Feels Like Home To Me

Feels Like Home to Me

The music stopped my writing in its tracks and tears began streaming down my face. The words “Feels Like Home to Me” (Newman, Krall, Adams, 2024) hit me like a ton of bricks shattering the glass walls I have built up around my spirit and self. The tears flowed down my cheeks without me knowing why or where they were coming from deep inside. Each lyric of the song was like an arrow piercing the walls I had built and letting in the fresh air and light. My soul seemed lighter, and I felt like I was floating above myself transported to another dimension or alternate world and version of myself. I connected with something deep within from those lyrics that I hadn’t expected. I was writing a completely different article topic but had to stop and go to this and put the song on repeat. Below are the words as they flowed out inspired by the song lyrics.

I’m still sitting here with tears streaming down. I know the song is written from the perspective of a love song between two people. But for me it is so much more in this moment. It does resonate with me as a love song to my husband Ryan, whom I love deeply, and our love is one that ‘feels like home.” He describes it as a Korean word called Jeong (정). There’s no direct translation into English but the closest translation is love, affection, compassion, sympathy, community, attachment, loyalty, etc. that is often an unspoken demonstrated love. When you spend a lot of time with someone, some Koreans say 정 들었다 (they are bound with 정). This is when a special connection is felt between two people based simply on the amount of time spent together, which doesn’t have to be an exceptionally long amount of time. Jeong is a broad concept and very important part of Korean culture. It can be between humans, but Jeong can also be felt towards inanimate objects.  It is a deeper transcendent love that goes beyond what we define as love in the west. It is complex to translate to non-Koreans, but I get it after many years, and this song and its lyrics I think describes the sense of Jeong and our love for each other. My love for my husband Ryan feels like home to me.

Also, this song resonated with me that it is talking about my love for friends and family, a deep love that feels like home to me. But what brought the tears today was something different. It was how the words of a love song between people, hit me as also related to me saying these words to myself and my writing and storytelling. They fit. Telling stories, written and verbal, feels like home to me. Doing this blog and telling stories feels like home to me. The lyrics, “Feels like home to me. Feels like I’m all the way back where I belong” flood my soul. The words conjure a movie in my mind of childhood growing up on Georgia, playing and running along the red clay banks of the Chattahoochee River and Lake Lanier with my family and friends. The movie shifts to scenes of me exploring the countryside, villages, and coastline of the Puglia region of Italy with my fellow Air Force friends. Next, a bucolic scene of me on nature walks along the cliff walks and strolling through quaint Cornish fishing villages in southern England. Then, wandering the historic streets of London to find my true self within the heartbeat of the ancient city that became my favorite city in the world. All of those places, experiences, and the people there feel like home to me.

The song is on repeat now as I continue sitting here with happy tears streaming down my face, moved beyond emotion and my fingers keep moving as the words flow out of me onto the screen. If I was writing long hand the paper would be streaked with my tears, blended in with the words they inspire. It feels like a floodgate opened up and everything started spilling out. All the stories from my family and ancestors came flooding to my soul and are cheering me on and welcoming me all the way back to where I belong. Feels like home to me.

As always, I encourage each of you to reflect on your stories and consider what feels like home to you. Is it a person or persons, a relationship, a place, job, career, hobby, art, music, experience, or anything else that stirs your soul deep within, causing you to get lost in the flow? Look within yourself and your stories to find what feels like home for you and allow it to bring you back where you belong.

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