Where is Home? 🏠 A place or a state of mind?

We closed on our house in Lake Forest today. It took a while to sell it but now it’s officially final. I thought I had already gone through the tears, the memories, the goodbyes but, oddly, the finality of selling the house makes it all too real (again). When you think you’ve felt it all, you discover you actually have an unlimited capacity to feel. It was our home for 22 years. So, now, where is home?

“Home is where the heart is,” is what @donbaeyoga and I jokingly say to each other. It’s true and I believe that, but why does it feel like we’re without a home? Whenever we’d return from traveling, there’s no other feeling like coming home…to your space, your bed, the familiar, the comfort. Home is a place of safety and refuge, where all barriers can come tumbling down and you can be your raw, unfiltered self. It’s a space you know, in which you don’t need to ask any questions.

We’ve been living in CA five months now and I’ve noticed that when we refer to anything in Chicago (family, friends, our house) we call it “home.” Very rarely have I called our place here in Venice “home” because it doesn’t quite feel like it—yet. Maybe we’re not home? Maybe this is just a pit stop. Maybe this is trial run. Maybe this is a transition. Maybe it’s a pause—that place in between.

Is a home somewhere you grow into? Will California feel like home in a month, a year, a decade? It’s impossible to live up to 22 years in 5 months. Like a new relationship, a new home needs to be negotiated without comparison to its predecessor. But when a place has held your heart for 22 years, that’s a hard philosophy to follow through on.

Even if Cali isn’t home, even if it is a pitstop, a transition – that’s okay! The moments in between, the stepping stones, are just as important as the destinations, if not more so. However long we are in CA for, we will grow, we will learn, we will be strengthened. We’ll meet new people and have new experiences. We are always moving forward.

If the time comes to move on, we’ll know. If the time comes to accept California as our home, we’ll know. I trust whatever the Universe has in store for us😉