Creating a Home

However you define it, there are universal truths about what home provides.

One of the most important lessons I’m learning about my relationship to home:

It doesn’t need to stay the same. It evolves, just as my life and my community do.

What is home to you?

• Lock and leave — convenient, low maintenance, minimal attachment. A place to land between travels.

• Retreat and refuge — a safe space to recharge, to be fully yourself, and to connect with those closest to you.

• Entertaining base — a home filled with people, music, and gatherings—large and small—where you are rarely alone.

• Designer showcase — every room intentional and beautiful. A reflection of identity through design. Comfortable, but not always cozy.

However you define it, there are universal truths about what home provides.

Home is more than a physical space—it supports something deeper. As psychologist Dr. Peggy Loo notes, there are real mental health benefits to living in a space where you feel comfortable, where you feel it is your own, where you can truly be yourself.

In many ways, home sits at the center of what we need most. It holds both safety and belonging—two foundational elements of a meaningful life.

Home offers:

• Emotional and physical safety

• A sense of personal identity

• Territory—something that is yours

• Familiar sensory experiences—sounds, smells, light—that ground you

• A place for connection, where relationships deepen and community forms

It is not just where we live. It is where we belong—to ourselves, and to others.

As I find myself on the other side of caregiving for my husband with Alzheimer’s, my understanding of home has shifted profoundly.

Over time, our home changed. What was once a place of joy, ease, and shared life became something more clinical—designed to prevent falls, manage routines, administer medications. It became functional. Necessary.

But it no longer felt like home.

During those years, I experienced a quiet but profound crisis of meaning and identity. For most of our marriage, my definition of home was simple: Wherever Lee and I were together—that was home. Our connection defined it. Our partnership gave it shape.

As his condition declined, that definition was slowly—and then completely—taken from me.

I had to face a difficult truth: Home, as I knew it, no longer existed. But I had to keep going.

Caring for him. Managing the day-to-day.

And eventually, letting him go into Assisted Living.

Reconstructing “home” has become part of rebuilding my life.

It is still evolving. But it has become a pillar of strength as I move forward.

What was once simply a refuge is becoming something more expansive:

• A gathering place for traveling friends

• Weekly game nights

• A starting point for a walking group

• A space where someone can stop by for coffee or a quick hello

Home is no longer only where I retreat. It is where I reconnect—with life, with others, and with myself.

This evolution didn’t happen by accident. It required intention.

• I designed my home with distinct spaces—areas for conversation, for quiet, for connection.

• I created openness—room to move, to breathe, to simply be.

• I leaned into outdoor space—a porch that invites reading, resting, listening, or doing nothing at all.

And I brought Lee with me, in a different way. We collected art together. Those pieces now hang on my walls—each one holding a memory, a story, a moment in time.

They connect me to him. They remind me of love.

There is a concept called adaptive grief—the idea that we move between honoring loss, drawing strength from memory, integrating what has changed, and creating space to continue living.

I see that in my own life. I draw strength from what remains.

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Each version of home serves a purpose. Each creates belonging in its own way. And sometimes, life asks you to redefine it completely.

Your sense of home may change. And when it does—you have the opportunity to rebuild it in a way that reflects who you are now.

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If this would be of value to you to hear more about how I restored my sense of community after 4 years of caregiving, Subscribe to Vicki’s Substack, “The Tender Warrior”