Where Is Home

Due to constant political and financial instability, many young adults are leaving Argentina. They are moving to various places around the world in search of a more promising future. This emigration has been raising on and on for the last few years …

For those of us who have been living abroad for some time, we know that living abroad is not easy. Finding a new place to call home takes some time. One of the first questions you get when you meet someone is, where are you from? Of course, the answer to that question is easy. Later, when they get to know you, comes a second and sometimes tricky question, where is home for you.

Where is home for me…

I was brought up in a family that moved from one country to another. Take into account that the internet and “family-based technology” are younger than me; so, staying connected was hard.… It was my dad’s job. We all just followed the league. Every three or four years we would come back to “homeland” Argentina, but, for me, that was not home. No friends, no school, no known neighborhood… I had no special land, no matter the country. Home for me was where my parents lived. It was just that place where I can be myself. I was from “my family”, that was when I discovered that for me home was where my heart was.

I grew up and discovered I had the “moving bee” inside. I just went traveling and moving from one place to another. While I studied animal behavior, I saw that animals would try to take possession of the place they lived. Usually, they would mark it with their smell just to make it theirs. Make it home for them and their family. This way, they also let the rest know that the place was theirs. Well, I guess humans, or at least me, do the same in some way. We decorate the places, do the lawn. We make it home.

Attachment to home

There is a connection, a cognitive-emotional bond between us humans and our settings. This attachment to what we call home is a common human experience. That is why moving isn’t as easy as it sounds. To ignore this fact or reduce its effects makes the emigration process harder.

It is no secret that people develop a strong attachment to what we call home. Not related to a specific place, it is related to a sense of control, predictability stability.

Home is where my heart is.

I see a home as a part of my self-definition. I made a home of every place where I lived. I considered each of those places my home at one time or another. Whether it was for months or years, I made it mine. Home then was where I was, where my heart is. Me myself, that was my home.

If you have decided to emigrate, you will move to another country. Just remember to allow yourself the time to make that place your home. This does not mean you regret what you left, it means your home is where your heart is.