Hiraeth is a Welsh word meaning a longing for home. Except this home does not exist anymore, or never existed in the first place. It’s a word rooted in the ideas and experiences of nostalgia, of looking back to a moment and not being able to go back there. I think people experience nostalgia and Hiraeth often, or at least I do. This word fits into my life as I discover what it means to have a home and a family. 

I think back, sometimes, to the home I grew up in. My parents and brother still live there, with the cats I grew up with. The kitchen is still the same, same with the fireplace and the bathroom. Nothing has changed. Except now, I don’t feel like it is my home. When I visit, I don’t even have my own room to sleep in. The kitchen feels weird. I look around, and the living room feels wrong. How can it be a home when I don’t have a bed, or the rooms I grew up in feel foreign? The home from my childhood is no longer there, despite the same people, furniture, and physical house still occupying the same street with the same trees in the park strip and the same fountain in the front yard.

It’s unsettling. Every time I visit my parents, I feel like I’ve gone elsewhere. Every waking moment is spent thinking about and wanting to go home. But what is home? The word Hiraeth is the reminder that home can be found anywhere. Looking back at the home I have grown apart from cements the home I have built for myself. It’s ownership of the present. When asked where I’m going after  class, my answer is “home.” It’s a 10-minute drive north from campus. It’s passing through the stoplights and turning onto a small road before the two lanes merge into one. It’s a second-floor apartment that gets warm afternoon sun, views of each day’s sunset, and the smell of the ocean that is past the horizon. It’s a home I’ve made for myself, with my furniture, dishware, DVDs, and bedding. 

Hiraeth is a longing for home, and it’s a reminder that an actual home is one that can be created, one that I can create and be happy to return to at the end of every day. This necklace reminds me of that. And when I find myself without a home, or at the start of building a new one, this necklace will still be constant and one I can carry with me everywhere I go.