home is wherever i'm with you.

In case you're just starting, this week I'm exploring home; what and where and who it is. I wrote the other day that home is a place, a location that is familiar and comfortable and known. My friend Alex mentioned yesterday that home can be full of oxymorons and opposing emotions. Today I want to look at home as a person or group of people. 

Have you heard this song? I think it was once featured in a Coke commercial, 

so that really makes me like it. (scroll down and pause my playlist to listen)

I like this song for another reason, too. When I started exploring home, one of the phrases that immediately came to my mind was home is wherever I'm with you. 

The heart of home, I am realizing, is who you're with. It's being with and loving and living with the people who know you the most and love you the best. Home is knowing that I can laugh or cry or scream or trip and fall in front of certain people, and they won't walk out the door. Home is trust. Vulnerability. Conflict. Honesty. Conversation. Laughter. Tears. Memories. It's knowing that I can be at my best or at my worst, and there are people who will be there through it all. 

Home is hugging my mom after a few months in Chicago. Home is singing loud on the dining room chairs with my roommates. Home is talking in the kitchen at Bethesda. Home is Caribou with Nicole. Home is phone conversations with my sister. Home is laughing about inside jokes with my Dad. Truly, home is wherever I'm with you. Home is being with the people I love, making memories and building relationships. 

Who in your life makes you feel the most at home? I'd encourage you, in the next few days especially, to go spend time with them. Make memories and build traditions. And tell the people who love you and who make you feel the most at home and who make you feel safe to be who you are ... tell them that you love them. Tell them, home is wherever I'm with you.