Home for the Holiday

The Familiarity & Foreignity of Home + Thanksgiving Trip Recap & More

💌 QUICK NOTE 💌

This post is a part of Freely & Lightly, a collection of personal musings and raw and honest essays from my journey of undoing and becoming. To access this full post as well as future essays, recommendations, exclusive podcast episodes, and link roundups, consider becoming a paid subscriber.

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Three and a half years. That’s how long it’s been since the last time I’ve been home. It was the summer of 2020 during COVID and the beginning of my third trimester. Vaccinned, big-bellied, and anxious, I hopped in the car with my aunt and cousin as we hauled our way up to Ohio for a brief summer getaway. While I was excited to see my family, I would be gone for three weeks, the longest my husband and I had been away from each other since our long-distance dating days. But I needed that time and space, the time and space to rest, reflect, and ready myself for a new season. Not that I couldn’t do that at my apartment in Atlanta with my husband, but my childhood home in Ohio provided a more intricate and intimate layer of comfort and respite that I desperately needed. And three years and three kids later, I found myself craving that same comfort, the comfort of home.

It’s funny because growing up in Ohio, I was always ready to move out. The grayness, slowness, and stillness of my city left little to be desired. I wanted to live in a city that was much brighter, busier, and bolder. A city that was burgeoning with hope, promise, and opportunities, much like the places I read about in the books. I wanted to live in a city, a setting where I could be the main character. So when I was offered a full tuition scholarship to Howard University in Washington, D.C., I found my ticket out. That was over 12 years ago. Since moving out of Ohio, I lived in D.C., North Carolina, and Georgia, and while I feel more like myself in these bigger cities and spaces, there is nothing like the familiarity of home.