Recently, I researched various journal articles about what people associate with the concept of “home”. It was fascinating. There was one response that repeated time and time again, and it was this: home is a special place where you are loved and can be yourself. I thought, yes, that is something I strive for in my own home. To create an environment where each person truly feels loved and therefore is free to BE who they are, in any state of their development of self. Is there a better definition of home?
It’s interesting to consider what people most associate with home isn’t tangible. It is not the suburb they live in, a lovely home or the stuff inside it. It’s about how home makes you feel. This has been comforting for me as a parent, because the tangible things often associated with home have been hard for our family to achieve.
The reason being, our family has moved and rented 10 homes in various of places around Australia and the world for the past 15 years due to my husband’s work and study commitments. Often we would arrive at our new digs, settle the best we can and then move the next year, pulling children out of school, saying goodbye to friends and doing it all over again. At times, I have felt a sense of guilt, failure even, that I was unable to give my children what I think they need, what others have. The personal photos lining the walls, the established friendships, the location stability. But it is always – always – a trap to measure your life on the ruler of perception.
There’s comfort in scaling an issue back to its bones and realising it’s been there all along. While I was jotting down these thoughts, I asked my 12-year-old daughter nearby about what home means to her. Completely unprompted, she said this: “Home is somewhere where you can belong. Somewhere where you are loved.”
There it is again. It’s what we all want. To be loved. To belong. And if I can give my children this sense of home, where we live doesn’t matter.
Words // Kelly Burstow, Be A Fun Mum Blogger
