What Does Home Mean to Me?

What does home mean to me? I had to think about this when I was asked this question. A lot of people explain it as a place where you’re warm and safe, and they say it’s a feeling that is much different than the feeling of being inside just a house. If I were to give you a quick answer, yes that is what a home is, but after thinking about it for a while I had a few other ways to describe it. When I hear the word home, I think of one place or one thing, but I realized that home isn’t just one place to me. Home is my community. My friends that live down the street, my school that’s at the top of the hill, Even the sound of the trains at night when I’m trying to sleep. These are all the things that I think of when I think of home. A house and a home are two very different things, but a home and a community are different too. I was very happy when I was told about this contest because I really like the idea of building homes for families. Two years ago, I ran a fundraiser to raise money for the Integrated Care Hub in Kingston. The thing that inspired me to do this was when I saw someone in a parking lot trying to put up a tarp in the wind to make a home. I realized that not everybody’s home is the same. In fact, everybody’s home is very different, but not everybody knows or remembers what a home feels like. Everybody should be able to know what a home feels like. I know for sure that the feeling of my home is one of the best things there is, and everybody needs to be able to feel that way no matter who they are. That’s what home means to me.