Where is Home? We meet @585 Somerset St West

We meet at a new location; Kelly Funeral Home @ 585 Somerset St West.

For someone who has always lived in one country, the word home may seem straightforward. It is an address. A passport. A place to return to.

For someone who has lived across countries, home becomes more layered.

I was born in South Korea. That is where my earliest memories were formed. It is where my first language shaped how I understand the world. Some parts of me will always belong there, not because I consciously choose it, but because it shaped who I am.

But I have also lived in other countries. Each place left its mark on me. I adapted to different cultures, social norms, and ways of communicating. Over time, I became slightly different in each environment.

Now I call Canada home.

Yet this sense of home did not arrive immediately. It developed slowly, through time and experience.
Ottawa winter this year, in particular, challenged me deeply. The cold was not only physical; it was emotional. The continued icy winds and heavy snow often left me feeling unable to step outside, as though my world had narrowed to interior spaces. In those weeks, I began to question whether I had truly chosen the right place to call home.

And yet, I stayed.

This raises a deeper question: is home the place where we feel most comfortable, or the place where we choose to build a life despite discomfort?

When I return to South Korea, I feel familiarity but also distance. I recognize the rhythms, the language, the unspoken rules. Yet I also sense that I have changed. Some assumptions no longer fit as naturally as they once did. I belong but not completely.
In Canada, I also belong, though differently. My accent carries my history. My past is rooted elsewhere. I am integrated, yet not completely. Part of me remains shaped by another place.

So where is home?

Perhaps home is not singular. Perhaps it is the place where our past and present can exist together without contradiction.

Perhaps home is where we allow ourselves to be shaped by more than one culture without feeling divided.
Perhaps home is less about perfect belonging and more about commitment, the place where we choose to invest our time, endure difficulty, and imagine a future.
For those who cross borders, home may stop being a fixed point. It becomes something built gradually through relationships, repetition, memory, and resilience.

Home may not be where we began.

It may not even be where we feel most at ease. It may simply be where we decide to remain and, over time, where remaining begins to feel natural.

During our discussion, let's explore these questions together.

• Where is home to you and why?
• Does home exist more in our memories and emotions than in physical space?
• Can someone feel fully at home in more than one country?
• What parts of our first home remain the same, and what parts change, after we live elsewhere?
• Can living between cultures create a richer identity or a sense of incompleteness?
• How much does language influence where we feel most at home?
• Is the search for home ultimately a search for something deeper, like identity, belonging, love, or stability?
• If we feel slightly foreign in every place we live, does that mean we have no home or many homes?
• Can commitment and endurance create a stronger sense of home than comfort and familiarity?
• How do we know when a place has truly become home, rather than just a space where we live?