I really enjoyed reading about my peers’ experiences of home. People’s conceptions of home and family have always been of great interest to me (perhaps because I find that my identity is so deeply entrenched in my idea of home). I was particularly interested in Jacob Kosh’s, Joseph Um’s, June Roh’s, Navid Yazdani’s, Chino Rodriguez’s and Indra Isita’s posts.

In June’s post, she mentions that home is more connected to people than to the ownership of a physical house. The story of her grandfather really touched me. It reminded me of my grandparents. June describes how her grandfather’s home was stolen. My own grandparents were forced to flee their home in Czechoslovakia during World War II to escape the persecution of Christians that was occurring at the time (my grandfather escaped a work camp). They came to Canada and watched as the war literally tore their home country in half. To this day my grandmother mourns the loss of her home and feels displaced in Canada.

Chino’s idea that home is a set of experiences and sensations really connected with me. I especially had an appreciation for his reference to the presence of sports in his conception of home. His description of coming home from basketball practices triggered a lot of memories for me. I liked the idea that all these daily rituals are what form one’s idea of what home is.

Joseph’s story of movement through countries and his search for home and identity in different places was interesting to me as I have never even moved houses. It made me question the role of “place” and more broadly, the role of country in one’s connection to home. As well, I enjoyed the way he considered the intersection between ethnicity, culture, country, and home. It (once again) made me think of my grandmother. People do not doubt her “Canadian-ness” because she is white (something which many immigrants do not experience) yet she never found a sense of home in Canada. She was never able to culturally identify with the country (nor did she try particularly hard to).

Navid’s blog post made me expand on ideas of home in reference to place that were initiated by Josephs’s writing. Navid described home as a structure that holds “all that is valuable” to him. (I loved this particular line.) In my post, I had focused on the familial aspects of my conceptions of home but after reading Navid’s post I was led to think about how dearly I love my home too.

Indra referred to home as being something you can create for yourself. Once again, this was something I had not considered before. I really liked the idea that we have a certain level of agency in deciding who and what our home is. She says that “everyone deserves the opportunity to create their own sense of home, rather than being restricted to the house or situation they were brought home to without a choice.” This differed greatly from the idea of home that I articulated in my post but I think Indra’s conception of home is very powerful and freeing and therefore, exceptionally valuable.

Jacob’s post was similar to Indra’s in certain aspects. He described his search for a sense of home and ultimately he found that home is where you can live your truth and he determined that home is more of a “state of mind” than a place. Once again, this idea was new to me but it really piqued my interest. His conception of home, like Indra’s, insinuates that we have power over what our home is. I liked the idea that our sense of home depends on ourselves rather than on other people or places.

Ultimately, I think there is a lot of significance and power in considering what home means to yourself and to the people around you. Thanks to all my peers for sharing their stories and experiences of home!