Home, Near and Far

What, and where, is home for you? It's a multilayered concept that can be difficult to define yet clearly has deeply emotional connotations. A seasoned expat herself, psychotherapist Isa Soler shares with us the the ways in which the concept of "home" has changed for her through the years.

If you’re an expat like me, the concept of home may have come up a few times. Is home here, there, everywhere? You may have even noticed how much your idea of home may have changed since living abroad. I mean, home is home, right? Well, maybe? I just find it so interesting that such a deep and life defining construct can be so changeable and flexible at the same time. 

In the Beginning

As children, our homes feel larger than life. So much happens there, our lives seem to be deeply connected to not only the physical space but to our identity and sense of belonging that it can potentially provide. I always thought it was interesting that so many homes have the actual measures of children’s growth charted on the walls. 

As a child, I remember wondering if houses grew smaller as the humans within it grew larger. And to this day I’m often curious to know how many homes’ freshly painted walls hide the remnants of drawings made by the children who were once living there. Layers and layers of life embedded in the structure of a home. 

Home was where we first learned about love, our values and who we were in relation to others. If you were lucky, home was the comfort and safety that waited for you at the end of the day. For many of us, however, home was a complicated place, full of contradictions and difficulties keeping us from safety and comfort. In a way, this longing for home continues to affect us and perhaps keep us searching for that peaceful place to come “home” to. Interestingly, despite our differing experiences, we hold on to our concept of home as that intimate place that holds our deepest memories and sense of self. 

Branching Out

As we grew, the concept of home seemed to grow with us. We might have found a sense of it at a friend’s home, you know the one we spent most of our time with. Home may have also been found in that sense of freedom we experienced by driving around in a car with friends, and later in the sense of connection and belonging in the early homes we shared with others. The concept of home changed and expanded depending on our changing lives. Funny, though in those early days; “going home,” often meant going back to the childhood home, town, or at least to a parents home. These days, however, for me “going home” no longer carries that connotation. Is home now the country in which I was born? The country I lived in the most? What does “going home” mean for you now? 

There are probably very few constructs so deeply rooted in our sense of self as the concept of home. It is no wonder that many of us never leave our childhood towns, cities or even our actual physical childhood homes. Due to the changing nature of our world, however, many of us do. Economics, politics, immigration, financial opportunities and technological advances have made the world more accessible to us. Whether we’re aware of it or not, in subtle and not so subtle ways, our concept of home changes, morphs and adapts to our mobile, changing lives. 

A New Land

According to Expat Explorer HSBC and other studies of the expat experience, there were 57 million expats living across the globe in 2017 making up 25% of all globally mobile people. If we were to include the world’s refugees and immigrants to this list it would grow to 232 million. We are increasingly on the move, multicultural and multinational. For this population, the concept of home is a changeable work in progress. 

As a 10 year old who immigrated to the US from Cuba, movement and change came early. I realized early on that home went with me wherever I went. This began a lifelong curiosity for the excitement and newness that change can provide. Since then, I have 

moved more than 30 times across the globe. Each place adds something new to the concept of home, creating a virtual architecture that collapses and comes together in a new setting. I continue to find that home is really, wherever I am and wherever I go. 

The More Things Change, the More They Stay the Same

It’s been two-plus years since I arrived in Barcelona and already I’ve moved twice. I’m not alone in this; in Barcelona city where the population is nearly two million, over 300 thousand are foreigners. The majority are from the European Union, followed by foreigners from the Americas, Africa and Asia. The concept of home, at least for us, continues to evolve, changing into whatever is needed at the moment. Out of necessity or curiosity, home expands, collapses and overlaps for this growing population of globally mobile people. 

Despite this movement in my life, I’ve found that there have always been some key things present in all my “homes”; objects, conditions that support a feeling of belonging and can lead to a sense of home. Plants, for instance have been a staple, unique flea market art, baskets, comfy cushions and a colorful kitchen seem to be always present in my different homes. In my early 20’s I remember living in tents and VW buses as I traveled through the Southwest, Northern California, Oregon and Hawaii and I realize now that each temporary home I lived in then was decorated with these same types of objects. I have come to love how it all comes together in new spaces, reflecting different aspects of themselves. Interestingly, I have found that each new “home” also reflects something new about myself as well. 

What Does Home Mean to You?

As our lives evolve and root in new settings, new cultures, our sense of home evolves as well. Life gets punctuated in a different language, we eat at different times, rest at different times, work hours differ and our homes accommodate to a new social pace. The architecture of new settings frames our spaces in new ways, beams, balconies, tiny rooms and shuttered windows create a landscape that seeps into how we feel about ourselves, our homes. Home is created in layers by the knowledge gained in new places and the shifting focus of our lives. 

I invite you to think back at how home has changed for you across your life, and by “home” I’m not just referring to the physical but also to the conceptual sense of home. I wonder how this particular version of home that you find yourself in, links to previous ones. What is different and what has remained the same? 

This awareness and experience of home seen both as an innate unchanging experience, one that we carry with us wherever we go, and also one that is constantly being created and evolving along with us, comes in very handy for expats like us. In this way, the grief inherent in feeling far from home can be substantially lessened. Experiencing home as a continuous work in progress, as a part of who we are, just as we are right now, has never made “going home” and “being home” so easy. So today I say to you, welcome home.

Isa Soler is a US trained and licensed psychotherapist who is familiar with the changing nature of home. She specializes in trauma related issues, is certified in several trauma informed modalities and is currently collaborating with other expat therapists in Barcelona. She enjoys living and working in this part of Catalunya as well as discovering, experiencing and documenting the changing nature of our world. You can connect with Isa on LinkedIn and read her blog at: expattherapybarcelona.com.