Home

I live in a city where homelessness is a major concern. I am fortunate to have a home, a steady income, and an overall sense of security.

I grew up in a home that had been in my family for three generations. It was an old farm house on (you guessed it) a farm. I grew up on ninety acres covered in trees and grass. My home was not only where I lived, but it was the place where my closest family was and where my closest friends would visit.

I remember my first big move away from home. Specifically one year after begin away, I was able to say with confidence that home wasn't a specific place, but a feeling or an emotion in my heart. I had moved one thousand miles away from the home and community that I had grown up in, and as much as that was "home," I began to realize that home was more that a house or a zip code.

That sense of security had to do with feeling at home with the new friends I had made; feeling at home in the work I was doing; and of course feeling at home in my apartment and neighborhood.

Feeling at home. Feeling. Home is a feeling. When making a deeper emotional connection with "home" I can't help but think of the homeless people in New York and across the country who suffer from mental and emotional illness. They are physically without a home, and they also struggle with finding a sense of emotional security that I have identified as my "home." How much greater is the challenge to finding a "home" when you cannot afford the rent, and you don't know how to spend emotional energy on a sense of security?