Feb 15, 2021-  Reflections of home 

Hello reader! 

Welcome back! For this week’s blog post I will be going over similarities and differences that were amongst our posts about home. In addition to this reflection, I will also add my own thoughts on why I believe these patterns are important. Many of the similarities that we talked about when thinking about home are childhood, feeling, parents and safety. And many of the differences were around the different stages of life and experiences each of us was going through. Despite these differences, I believe that these similarities and differences make us who we are and are a testament to how we were raised.   

 For the similarities, I found that many of us referred back to our childhood homes and what it looked like for us. For example,  it was the ability to navigate the streets of Delta than it is for him to navigate Vancouver. But yet home could be the ability to know particular parts of one’s neighbourhood. Another key similarity that home had for a lot of us, was the feeling you have when you’re there. For one of us, home was where you made cookies, filled with laugher and love. And again, home can be where love is and it could manifest itself in many different ways, could be two different places. In each of these examples, they focus a great deal on their childhood home that their parents owned and their separation from this feeling that home had for them. 

Then come the differences. One of the biggest differences that I noticed how each person had different kinship ties and which ones were more important to them than others. This is different than my own family seeing that my parents never got divorced and I have 7 aunts and 3 uncles on my mom’s side. So it is sort of hard for me to think of home with not many people running around. The second difference that I noticed was that some of us talked about how home could be limiting. But, not in limiting in the way a small home town is, but more rather limiting due to the pandemic. I never thought of the home this way as it is a safe spot and nurturing but now it is brought to my attention that the pandemic blurs the line of home vs workspaces. Which in return can blur our relationships within the home. 

 With this all being said and after much enjoyment of reading our blog posts about home. I believe that we all fundamentally have the same idea of what home looks like at the core. But, depending on what experiences we have been through also determines what we think of home and what is not. I also realized that there are so many ways to express ourselves which made it an enjoyable way to get to know one another.