What makes a home feel like home? Reflections on finding our place(s) in the world

The concept of “home” has always been fascinating to me. What is it about a place that makes us feel at home there, while other people in the same place do not? Why do we connect strongly with certain cities, towns, or even whole countries, while feeling ambivalent about other locations? Are we meant to have one true home in our lives (much, I’m realizing, like the often-illusive, decades-long monogamous relationship we’re also taught to strive for), or are we meant to have many homes, many spaces, many “relationships” with different places during the course of our lives? And so on, and so forth.

As I write this, I’m on the cusp of a major life change, which is part of the larger question of what home means to me. Now just past my five-year anniversary living in New York City (which happens to be just a few miles from my hometown, where I spent an additional 18 years), I am working toward a big, drastic change in my life: leaving New York. Where, or for how long, I do not know—but hopefully it is to a place that feels like home.

My personal history of home

I’ve connected with this idea of home at different points in my life, in different places. Perhaps the first time was when I was living in Sevilla, Spain, almost 10 years ago. My time in Sevilla was brief, just half a year – too brief to really know if it would be a long-term home for me. But it was my first experience cultivating an independent life in a new place. Surrounded by entirely new people, in a new culture and context, I had to learn to find my way.

During the course of my time in Sevilla, I felt a taste of the empowerment that comes from really owning an experience somewhere. I relished speaking Spanish everyday, in every conversation. I began to find my spots around the city: familiar streets, favorite restaurants, and inviting benches in my favorite parks for sitting, writing, and reflecting. And most importantly, I started to cultivate community. Ten years later, my friends in Sevilla still feel like family, a reminder that the essence of home still exists for me in the fabric of the city, should I choose to return to it.

My next home was Baltimore. Although it was where I attended university, my experience really connecting with Baltimore did not begin until after graduation, when I moved into my first apartment and started working fulltime. Although I had a stronger base in Baltimore than I had in Sevilla, with connections from college, this also felt like a critical moment of establishing myself and forging new relationships, exploring new interests, and beginning to see what life was like there as an independent adult.

Although the beginning of this chapter was not easy, I quickly began to feel a sense of peace in Baltimore. Each day, after my long commute from work, I felt comfort and joy returning to my neighborhood and seeing the multitude of rowhouses, charming in their colors, unique beauty, and familiarity. I loved the feeling of establishing the smallest of routines: walking to the farmer’s market on the weekends, sipping coffee and writing in a nearby cafe, and even tending to my apartment, which I cherished and maintained with care.

Baltimore was also pivotal because it was where I discovered dance, which remains one of the greatest gifts of my life. Just a few months into this chapter in Baltimore, on a cold night in December and still reeling from a broken heart, I mustered up the courage to venture to a club downtown, to try salsa dancing for the first time. I didn’t know anyone there, or what I was doing at all, but the experience swept me off my feet (literally and figuratively!). I fell in love with dance, which then transformed my life in Baltimore and my entire life since. Through the salsa scene in Baltimore, I found friendships, romance, community, and a passion that continues to date.

Overall, I knew with strong conviction that I loved my life in Baltimore. But various life circumstances (career stagnation, relationship turmoil, and an inherent need for a change) all ultimately led me (back) to New York.

My begrudging home in New York City

From the start, my relationship with New York City was rocky. I vehemently disliked the city and most things about it, finding it to be chaotic, stressful, and lonely. But I committed to New York in spite of these feelings, because I knew that it would be the right place to grow my career. So I stayed, but with the thought tucked into the background that New York was a “for now” place, not my forever place.

It took some time, but eventually I grew to enjoy, appreciate, and even perhaps love my life in New York City. I put all my tools to work, honed through life-building in Sevilla and Baltimore, to face my biggest challenge yet: finding community in what felt like the loneliest city in the world. And I did eventually find it, through dance, hiking, language learning, and other interests. Now, I attest with great conviction that I have the best community in New York City. It was a slow process, but I cultivated a life rich in all kinds of friendships, stronger connections with family, and overall so much love.

Over time, I began to see other, more external, positives about life in New York. There are days when I walk around different neighborhoods, whether in glitzy, hyper-developed areas of Manhattan, or the quaintest neighborhoods of Queens, and I feel a deep appreciation for everything this city has to offer, particularly its culture, diversity, and seemingly infinite opportunities. I understand why New York is so inspiring to so many. In the mornings when I commute to work, I come out of the subway in Tribeca, and the first sight that greets me is One World Trade Center, towering over downtown Manhattan. Some people travel halfway across the world to see architectural marvels such as this, yet there it is, adjacent to my office. During my first few weeks of work, I couldn’t help but snap a photo each morning of the building, the morning sunlight glinting off its façade. After a while, I began refraining, variations of the exact same shot piling up in my phone, though the urge to encapsulate the moment, and that feeling of inspiration, remains.

Five years, however, is a long time. And while my relationship with New York City evolved from outright antipathy, to one of begrudging acceptance and great appreciation, I never managed to shake the feeling of New York not being the right place for me. The negative moments lately have felt increasingly taxing: arriving tired to the subway at 1:00 a.m., just wanting to get home, only to find that the next train is 29 minutes away; the ever-increasing cost of living for tiny spaces (and the sheer impossibility of living alone without essentially doubling my salary); the brutal winters that never seem to end; and, in spite of me just minding my business as New Yorkers do, getting shouted at, spit on, and hassled by violent strangers.

Perhaps, though, what is most difficult for me is the general feeling I sense from the people: New Yorkers are essentially forced to become hardened and guarded to cope with all the challenges of life here. This makes us resilient, but it also cultivates a standoffishness and disconnect that feels like it permeates the entire city. In spite of my strong network and community, New York still feels extremely lonely to me.

Now five years after my arrival, personally I am in a much more stable place. My career has in fact grown, as I hoped it would; New York is where I found and kickstarted my career in sustainability. I have a good life in New York, yet at the same time nothing is tying me to it. I have no mortgage, children, or pets, nor is my job even tied to this location. Finally, I am ready to listen to that instinct that I tucked away, so many years ago, that New York was meant to be my “for now” place.

What’s next in the journey home?

The funny thing about trying to find “home” is that most of us don’t actually find it—we build it. I think it’s rare to actually choose a home, because “home” is a process that occurs over time. Neither Sevilla, nor Baltimore, nor New York City felt like home from the outset. In each place, there was a cultivation, over the course of days, months, and in the case of the latter two, years, to build a life.

Yet there is something inherent, and distinctly personal, about the feeling of connecting to a place. Baltimore, at its core, always felt more like “home” to me than New York, even though I arguably have a better and more fulfilling life in New York. I think sometimes it really is just that feeling that you have about a place; cities are alive in their own way, with their own temperaments—perhaps New York’s temperament just doesn’t align well with my own.

I don’t know where I want to live, in the long term or even the short term. But my hope is that I can use this time to search and explore, and maybe find a place or many to stay and build a home in. My dream is ultimately to live abroad again, but for a longer period of time, particularly as someone who values language learning, cultural exchange, and immersion. I am exploring my options related to travel (especially in the Middle East or Latin America, two of my favorite regions to visit), to get involved with more international fieldwork, and even potentially to continue my studies abroad. I have options and choices – all of which I hope will not only be personally satisfying, but also aligned with my long-term career goals.

And as I sit with these options and choices, I am also distinctly aware of my privilege. My country of origin, my passport, and my class privilege afford me remarkable opportunities to get out and see the world, and even choose a new country to live in, practically ad hoc. Considering the barriers that others around the world have in moving from place to place, even just for a short vacation, it feels almost insulting how easy it actually is for someone like me.

In the beginning of this post, I listed a series of questions about the idea of home, but a key thought was missing from that list: the notion of who gets to choose their home, when so many do not. And with war, economic distress, and climate catastrophes only increasing, the number of people throughout the world whose homes are becoming inhospitable, or who will be forced to move entirely, will only increase. What does the process of finding and building a home look like, for those who have been forced from theirs? What does it look like for those who want to leave but can’t, due to financial, familial, visa, or other constraints?

I cannot pretend to know the answers to those questions, when all of my own movement has been fundamentally my choice. However, my experience has taught me that no matter where in the world I have found myself, that being in community facilitates a connection to that place. With this in mind, as I move off into the future, and look for a place, or places, to call home, community building will always be at the heart of my effort. At the same time, I think it’s reasonable to search for a place that speaks to me on a gut level, with that aligned temperament that I always felt was missing from New York.

And in general, regardless of whether we are in motion or in place, whether we are in our hometowns, home countries, or perhaps halfway around the world, whether we are travelers by choice or by circumstance – may we all feel at home in our home, wherever that may be.