Such a good and honest read Aimée! To be honest, this is how I feel about Portugal, or did for a lot of years. I gre up between Denmark and Portugal, but more in Portugal after I started school. By the time I was 15, I was done. I couldn’t wait to go to uni, to flee this place, I flet trapped. Yet all the people I knew, ‘oh you must love to live there, you are so lucky’. I moved away at 18 to Lisbon which also didn’t become my home. It was a lovely time, but I felt more at home one year in a smaller town in Wales than 4 years in Lisbon. Now I can finally return to southern Portugal, and see the elements that I missed, like the cork and olive trees, the food, and the views, but I would never be able to move there. I feel foreign, and in a way always have.
Now I feel like a lot of places are my home, there are elements to it I can really not explain. I just really feel it my gut, like the Scottish Highlands make me warm inside. People make me feel at home too, even in settings that I don’t expect.
I feel embarrassed or self-conscious talking about it. I always feel like I'm bad-mouthing a place that people love. It's so interesting to hear that you had a period of rediscovery and reconnection with Portugal and are able to appreciate it from arm's length. It's all about what you value and makes your soul sing. And I totally know what you mean about lots of places feeling like home. I lived in Germany for one year and it somehow still feels like a place I want to go back to and try again (even though I'm very settled here) x
Really interesting and honest to get your take on home and your birthplace Amiée . I’m midway though writing a piece about home and what this means to me and, like you, it’s about a feeling & people & a place that wraps itself around me like a strong armed hug. Less about being tethered to a city by birthright, or simply calling wherever we lay our head ‘home’ & instead recognising what Home stands for and the values that play into this affection. :) x
You've summed it up so perfectly, Amelia. 💞 It's exactly that - the values and the feeling. Something you can't quite put your finger on but it's just there, deep down in your bones. I can't wait to read your piece about home xx
It’s a piece of writing I keep returning to with more reflections and musings, since it’s a topic very close to my heart. My instagram handle - Le Bon Home is representative of everything I hold dear by way of family and friendships, rooms crowded with furnishings and flea market finds that all have a backstory entwined with my own. Gathering folk to our table and gently weaving the threads these memories serve into the tapestry of our lives are the very bones the word home hangs on. For as far back as I can remember, home has served as my most favourite hangout. :) x
Such a moving post Aimee, thanks for highlighting it to me. I totally get what you’re saying, as a child we moved around a lot, so I never really felt “hefted” to the land. But when we moved to Somerset I felt like I’d come home, it feels existence-easy in a way nowhere else ever has.
I could write forever in this comment. What a wonderful piece. My mum is from Northern Ireland. She left when she was a young woman and has never wanted to live there again. We’ve been back to visit since and I love Ireland as a whole, for exactly the reasons you say, but I also feel some piece of my soul is attached to it. Comes from there. My mum doesn’t feel it at all. It’s just memories. Familiarity. The feeling that comes with that, but no real longing. It’s home but only in the sense she came from there.
On the other hand, people always ask me where I’m from and my answer is ‘nowhere’. My dad was in the armed forces so the land I was born in is not my home. One of the lands I was raised in is a home in some ways but not in others. The lands my parents are from were not home.
I have, however, found myself landed firmly in the Welsh mountains, nestled among the hills in a town I have fallen in love with. I have found myself slotting in here easily. Despite being an outsider with an accent no one can place, with no family from around here and still needing to use sat nav to get around.
I feel a strange sense of having come home, despite never having been here before in my life. Wales yes. Here, this town, never. But it’s like it was waiting for me. I see the shape of the mountains as I drive up the roads and feel my heart settle. For the first time ever in my life, I don’t like leaving a place I live.
Home is such an emotional thing. Such an individual thing.
Thank you for sharing this piece. It was some wonderful bedtime reading 🥰
Karen! I resonate so much with everything you've just written.
My dad said to me once, "People say home is where the heart. But I think home is where other people's hearts are for you." And I LOVE that. That home is a place where you are loved. It doesn't have to be a place you were born or feel at home, but home is where you are loved. Aw, I feel so emotional writing this and reading your response to this post.
I love that you've found your place in Wales. My partner is Welsh. I knew nothing about Wales or its heritage or culture (aside from Dylan Thomas) before I met him so I too am falling for your landscape. I am so happy you have found your soul home. It's lovely to connect with you xxx
I love what your dad said! That's amazing. I'm stealing that 😂 What a beautiful way of putting it. I love it but also find it's not quite that for me, strangely, but that's largely because my family are all over the place. I also have friends who are family to me, so it feels strangely 'home' with them too. There are so many layers to that feeling. I've written about it a bit on my Sub because I feel very much like things have shifted for me. I've gone from nomadic wanderer, rooted in people, to settled and rooted in a place more than ever. People is still the thing, but this place. It's honestly like it was waiting for me.
I'm so glad you're falling in love with it too! Soul home is definitely the right description. My Dad's family are all Welsh, so I'm connected with it through heritage, but I lived originally in Cardiff and didn't really connect with it at all. Now, in the mountains, it's like breaking through the skin of something and being in the heart of it. This is real in a way I could never have imagined or explained before experiencing it. It's a magical place, for me.
Really lovely to connect with you too ☺️ and what a topic to connect over xx
You explain it so well - I think our memory can often photoshop things so that they present better, but in your case, you told the truth, warts and all. And so you eventually found 'Home'... a refuge, a place that creates true contentment.
Home for me is both where I was born and where I came back to. It called to me. I wrote a Substack post on it once called 'Hiraeth'. Most importantly for me, the sea and the coastline are home - I am at peace when I can hear waves and walk on the beaches. The tether that binds me stretches thin to breaking when I'm away from the ocean. My island home has such a warp and weft of memories for my whole family and I think it's that that winds around us, as you say, like a hug.
Prue, I LOVE your Hiraeth piece ❤️ I sought it out after reading this comment. The image of an old woman reeling you all back home in a net really struck a chord with me. I like that certain typographies can make you feel at home: coastline for you, the rambling fields for me. Thank you for sharing xx
Aimee I LOVE this. I’m second generation Irish (from over the border) and have never lived in Ireland, but find myself questioning more and more as I get older - what is home? Where am I from’ type thing. And whilst I do feel a strong connection to that land in which I have never lived, one that I’m curious to explore, your perspective of your reality in Ireland is so refreshing to read. You’re right that so many of us have a love and affinity for Ireland, but what if it doesn’t feel like that having lived there? So interesting. I’m currently writing a piece about ‘a sense of place’ and ultimately for me it comes down to the people. The places I call home are not the ones I have lived in for longest or ‘come from’, but those where I am accepted, and where I feel I belong, whether that’s down the road or a thousand miles away x
Oh Aimee I have so much to say on this - what a brilliant piece. I have drafted something on this very topic, and as a ‘second generation’ Irish person born in London I have some complex feeling on it. This has inspired me to pull that out of drafts and complete it. The meaning of home is something I ponder often, and for me it is all about the people I share a space with. Thank you for this ❤️
This was a beautiful read Aimee. I live in America but my grandparents are from Ireland, moved here as teenagers in the early 1900’s. And like you said, I have always wanted to go. Something about Ireland always seemed dreamy to me. Like my DNA is trying to get back there. I really enjoyed this perspective and eloquent writing. Thank you for sharing😊♥️
Yes I agree that it’s very likely you have some English roots. I have Irish roots but they were anglo-Irish, English and welsh etc. I am very drawn to Ireland and it’s Mythos and lore, I am deep into Celtic studies. But the bad taste I see everywhere in Ireland does really put me off ever moving there like you said. I wanted to one day move to Connemara. But I think I will return to my Gloucestershire roots or something.
I was born in Australia, never felt I belonged here or felt any connection to the landscape etc, I use to write that it was like being married to a man who provides everything for you, but is not your soulmate, there’s no deep connection that’s how I felt about Australia always. But it’s grown on me so much, I love the wild nature here and the open light. Everything is beautiful here. But deep in my heart I am and always will be very English. It was only two generations back that my ancestors were English and living in England.
Aimée, thank you for sharing a link to this post in my own comment section. Like you, YOUR posted reverberated in my very soul. Also, the cadence and softness with which you use language is like a drizzling of honey over my Monday morning. I am so glad to have found you here.
Love this Aimee. I would recommend delving into your family history, I found it really interesting when I did mine, it’s very possible that your family may have originated in the elsewhere. It gave me s real insight into myself.
I loved listening to your voiceover, Aimée! Writing is beautiful as always, but such a gorgeous narration voice, too. ♥️ I often think about my fondness for Europe, specifically the Netherlands, Germany and Italy, too. I wonder what ~thing~ my ancestors left for honestly.. I hope they found it. No matter the hardship, I tend to embrace wherever I land with open arms, find my favorite few places and nuzzle into home.
Such a good and honest read Aimée! To be honest, this is how I feel about Portugal, or did for a lot of years. I gre up between Denmark and Portugal, but more in Portugal after I started school. By the time I was 15, I was done. I couldn’t wait to go to uni, to flee this place, I flet trapped. Yet all the people I knew, ‘oh you must love to live there, you are so lucky’. I moved away at 18 to Lisbon which also didn’t become my home. It was a lovely time, but I felt more at home one year in a smaller town in Wales than 4 years in Lisbon. Now I can finally return to southern Portugal, and see the elements that I missed, like the cork and olive trees, the food, and the views, but I would never be able to move there. I feel foreign, and in a way always have.
Now I feel like a lot of places are my home, there are elements to it I can really not explain. I just really feel it my gut, like the Scottish Highlands make me warm inside. People make me feel at home too, even in settings that I don’t expect.
I feel embarrassed or self-conscious talking about it. I always feel like I'm bad-mouthing a place that people love. It's so interesting to hear that you had a period of rediscovery and reconnection with Portugal and are able to appreciate it from arm's length. It's all about what you value and makes your soul sing. And I totally know what you mean about lots of places feeling like home. I lived in Germany for one year and it somehow still feels like a place I want to go back to and try again (even though I'm very settled here) x
How did you decide on a to finally settle in?
Really interesting and honest to get your take on home and your birthplace Amiée . I’m midway though writing a piece about home and what this means to me and, like you, it’s about a feeling & people & a place that wraps itself around me like a strong armed hug. Less about being tethered to a city by birthright, or simply calling wherever we lay our head ‘home’ & instead recognising what Home stands for and the values that play into this affection. :) x
You've summed it up so perfectly, Amelia. 💞 It's exactly that - the values and the feeling. Something you can't quite put your finger on but it's just there, deep down in your bones. I can't wait to read your piece about home xx
It’s a piece of writing I keep returning to with more reflections and musings, since it’s a topic very close to my heart. My instagram handle - Le Bon Home is representative of everything I hold dear by way of family and friendships, rooms crowded with furnishings and flea market finds that all have a backstory entwined with my own. Gathering folk to our table and gently weaving the threads these memories serve into the tapestry of our lives are the very bones the word home hangs on. For as far back as I can remember, home has served as my most favourite hangout. :) x
Such a moving post Aimee, thanks for highlighting it to me. I totally get what you’re saying, as a child we moved around a lot, so I never really felt “hefted” to the land. But when we moved to Somerset I felt like I’d come home, it feels existence-easy in a way nowhere else ever has.
I could write forever in this comment. What a wonderful piece. My mum is from Northern Ireland. She left when she was a young woman and has never wanted to live there again. We’ve been back to visit since and I love Ireland as a whole, for exactly the reasons you say, but I also feel some piece of my soul is attached to it. Comes from there. My mum doesn’t feel it at all. It’s just memories. Familiarity. The feeling that comes with that, but no real longing. It’s home but only in the sense she came from there.
On the other hand, people always ask me where I’m from and my answer is ‘nowhere’. My dad was in the armed forces so the land I was born in is not my home. One of the lands I was raised in is a home in some ways but not in others. The lands my parents are from were not home.
I have, however, found myself landed firmly in the Welsh mountains, nestled among the hills in a town I have fallen in love with. I have found myself slotting in here easily. Despite being an outsider with an accent no one can place, with no family from around here and still needing to use sat nav to get around.
I feel a strange sense of having come home, despite never having been here before in my life. Wales yes. Here, this town, never. But it’s like it was waiting for me. I see the shape of the mountains as I drive up the roads and feel my heart settle. For the first time ever in my life, I don’t like leaving a place I live.
Home is such an emotional thing. Such an individual thing.
Thank you for sharing this piece. It was some wonderful bedtime reading 🥰
Karen! I resonate so much with everything you've just written.
My dad said to me once, "People say home is where the heart. But I think home is where other people's hearts are for you." And I LOVE that. That home is a place where you are loved. It doesn't have to be a place you were born or feel at home, but home is where you are loved. Aw, I feel so emotional writing this and reading your response to this post.
I love that you've found your place in Wales. My partner is Welsh. I knew nothing about Wales or its heritage or culture (aside from Dylan Thomas) before I met him so I too am falling for your landscape. I am so happy you have found your soul home. It's lovely to connect with you xxx
I love what your dad said! That's amazing. I'm stealing that 😂 What a beautiful way of putting it. I love it but also find it's not quite that for me, strangely, but that's largely because my family are all over the place. I also have friends who are family to me, so it feels strangely 'home' with them too. There are so many layers to that feeling. I've written about it a bit on my Sub because I feel very much like things have shifted for me. I've gone from nomadic wanderer, rooted in people, to settled and rooted in a place more than ever. People is still the thing, but this place. It's honestly like it was waiting for me.
I'm so glad you're falling in love with it too! Soul home is definitely the right description. My Dad's family are all Welsh, so I'm connected with it through heritage, but I lived originally in Cardiff and didn't really connect with it at all. Now, in the mountains, it's like breaking through the skin of something and being in the heart of it. This is real in a way I could never have imagined or explained before experiencing it. It's a magical place, for me.
Really lovely to connect with you too ☺️ and what a topic to connect over xx
What an honest piece of writing.
You explain it so well - I think our memory can often photoshop things so that they present better, but in your case, you told the truth, warts and all. And so you eventually found 'Home'... a refuge, a place that creates true contentment.
Home for me is both where I was born and where I came back to. It called to me. I wrote a Substack post on it once called 'Hiraeth'. Most importantly for me, the sea and the coastline are home - I am at peace when I can hear waves and walk on the beaches. The tether that binds me stretches thin to breaking when I'm away from the ocean. My island home has such a warp and weft of memories for my whole family and I think it's that that winds around us, as you say, like a hug.
Prue, I LOVE your Hiraeth piece ❤️ I sought it out after reading this comment. The image of an old woman reeling you all back home in a net really struck a chord with me. I like that certain typographies can make you feel at home: coastline for you, the rambling fields for me. Thank you for sharing xx
Kind words. Thank you.
Aimee I LOVE this. I’m second generation Irish (from over the border) and have never lived in Ireland, but find myself questioning more and more as I get older - what is home? Where am I from’ type thing. And whilst I do feel a strong connection to that land in which I have never lived, one that I’m curious to explore, your perspective of your reality in Ireland is so refreshing to read. You’re right that so many of us have a love and affinity for Ireland, but what if it doesn’t feel like that having lived there? So interesting. I’m currently writing a piece about ‘a sense of place’ and ultimately for me it comes down to the people. The places I call home are not the ones I have lived in for longest or ‘come from’, but those where I am accepted, and where I feel I belong, whether that’s down the road or a thousand miles away x
This is so true, sometimes your birthplace is not your identity and does not represent who you truly are.
Currently living in Northern Ireland, originally from Ukraine, moving about 7 times within last 10 years for the well-known sad reason.
Can definitely say - you home is the place where your children live❤
Oh Aimee I have so much to say on this - what a brilliant piece. I have drafted something on this very topic, and as a ‘second generation’ Irish person born in London I have some complex feeling on it. This has inspired me to pull that out of drafts and complete it. The meaning of home is something I ponder often, and for me it is all about the people I share a space with. Thank you for this ❤️
This was a beautiful read Aimee. I live in America but my grandparents are from Ireland, moved here as teenagers in the early 1900’s. And like you said, I have always wanted to go. Something about Ireland always seemed dreamy to me. Like my DNA is trying to get back there. I really enjoyed this perspective and eloquent writing. Thank you for sharing😊♥️
Oh and get a DNA test, it will tell you how English you are.
Yes I agree that it’s very likely you have some English roots. I have Irish roots but they were anglo-Irish, English and welsh etc. I am very drawn to Ireland and it’s Mythos and lore, I am deep into Celtic studies. But the bad taste I see everywhere in Ireland does really put me off ever moving there like you said. I wanted to one day move to Connemara. But I think I will return to my Gloucestershire roots or something.
I was born in Australia, never felt I belonged here or felt any connection to the landscape etc, I use to write that it was like being married to a man who provides everything for you, but is not your soulmate, there’s no deep connection that’s how I felt about Australia always. But it’s grown on me so much, I love the wild nature here and the open light. Everything is beautiful here. But deep in my heart I am and always will be very English. It was only two generations back that my ancestors were English and living in England.
Aimée, thank you for sharing a link to this post in my own comment section. Like you, YOUR posted reverberated in my very soul. Also, the cadence and softness with which you use language is like a drizzling of honey over my Monday morning. I am so glad to have found you here.
Love this Aimee. I would recommend delving into your family history, I found it really interesting when I did mine, it’s very possible that your family may have originated in the elsewhere. It gave me s real insight into myself.
I loved listening to your voiceover, Aimée! Writing is beautiful as always, but such a gorgeous narration voice, too. ♥️ I often think about my fondness for Europe, specifically the Netherlands, Germany and Italy, too. I wonder what ~thing~ my ancestors left for honestly.. I hope they found it. No matter the hardship, I tend to embrace wherever I land with open arms, find my favorite few places and nuzzle into home.