"Home"

What does the word "Home" mean to you?  Is home a destination...or is it a sentiment?  I used to think that home was the place where I hung my coat.  I have since broadened my view.  

I have lived in seven homes during my lifetime.  I have left each and every one with little regret because for me home was wherever my loved ones were, and as long as the connection to family was kept, I felt at home at every reunion.

Many share the same sentiment...

"Where we love is home,
Home that our feet may leave, but not our hearts."
~Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr., Homesick in Heaven

"Home is a place not only of strong affections, but of entire unreserve; it is life's undress rehearsal, its backroom, its dressing room."  ~Harriet Beecher Stowe

Fredrick Robertson best expresses how I feel about "home."...or the kind of home we all would love to experience.

"Home is the one place in all this world where hearts are sure of each other.  It is the place of confidence.  It is the place where we tear off that mask of guarded and suspicious coldness which the world forces us to wear in self-defense, and where we pour out the unreserved communications of full and confiding hearts.  It is the spot where expressions of tenderness gush out without any sensation of awkwardness and without any dread of ridicule."  ~Frederick W. Rob

The home...the family...that I would like to claim as my own is the one that welcomes me with tenderness, and without reserve....where kindness, compassion, understanding and forgiveness abide without exception... and when I leave that safe haven I will know that nothing is said in malice after my departure...and that home,  I will yearn to return to.

I have, at times,  used the word "home" to describe more than the place where loved ones gather.  Over the past several years, I have felt a "pull" in a certain direction.  I have become interested in Herbology, in Art, and in Sustainable living.  For the first time in my life, I feel as if I have "come home" to who I am as a person.  These subjects have become my passion.  I feel more at Peace than I have ever felt, when I have paintbrush in hand.  Do you understand what I mean?  Some may.  Some might not. Van Gogh did.

“One may have a blazing hearth in one's soul and yet no one ever come to sit by it. Passersby see only a wisp of smoke from the chimney and continue on the way.” Vincent van Gogh 

Do you offer a feeling of "home" to your loved ones?

Have you found your passion?  

What does the word "Home" mean to you?