Home is a feeling, not a place.

There are certain places that become woven into the fabric of our lives. Places where children learn to swim, where friendships deepen over long summer evenings and extraordinary adventures, and where traditions quietly emerge without anyone ever deciding they should. They become places that hold laughter, grief, celebration, solitude, and the countless ordinary moments that eventually become the story of a life.

For twenty-seven years, a cottage was one of those places for me.

Over recent weeks, I found myself sitting quietly with a question: How is it possible to love a place so deeply and still know it is time to move on?

For much of my life, I believed home was something we found, a house, a neighbourhood, a city, a country. Somewhere we arrived and finally belonged.

Perhaps that’s why we spend so much of our lives trying to hold on to the places that have shaped us. We fear that if we leave them, we somehow lose ourselves or leave part of ourselves behind. But life has a curious way of teaching us otherwise.

My parents lost the country they once called home and began again in another. I’ve lived in different cities. I’ve built a career that, for many years, felt like home, and eventually knew it was time to move on. To grow. I’ve built another life and discovered a farm that somehow felt as though it had been waiting for me all along.

Again and again, life has quietly dismantled my definition of home. Not because home was lost, but because my understanding of it was changing.

As I looked across the lake, I realised something I hadn’t fully understood before. Moving on doesn’t mean we’ve stopped loving. Sometimes we move on because we have received what a season of life came to offer. Because it’s time to grow. There is a profound difference between abandonment and completion and expansion.

The cottage had not become less beautiful. If anything, it had become more beautiful than ever. The loons still sang across the water at dusk. The forests remained wild. The shoreline still invited silence. The friendships endured. What had changed was me.

When I first arrived, I was eager to build. There were projects to complete, trees to clear, things to improve, weekends to fill, and a family to raise.

Today, I find myself longing for something entirely different: to sit, to listen, to notice, to be curious and explore, to contemplate, and to belong, not to a place, but within my own heart.

The lake hadn’t changed. My relationship with it had.

Perhaps that is what the second half of life offers us. Not simply new places to steward, but a new way of exploring, finding and inhabiting places we come to love. Perhaps that is why home slowly begins to reveal itself as something much deeper than an address.

Home is wherever our soul is free to breathe. Where curiosity returns. Where love expands. Where creativity awakens. Where awe and wonder interrupt us. Where we become more fully ourselves.

Once we understand this, something extraordinary happens. We discover we can leave a house without leaving home. We can leave a career without losing ourselves. We can leave a marriage, a country, a neighbourhood, or a beloved cottage and still carry home with us.

Because home was never the place. It was always the life unfolding within us.

I still love this place, and I always will. I love the lake. I love the people who became and are part of my story. I love the friendships. I love the countless memories gathered over twenty-seven years.

None of that leaves when we move. None of it is for sale. It lives within me, within us.

A few years ago, while travelling through Germany, I had just shared a beautiful lunch with cousins I hadn’t seen in years. We lingered around the table, sharing stories, laughter, and generations of family history before I wandered through a small gift shop attached to the restaurant.

Behind the counter stood a radiant woman. There was something unmistakable about her presence. My intuition told me her radiance had been earned, and my cousin quietly confirmed it. As we spoke, I found myself wondering what life she had lived to become so peaceful, so open, and so full of light.

Then I looked to my left.

On a small display of greeting cards were six simple words:
Home is a feeling, not a place.

I stood there in silence as tears filled my eyes.

At the time, I was travelling through ten countries. Solo. Everywhere I went, I experienced extraordinary kindness, beauty, and humanity. For perhaps the first time in my life, I realised I didn’t simply feel at home in one place.

I felt at home within myself. Within the beauty of humanity and our shared world.

Only now, standing at the close of this twenty-seven-year chapter, do I truly understand what those words were trying to teach me.

Home is a feeling, not a place.