“Let your home be you mast and not your anchor.”

Khalil Gibran

Where do you come from? This is such a simple question but one that challenges some of us.

“Home is when I am connected with myself and my community of people where I feel accepted and loved.” This is my most common answer and most truthful response.

If you mean “which place goes deepest?” then I feel most at home when I am in Bern where my family and many friends live. But then I feel at home in Bangkok where I spend four to five months of the year. There was a period I felt at home in Chiang Mai when my sister and her family lived there.

During the time when I often visited and worked in Togo I felt at home in Lomé and also in Accra.

Nico Pyler, the novelist said in a TED talk “My home would have to be whatever I carried around inside me.” This is so liberating. We can choose where we belong and find safety.

In my idea world, home is the place where I am safe. It’s the inner and outer space where I am not questioned beyond the boundries of love, I am accepted wearing inner or outer old and dirty clothes as much as when I’m ready for an evening out wearing my smartest clothes.

We need such a place where we let down our guard. A space where we speak, breath, act, decide unguarded and freely. Knowing that our heart and soul are beloved and therefore when we fall or hurt, when we make mistakes and soar in success, others are by our side.

Home doesn’t “happen”. We create this place. We design, build, tear down, re-build again and again. That’s home. Build in laughter with sweat and tears. A place where passion finds air to breath. A cave to retreat when everything is too much and we need a womb to hide in. A place to celebrate birthdays and to mourn illness and death. A kitchen to brew coffee and let spices entice us.

But most importantly … home is where I am beloved and free to love.