here’s the thing about ‘home,’ though: A home is wherever you make it.

See, ‘home’ does not equate to one place, one location, one physical house that shelters you.

It is not a certain time or a certain feeling.

You find homes in wherever you wander, in wherever you grow.

You find homes in interactions around you, in moments, in memories.

You find homes in people.

See, you make a place your home.

It has nothing to do with a structure that you grew up in, but those you were surrounded by. It isn’t about the walls that were built around you, but about how you felt within them. What made you laugh and cry, what created your foundation, who molded you into who you are.

That’s a home.

But a home isn’t necessarily dependent on people.

You make your home. It has nothing to do with family, nothing to do with friends, nothing to do with lovers, even if you made permanent, or temporary homes in those people.

A home has to do with the smile on your face that comes naturally when you build yourself up, when you surround yourself with what makes you happy. When you decide, for yourself, that a certain feeling, a certain location, a certain spot on a map is yours.

‘Home’ happens when you allow a place to become a part of who you are.

You become a place, and a place becomes you.

The two of you become intertwined, so much so, that leaving makes your heart ache because leaving means leaving what feels like a part of you.

See, there isn’t just one ‘home.’

The thing about home is that it’s transitory. It changes as you change.

But that doesn’t mean you forget about the homes you had before. That doesn’t mean those past places and people leave your heart.

The beautiful thing about making homes where you wander is that you’ll forever find places to call yours.

You will grow wherever you’re planted.

You’ll never be a wandering body, a lost soul without a place to feel grounded. You’ll always have the hundreds of past dots on a map that you’ve been, the connections you’ve built, the people who have made you feel loved.

You’ll always have those homes.
And you’ll make new homes.

A home is wherever you make it, wherever you go, wherever you decide to lay your burdens, your dreams, your wandering thoughts.

A home is where you find pieces of yourself, pieces you didn’t even realize were lost. And you discover yourself, again and again and again.