Home away from home

Merry Xmas everyone! A day like today celebrating away from Greece and most of our family and friends thoughts jumped in my head. "Home", one simple word that is very difficult to define when you are an expat or when you have just moved to a new place far away from home. Is home a place or a feeling? Can you feel at home in more than one places? Can home be something that you had and you were use too, or something that you can built and have to adjust? Is it the people you are surrounded or the things? Is it all of the above?

I (we) had to change houses and countries over 14 years, 5 times, and sooner or later i am pretty sure it will be 6. In some places the house never felt like home, and in others felt like home from the moment i stepped in. But there was nothing really wrong with the places. Of course it might have been different, and challenging, and hard, and confusing, but it was more my problem and they way i was approaching the word "home".
As i was growing, and learning from the experience i was living i realized that home can be anywhere, and yes it can be more than one places. Home is the familiarity, the coziness, the safety, home is a warm place, a shelter for your body and your soul. Home can feel home, by carrying with you a little bit from the previous one or from your childhoods home.
When you are studying you make home the college dorms by bringing with you pictures, and pets, or items from your parents home, and slowly you built up your surroundings. When you get your first house it is the same, it is more the items and the attachment.
Things are changing when you get married and starting a family, at that moment home is wherever your new family is. And your home country, your parents house or your old city is still a home, as your new country and place. And you feel torn and weird and confused when you are at your home city for holidays, but you are looking forward to go back at your "guest home city", which can be a future permanent home.
So home for me is all that i mentioned in the beginning. Finding your "home" is as important as finding your identity. Home is like a small box with soft edges, full with memorabilia, sweet music, smells, sounds, and images. Either you are living alone or with others home should always taste like a candy cane, like a warm, fluffy hug where you feel protected and secure. Home is the cape of our soul and only with love and caring you can turn a house.. to a home wherever you are in the world.

Happy New Year! 
Xo Xo