Home to me...

To me, home is not just a physical structure, it is also an emotional structure. Home is what you make of it, and also where you make it. It does not have to be your house, or where you grew up, to be considered home. The concept of your home is built by those around you.  

The house I currently live in, I have lived in all my life, therefore it will always be my home, because of the memories and experiences, good and bad, that I have faced there. I do not feel that tracing my roots back to where my ancestors came from and following their footsteps would be home to me, because I have no connection to that place, except through them. I would not be able to call a place I have never been to home. 

I believe that you have to know where or what your "home" is, to go home. I believe that your home is a place in which you feel a connection and a belonging with the place or those around you. An old well known quote describes my view of "home" exactly, "home is where the heart is". 

I have had many experiences in which I learned the true meaning of home, including two volunteer trips, one to West Virginia and one to New Orleans. During these trips the people I was working with would say "Oh I can not wait to go home" and other things such as that. But they did not mean to our home here in Massachusetts, instead they meant the place that we were staying. For the week on each of those trips, we made our own home at the place we were staying with the bonds between each other. Not only were we building structural homes, but we were building homes for those of us working together, and for those who were in need. Home was for us and is still the place you can turn to, when you feel you can not turn anywhere else.