BOOK: Chapter 1 - Home is Where the Heart Is

Welcome to my second week of Writing Wednesdays, where I share one chapter of the first draft of my book, one week at a time. An imperfect share of something that is a decade in the making. ❤️

If you missed it, and want to read the first post of my weekly book sharing, you can find it here.

I wrote these words below, besides the final paragraph, in summer of 2023. They’ve been sitting there in a Google Doc, untouched since then. Given that the current state of the world has drastically shifted since then, I’m noticing I want to change/edit/update some of the way I express this. I will likely commit to doing this later, but for now, here it is, as it was:

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Just a small sampling of a few of my homes over the past decade. From the city of San Diego, to the rural woods of NorCal, to homes on wheels, to beach studios in Oaxaca, sublets in Oahu and a few places in between. Home has looked like a lot of things for me.

Chapter 1: Home is Where the Heart Is

The never ending question I ask myself time and time again is: Where is home? No matter how many lessons I learn that prove to me I already know the answer, I still can’t help but ask. Because aren’t we always curious? Isn’t it a good thing to revisit old wonders time and time again to witness how they may evolve? What I do know now, or maybe have known for a very long time, is that home for me is a feeling. It’s the people, it’s the community, it’s the familiar embraces of nature all across the globe. It’s laughing with strangers and sitting in peace watching the sunset at any single place in the world. Having spent many years of my 20s wondering where my people were and longingly searching for community, I feel like I blinked and I’m here. Or rather, I’ve been here the whole time. Home is always all around me, I just have to remember to open my eyes to it wherever I may go.

After 15 years of (intermittent) solo travel & being raised by parents who needed to change where “home” was every 1-2 years, being on the road has been where I most feel at home in myself. Getting on a plane or train or bus or car to go to a new or not-so-new land instantly brings me feelings of peace and calm and groundedness. I’m a people-person who feels big happiness being around my chosen people. But a life on the move doesn’t always allow me to sink as deep into my in-person communities as my heart wants. As my life shifts and grows and stretches, so do the lives of the people around me. Neighbors who feel like family move away. Best friends start new lives with new routines. Community moves around. And on the occasions where I happen to be the one who decided to stick around in one place, the temporary feeling of loneliness has me wondering how I can better foster a sense of community in a life that can be so versatile.

Despite all of these complicated feelings, I really love this life. Living with a sense of wonder and an urge to wander has brought me so many beautiful friendships and experiences that continue around the world. Choosing to seek comfort in the continuously new and unknown has taught me wisdom I never even knew I wanted or needed. And it has all brought me closer to the ones who live in my “home bases” around the world. Thanks to technology, so many people are just a phone call, audio note, or message away. Human connection is around us always, no matter where we are or who we are with. I really think that’s all we’re here to do. Connect.

After growing up in the border city of San Diego, California, I look back and one of my favorite things is how much multiculturalism we got to live with and celebrate. Over half of my high school was Latino, my university was primarily Latino & many of my friends growing up were from families from countries all over the world. San Diego is a mere 20-minute drive from the border and simply because of proximity (& because of the fact these lands did indeed used to BE Mexico not all that long ago) Mexican culture has always felt like a piece of home to me, despite being raised by my immediate family who have no ancestral roots in Mexico nor the rest of Latin America.

When I started to feel less at home in the US, and as my city & this country grows and changes, I found myself wanting to spend more and more time in a country that feels like my second home. For so many years I chanted “I’m going to quit my job and move to Mexico” without the feasibility to actually do so. But I kept this dream in my heart, had a general plan and a vision for my future, so I made it happen. Eventually. I worked for years to build a career that provided me a flexible lifestyle, lived frugally, took short trips to feed my soul, and saved up money so I could one day explore my next steps. And I did just that. I took the leap after a one week vacation in a Oaxacan beach town. While visiting, I fell in love with the community, returned home to pack up my things, filed for a leave of absence from work and moved here alone for the summer to try it out. I later found myself never wanting to go back.

Maybe this particular town in Mexico isn’t my forever home, but deep down I know this country is. Mexico has me feeling held and safe and loved and celebrated. The food, the way of life, the untouched nature all make my soul sing with happiness. When I think about the US and what it is becoming (or what it has always been) and has become in my 3+ decades of life, I feel anxiety and fear and sometimes hopelessness. Like a buried survivalist part of me tells me that I need a back up plan or escape plan in order to be okay in the US during current events. In Mexico, for me, things just ARE. Of course I recognize that no place is perfect and every corner of the world has its challenges and injustices. But right now, I know I can be safe and happy in Mexico. I envision it being a safe place for my friends and family to also escape to when they need a break from their version of reality or when our home country feels less like home to them too. 

Waking up and deciding to actually JUST MOVE HERE doesn’t make me oblivious to the fact that it is a huge privilege to be able to do what I have done in the way that I did it. I want to make sure that I continue my next steps forward mindfully. Although I do somewhat feel like I’m fleeing the US, a place that no longer feels like home to me, I try to always keep gratitude in my heart and mind. The US built me so many opportunities. Opportunities to be able to quit my job with enough savings to find a new place to settle. The passport that lets me come and go with relative ease. The financial power to be able to comfortably afford housing.

This last note hits a sensitive piece of me. In San Diego, I grew up with a scarcity of money and mild house insecurity. As a child, my single mother had to move us from home to home nearly once per year as rent increased at a rate we couldn’t keep up with. Although part of me loved the experience of being somewhere new, I also longed for the life that some of my friends had: Living in the same home since childhood, having memories forever pasted on the wall, all the things they’ve ever owned all in the same place. I learned early on how to pare down my belongings to only the things I really wanted or needed, because it would be ME who had to carry the heavy ass boxes to the next place as I gradually realized truly how much shit I owned and probably did not need. Maybe I was raised and conditioned into the nomadic life or maybe it’s always been in my soul. Maybe it’s in my blood as only a couple generations are in between me and my ancestors who fled war and unrest in Eastern Europe. Regardless, for as long as I can remember, I’ve always loved being able to pack what I need into a bag or two, fill up my car or hop on a train, plane or taxi and know everything I have with me is just enough as is.

I do love the outcome of what this way of life has brought me, but I also know there is a little part of my heart that feels like I was slowly pushed out of my home for my whole life. All those times in my early 20s where I cried on the side of the road scared to buy gas because rent payment was going to be tight. Wondering how long I could sustain a life working more than one job just to barely make ends meet. It wasn’t until my 30s that I felt true financial stability for the first time, but by then it was too late. I was far too tired of keeping up with inflation and the other pressures of mainstream capitalism I experienced in the US. The new mega-buildings surrounding the places I loved most growing up. Masses of new people with more money coming in hot without a care for the community they’re stepping into, often without becoming an actual PART OF the community but rather taking over with no room for inclusion. There came a point where I felt that my home city had morphed into a place I didn’t belong and didn’t want to be. It all happened right before my very eyes, but so gradually that I didn’t see it coming.

I know the pain and struggle of being pushed out of a place I call home because of other people’s access to more money at the right time. And I also know there are people who have been pushed out of their homes far more brutally and quickly than I was (via war, colonization and other forms of violence). My reality in the US is: I am generally safe and I can provide a life for myself here. But the fact is, I don’t want to be in a place where I don’t feel I can thrive. And so I take these thoughts with me and I contemplate my move to Mexico.

I now have the financial freedom to live where I want, but I want to live in a way that support locals in hopes I may not be part of the problem I experienced in San Diego. I don’t want to live in a newly built home by foreign investors or buy and develop land in a place I just recently came to. I want to rent a home from a local to make sure the money stays more local for as long as possible. Supporting local is choosing to be part of the culture that already exists here, not crushing it and forcefully conquering a way in. Not re-building everything anew in order to overpower it. I want to be friends with the locals, eat local food, clean up and enjoy local beaches, spend time in local nature. I come here because it was perfect as it was when I got here and I’m not here to change it for me. I appreciate the warm welcome I’ve often received on new lands and I want to return the love and respect.

Despite the long-time reality that my physical home is everchanging, I still like to create it to be a sacred escape from the world. An energetically safe bubble. I want (need) my homes to be cozy. I want other people to feel at home the second they step foot in my door. I want it to be a place where we gather, no matter how small. In the past, I’ve held back and procrastinated nesting at a new place until I felt more grounded in my new home. But now it’s the first thing I do. I tidy up, put the art up, get the plants out and light the candles. I put my presence and my best energy into my homes. I come home again, and again, and again, to each new home.

I mean that both literally and metaphorically. In the stories that follow, I’m sharing what coming home looks like to me and has looked like to me over the course of many years. How I came home to myself time and time again through trauma therapy, through friendship, through exploration. Coming home, to me, means finding more peace within myself and where I am. It means understanding myself more and being willing to ask the questions, “What else is possible? How could this be even better?”. The same way that I enthusiastically explore new lands, cities, and countries, letting these adventures teach me to grow and see new perspectives, I do that within myself. Within my heart and soul. Within my space. Within my relationships. Within my surroundings. Wherever I may find myself. I come home.