Home Is People, Not Places: Lessons from Moving Countries

When I was leaving Africa to start college in the US, I wondered day and night, how to leave my "home." I questioned if I would ever find home in the new place I was moving to. Home was not just a place for me; it was where my deepest relationships and world-travelling friends remained. I remember moving back to the US and friends and family alike welcoming me with, "Hey Karis, welcome home." How was I supposed to respond to that when I had just left home and come to a foreign place?

As much as I longed for home back in Africa, I knew that my TCK relationships were where I could find home again. I could be in any place in the world and if I met a fellow TCK I would immediately feel at home despite being a few thousand miles from home. They make all the places I've been feel like they belonged to me, even if only for a season.

The Traditional Idea of "Home" vs. a TCK's Reality

For many people, home is where they were born or where they spent their childhood. It's a physical location that holds their history. But for third culture kids like us, home isn't necessarily a static place - it's a mosaic of faces, voices, and shared experiences scattered across continents.

I experienced my first identity crisis in college when I questioned where I should tell people home is. I no longer lived in Africa, my parents lived in Charlotte, NC and I was in school in Greensboro, NC, my oldest sister lived in Chapel Hill, NC and my other sister at the time in Florida. How was I to define home when my friends and family were spread out across cities and even continents? To call one of these places home, felt like utterly disappointing one person, but choosing another home, felt like disappointing everyone else.

Lesson 1: Relationships Make a Place Feel Like Home

I remember moving to the US for college as an 18-year-old, overwhelmed by unfamiliar streets and a new school with tens of thousands of students where I knew no one. Everything felt foreign until I made my first friend - my college roommate. We bonded over silly inside jokes and late-night chats, and slowly, that strange city started to feel warmer, safer and more familiar.

It wasn't the geography that made me start to settle in - it was friendship. It was realizing that people have the power to turn a foreign country into a home, simply by offering you a seat at their table.

Lesson 2: Leaving People Hurts More Than Leaving Places

When I left Africa to start college, the move came with many goodbyes. And while I missed my favorite hiking spot or familiar school events, it was the people I left behind that left the deepest ache. I learned that saying goodbye to a place is hard; but saying goodbye to the people who made that place home is what breaks your heart.

Every farewell taught me how fragile and precious relationships are when your life is defined by goodbyes and people constantly coming and going. I grieved friendships that faded with distance, but I also carried pieces of those people with me into every new chapter. Knowing that if I ever needed a taste of home all I had to do was pick up the phone and text or call them.

Lesson 3: You Carry "Home" With You Through People You Love

The beautiful - and painful - truth is that home isn't always tied to walls or streets. It's carried in memories, phone calls across time zones, and reunions after years apart. I've learned that even when geography separates me from the people I love, our love for each other doesn't shrink. In many ways, home becomes a network of people who anchor you, no matter where you are in the world.

Some of my dearest friends live oceans away, yet they still feel close. We don't need to share a postal code to share a sense of belonging. That, to me, is one of the greatest gifts of growing up between cultures.

Redefining Home as a Third Culture Kid

While I had the privilege of growing up in the same place my whole life with occasional trips to the US, I know that is not the same for everyone. For some of you, when someone asks where home is, you don't point to a country on a map. You think of the people that shaped you - the friends you text across continents, the family traditions you carry into every new house, the mentors who saw potential in you no matter where you lived.

Home, for us, is a patchwork of relationships stitched together across borders. It's less about a place we return to and more about the people we return to, in whatever form that takes.

And maybe that's ok. Maybe home doesn't have to be a fixed point. Maybe it's a feeling we find in the people who remind us of who we are.

What Makes a Place Feel Like Home to You?

I'd love to hear your story. Whether you've moved countries or stayed in one place, how do you define home? What (or who) makes you feel like you belong? Share your thoughts in the comments - I'd love to connect.