When It Looks Like There Is None

Words & Photography
by Brooklyn Wagner



I think growing up in a small farm town in Southern California taught me that home would never look the way I’d expect. I wouldn’t find home in a house with a mom and dad, or brothers and sisters. I wouldn’t have a home with funny family dinners and silly holiday traditions.

As I got older, I would eventually look for home in my classmates or my academics, but I soon learned that I was pursuing a changing stream of people and goals, meeting new friends each year on the playground, in Sunday School, and at the park on an exceptionally hot day. But they never stayed, because their families would move or life would draw them to a new place with new people. The never-ending rotation of humans in my life looked a lot like a melancholy montage from a dark comedy; it was something to be sad about, but nothing to cry over.

I began to see myself as a ship, a mobile creation, a vagabond...I resigned myself from any form of home and decided that I would be alright with that.

I finally packed up and shipped off to college where I planned on finding people that I would schmooze into sticking around, and into sitting on the proverbial (or literal) front porch with me and stay. I could settle down, plant my feet firmly along with my new family, and we could change the world together. However, the rotation continued, and I did not understand what I was missing. Was it me? I learned how to be more winsome and charming, but people were still getting married, moving across the country for jobs, joining an organization in east Asia, starting a non-profit in an urban center. I began to see myself as a ship, a mobile creation, a vagabond...just like them. I resigned myself from any form of home and decided that I would be alright with that.





Then I moved to Oregon, started at an internship, decided to use my degree, and get good at stuff. I was a rogue wave, crashing head on into a brand new life plan. My internship leader sat me down from day one and taught me about this process called "self-discovery". This was a new concept to me, but this practice changed everything.

What this practice taught me is that by taking the time to know myself, I am able to know others even better. I am learning how I uniquely speak, love, think, feel, give, and multiply. I learned that this is not fluffy, unimportant, cheesy, or too high-brow, but that it is actually really difficult, pain-staking, and matters severely. I am still learning this for the sake of not just me, but my brothers and sisters, mothers and fathers...for the rest of the rotation of humans that sit on my proverbial front porch or at my actual dining room table.



How simple is that? Home is where we are known. Home is where I know myself, and where you might enter to be known as well. Sometimes its with our nuclear family, sometimes its with a hodgepodge of humans who can sit for hours or who only have a few minutes. It presently and constantly blows my mind to sit with the other pieces of the puzzle of humanity and get the opportunity to know them.

How simple is that? Home is where we are known. Home is where I know myself, and where you might enter to be known as well.

The secret is that to be truly known is to be loved. Love, and I don’t mean desire, delight, or enjoyment, but straight up sacrificial, long-suffering, healing, unshakable love. Love battles against the constant rotation of humans in our lives and loves helps us endure in relationships that must last and be fortified. Love is what survives the changes. Love is what stays in your home, in your memory, in your dreams and goals, in your communication…even when the people change.



Love lets us know each other in all the right ways. I have made space at my proverbial table for you (and if you’re ever in Oregon, perhaps there will be a space for you at my real table!). Not just because you need it, but because I need it, too. We can be homes for each other.

This is why I create. I want to tell the story of global family. I want to tell the story of home when it looks like there is none.