What Home Really Means

I did not have a home growing up. Not in the way most people mean it.

We moved constantly. Boxes taped and retaped until the edges curled. Milk crates stacked with everything we owned. A new room, a new house, a new set of walls that never quite felt like ours.

Home was not a place. It was a concept I watched other people have.

I remember the dream that haunted me for years. A house filled with light. Wide plank floors. The smell of fresh cut flowers. A kitchen where I stood with my palms pressed against cool marble, breathing in the quiet. In the dream, I had built it. It was mine. And for one long, exquisite moment, I was at peace.

Then I would wake up. 4:30 in the morning. The weight of the day pressing in before my feet even touched the floor.

I told myself that dreaming was dangerous. That wanting something so beautiful was selfish. That I had no right to imagine a life like that.

But the dream never left me.

And now, all these years later, I build homes for a living.

There is something almost poetic about that. The girl who never had a home now helps others create theirs. The girl who was taught that wanting was wrong now gets to say, your dreams matter. Build them.

But here is what I have learned along the way.

Home is not really about the structure. It is not the countertops or the paint colors or the square footage. Those things are beautiful, and they matter. But they are not the soul of it.

Home is safety. It is the exhale at the end of a long day. It is knowing you belong somewhere, and that somewhere belongs to you.

Home is ownership. Not just of property, but of your life. Your choices. Your story.

Home is legacy. It is the walls that hold your family's laughter. The kitchen where your children will remember standing beside you. The rooms that will witness the ordinary moments that become the most precious memories.

For so long, I believed home was something you were given. Something you earned through obedience or luck or someone else's approval.

Now I know the truth.

Home is something you build. One brave choice at a time. One board, one nail, one decision to believe that you are worthy of a place that holds your dreams.

I think about that little girl who used to wake from her dream and push it down. Who told herself she had no right to want more.

I wish I could tell her what I know now.

That the dream was not dangerous. It was a compass.

And it led her exactly where she was meant to be.

Home.

Finally, home.

Love,

Jasmine