Home Is A Feeling

Words & Photography
by Sofia Tomé



At the age of 26, I moved out of New Jersey for the first time in my life. I accepted a job and traveled way out of my comfort zone, from the Northeast to the Deep South, within two weeks time.

While I’d spent most of my childhood traveling between the US and Portugal, for the first time I was in a new place, by myself, surrounded by a culture that was different from anything I’d ever experienced. It took me two whole years in Houston to develop a sense of home, and as soon as I’d established that feeling, I was off to start from scratch in another new city, very far from that one.

I’d become an expert at moving, at making myself at home in a place to which I had no connection. 

By the time I made my way to Boston, I’d become an expert at moving, at making myself at home in a place to which I had no connection. I found the closest Whole Foods, a cute coffee shop where I could settle in for afternoons at a time, a yoga studio near the apartment I shared with my boyfriend – and, with that, quickly found my footing in a brand new city.

A year later, when I made the decision to come back to Jersey, I felt ready for my third move in three years. I was “coming home” and found comfort in the familiarity of living in a place that I’d known all of my life. It was a place that I could navigate without GPS, where finding a good spot for brunch didn’t require research, where the cool shops were already on my radar. But, in finding myself back in a place that was oh-so-familiar, I learned that home isn’t always a place that you know. Sometimes, home is making an instant connection with a new friend in Houston or finding a local bakery with fresh croissants in Brookline.

It was a place that I could navigate without GPS, where finding a good spot for brunch didn’t require research, where the cool shops were already on my radar.

Home can be hanging out in your childhood bedroom in a tiny apartment in Newark, or it can be sitting fireside in a kitchen with your grandma in a far off village in Portugal. When you find your home changing from moment to moment, you learn that home is not a place; you learn that home is a feeling that you carry with you, always.