I sit down to write in my new garden, freshly brewed and iced coffee in hand. I’ve just finished a nutritious light lunch of tofu and mango summer rolls as I watch the butterflies play on this beautiful sunny day. There is a buzz of birds and insects going about their day in my little cocoon of foliage. I light a mosquito coil and a little scented candle from my brothers wedding that felt important to carry across the world with me. I am home.

This is the first time since the beginning of November that I have been still. In my own space, with no where to run to, no one to see, nothing to organise, no distractions. I have what I asked for, my own home surrounded by nature in the sunshine. Space to relax, release, heal, focus, expand and create.

Home is a really interesting and pertinent topic for me and it has brought up a lot of big emotions as I explored it, writing this. Home as an idea, concept, feeling. What unifies the choices people make when it comes to where and what they call home and what drives those choices? As someone who doesn’t live where they are born, has an adventurous free spirit and doesn’t currently have a permanent base anywhere, I have been known to use the term loosely, intuitively and interchangeably. People make a home, places become home, you cultivate a home within yourself. This year I am making big changes, facing my shadows and taking time to lay strong healthy foundations for the rest of my life and so feel it important to ask myself the questions:

What does home mean to me right now? What do I want it to look like in the future? What do I need to do to create my design?

It’s interesting because the people who feel like home to me live far away from me. Home is my family that I love and miss so much. Those friends that have been with you through so many changes in life and versions of you are safe, seen and grounded in the presence of. No matter the distance, no matter the time spent apart. There are places that become home over time, with experience, with alignment of the environment to who you are at your core. New partners and new friends forming connections that root into you so deeply that no matter where you go together, that feeling of home stays with you.

Strip it all away though, everything external, and then what builds that essence of home within ourselves? What allows that feeling of safety, grounding, stability, just as we are? How do we cultivate and maintain this?

Since arriving in Thailand, I have felt like I am where I am meant to be. I love it here; the culture, the people, the scenery and the food. Three weeks into my time here, I can see clear unexpected messages and lessons I am here to receive surrounding “Taking my Time” and the Importance of “Home”.

Whilst I had been recommended by other digital nomads to find a longer term rental upon arriving in Koh Tao, no one had anticipated the island being the busiest its ever been. The perfect storm of beautiful weather, recent scrapping of covid restrictions and neighboring island Koh Phangan Full Moon Party spillover resulted in homelessness feeling like a very potential outcome a few times. I had to do a few nights here, a night there for a total of sixteen days which almost broke me one day in the middle.

I had been doing, what I thought was, a great job at managing my stress surrounding the situation. I’d been coaching myself; embodying the belief of it all working out, visualising feeling safe and at ease in my new home, appreciating the beauty of the island, taking time to snorkel, kayak and rest. One day, about mid way through the two weeks, a place I had lined up for a couple of weeks fell through last minute. I could feel the stress and overwhelm physically.

I was at the pier in the afternoon heat, all my belongings in tow, feeling like I couldn’t take much more of this. I was physically tired and mentally drained and started to feel really overwhelmed. What was I going to do?
Feeling lightheaded, I took myself, bags in tow, for lunch. Feed yourself then we can resolve this, I thought. The food didn’t help and every time I went to look at my phone to try and find somewhere everything was just spinning which started to really concern me. Was I okay? Why was I feeling like this? I felt like I had taken some crazy drugs or been on some wild bender or a anxious hangover from hell but I hadn’t. I’d been looking after myself so well I was like WHAT IS HAPPENING!

I found somewhere with availability for a night, sorted out getting to the new place by boat and slowly navigated myself within view of general public at all times in case I fainted. Someone somewhere in the universe was looking out for me because that night I magically got upgraded to a hilltop princess palace on this little island off a little island with my own private pool. I literally said thank you out loud and couldn’t stop smiling. It was just what I needed. I took it as a sign and an opportunity to get some deep rest and comfort.

As I lay in the bed, windows open on the cliffs edge, staring out at the ocean, I thought about how nothing really matters if you don’t have your basic human needs met. How important it is to look after yourself and that I was so glad that I had stopped drinking. If you don’t feel safe and grounded everything else is unstable. You can be in the most beautiful place on earth and it can feel irrelevant if you feel fragile. How grateful I was to have this incredible home, even if it just was for one night.

I am relatively well practiced and fluid at moving about but I do also know that and appreciate that at a foundational level, we crave and need stability and routine to be able to function at a higher level. Some parts of my being have been in survival mode, not knowing when I would be able to find somewhere to rent for a couple at months. Unable to unpack, cook a meal, relax knowing I would have a roof over my head.

I don’t see it as any coincidence that on the day after I finally move into my new little home, after making eight moves in sixteen days, I find myself at a yoga class focused on balancing my root chakra. Whilst moving about I’ve benefitted from a healthy mindset, habits and beautiful natural environments without which, I would have been trying to function on unstable ground. I cant even fathom having to have deal with any of it on a hangover.

It got me thinking about why I travel. Why I live outside my comfort zone and far from my most loved ones.

As someone who has had a intense sense of adventure since I was a teenager, I am curious to what drives it. In some ways, I am envious of those for whom staying where they are brings sufficient happiness. I have a second cousin who was left her grandmas house in the will, which she then moved into with her husband and children. This happened at a similar time to when I was moving to Malawi to work, knowing no one but my new boss. I find it intriguing and whilst I accept that we all have different journeys, part of me wishes that living my life where I grew up, surrounded by those who I love and have known all my life was enough for me.

People often say, OMG YOU’RE SO LUCKY TO LIVE IN THESE AMAZING PLACES! I find this statement pretty triggering. Yes I know that I live a beautiful life that fulfills me from a location point of view one hundred percent. I am continually learning and adapting my living conditions to bring me my greatest joy. Yet this isn’t luck but choices that I consciously make and there’s a price. I give up living with the people who feel like home for where I feel most at home within myself.

I am deeply connected to myself and enlightened when in nature. I can simply be. I am inspired by the creation all around me and how it creates, coexists in a beautiful delicate balance of eco structure, change, cycles, evolution. In nature, the expectations get released and appreciation for its existence is alive. If I see myself as a plant, there are certain conditions in which I survive and certain conditions in which I thrive. If you get into gardening, even a little bit, you will know that different plants require different conditions to live long and happy plant lives. If you weren’t aware of this then you have probably had a lot of dead plants in your life.

Some plants can happily live inside with little watering. Some plants, like succulents, get along just fine in bathrooms with no windows and only the moisture from your showering to feed them. I am not a house plant. And that’s okay.

I am probably a really tall plant you find in a tropical jungle that blooms in the sunshine and is most commonly found at high elevation with fresh ocean air. If you tried to replant me in London there’s a few months of the year I could survive but I’d be unlikely to bloom that much. I think when we think about human beings, we can forget that, beyond our consciousness, we’re not that different to plants.

I choose destinations based on the needs of my plant self and I make sacrifices to do so. I don’t have a traditional type home at the moment. I have to create a really strong foundation and grounding to keep a home within myself. My mindset and spirituality create a home within my human body. I have had to learn to detach from those who I love the most in the world to be able to thrive in myself. There is always a cost and you have to listen to what overall is best for you.

Since starting my journey as a digital nomad in Barbados a few years back the world has slowly become home. I have connections all over the globe. There are wonderful communities and you form deep connections with those living a similar lifestyle. With a shared mindset, you easily pick up and drop off as you move around the world. Other than lifestyle, I do think that the tight bonds you form with fellow nomads is probably driven by similar core experiences in life. That part that makes us want to seek something external, a new environment and catapults us to leave.

Last week I discussed knowing when to leave but I guess I’m now questioning what is it that drives us to want to step outside of the world we know. What drives us to keep doing it? What are we looking for? If it was just the core natural elements then there wouldn’t be as much of a drive for change and variety. New things, new people new places.

Expansion? Inspiration? Evolution? Perfection? External pulls, reasons, validation? Do we need to just “get it out of our system”? Wear ourselves out until we crave longer term roots that can grow deep and provide a supportive, nourishing foundation? Does our physical form grow old and get tired or does someone become enough of a reason to stay put?

Am I searching the ends of the earth for missing pieces, answers, precious gold? Am I seeking what cannot be found in physical form? Am I distracting from the pain of a wound and trying to escape my shadow? Am I hiding in new corners or truly exploring this beautiful Earth?

Am I simply navigating a beautiful journey back home?

My first ever solo backpacking trip was to Thailand when I was eighteen. Now, having lived a whole other lifetime, I find myself back here again. Feeling that maybe I am now ready to close the loop of what I was seeking when I first set off from home as a teenager. I think that there’s been a duality and polarity in this journey and a reason I am back here at this point. Maybe I have been both exploring and running all this time without awareness. Only looking at where I was going and watching my step, unsure of the path.

Reflecting over the patterns and timings of when I have left has shone light on how I have been creating physical space from situations that I didn’t know how to resolve in the environment where they were created. Now, I feel that its not really about resolution. It’s about acceptance. Facing and accepting reality. Letting the emotions flow, the anger, the sadness, the release… until the weight is lifted and out of it I rise.

To be a free spirit and actually allow my spirit to be free. Not trapped it in a prison of avoidance. But free to allow myself to go home, wherever that home truly is.

And whilst the physical creation of that home is still pending, I feel clarity of what it feels like within me.

To me home feels like bringing my mum tea in the morning and navigating her bed full of pillows to sit and chat. It feels like morning coffee chats that turn into night, where the hours melt away in conversation. It feels like snuggling in PJs whilst it pours outside and a hug that you don’t want to end. It feels like sitting alone in a river, the sounds of nature bathing my ears. Its that feeling of a shower after a long hike, the relief and exhalation as you sit down. A full fridge, a freshly cooked meal. It feels like sweet stillness, no where to go to, having all that you need. Surrender, timelessness, breath.

Somewhere to come from. Somewhere to go to. Somewhere to be. Safe, grounded, home.