This week’s blog is by Jessica Still, a mental health advocate, writer, and all-round wonderful person. She explores the subject of home which I guarantee will get you thinking about what home means to you. As we grow up we all leave home, but does it ever leave you? Or does it adapt and change as you do?
Home is a funny word. With hundreds of meanings, places, and people, it can be difficult to decide exactly where our home is. Is home the childhood house that we played in, cried in, and grew up in? Is it the first person you ever loved who made you feel like you could travel the world without ever leaving their side? Or is it wherever you find yourself presently? Hotel room, house, café, or field?
Home, in my opinion, is a feeling. Not a place or a person but an emotion rooted deep down inside of you. Where safety is a given and love is always flowing. It doesn’t have to be four walls and a roof. It’s not somewhere that you can watch flowers grow and rainfall. It’s within you.

Home is wherever you are. Whether a piece of you lies on a cliff by the sea or the top of a skyscraper in the city, it’s where you can stand and feel powerful, invincible, undoubtedly yourself.
Don’t hold so much dependence on a place or a heartbeat. Not everything is permanent. Walls crumble and people leave but your skin, bones, and thoughts are always going to be with you. Through every possible emotion and experience, your body will be there to carry you through. It is your home in every possible way.
Place your home where your memories are strongest, where you can scream the words to your favourite song and laugh until your stomach hurts at a funny joke. Make sure that wherever you are, you are safe. Happy. Existing purely for yourself and nobody else.

For me, my home is a thousand different places. Fragments scattered far and wide across the globe. My home is the top of the Empire State, where I stood one Christmas day and stared out at a hazy sky. My home is in a rocky cove by the seaside where I ate chips and built sandcastles. My home is in the car with my mum, arguing over what song to play. My home is me, sitting on my bed, surrounded by the things I love; my cat, my books, my cushions. All these places are home because they are places that I have been and I have existed because at the end of the day, I am my own home.
Of course, there are always things that can bring you closer to home. Like special objects or pictures that you’ve always treasured. Whether it’s a map of your favourite place in the world, or a dusty ceramic statue of a dog- there will always be items that evoke a sense of nostalgia from within you. When we carry these things with us, it’s a reminder that home really is all around. From dust in the corner of a room to tea cups with lipstick stains on the rim. We’re surrounded by reminders of life, of other people’s safe spaces, of existence in the smallest ways. It certainly is something to treasure. Something that started the moment you were born deep down inside of you. A nostalgic gift that is all about belonging to yourself and your existence.
There is hope in knowing that the idea of home can be a million different things. It doesn’t have to be one thing that once gone can never be found again. Home is nostalgia and memories, new experiences and friends, love and happiness, Christmas days and Easter mornings. It’s the knowledge and the faith that it will all be okay. It’s everything and everywhere.
Home has never been about four walls and a roof. It’s always been two eyes and a heartbeat. It’s you.

It is everything you want it to be. You have complete control over what you decide home means to you. It’s your superpower.
To know more about Jess, take a look at her Instagram profile.
And for something wonderful to hang in your home try here.