This week, I’ve joined forces with two of my very good friends, Jack and Sarah-Jane, to explore a topic we’ve spent a lot of time talking about: what does home mean to us?
Jack and Sarah-Jane are exceptionally talented writers and I’m so grateful that they took the time to contribute to this piece.
It’s a long one but a very good one and I really hope you enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed pulling it together.
It’s Roma, amore!
My dad used to drive my sister and me to school every morning and he would always point out the fog over the river. For some reason, this is a memory that comes to mind when I think about my first home: the Philippines. I was born and raised in Batangas City, just an hour and a half ride from the capital, Manila.
My childhood was spent with my sister and my grandmother, my dearest Lola, who lived with us and took care of us while my parents were busy with their jobs in order to provide the family a simple and humble life.
That home holds lots of bittersweet memories and despite being 10,000+ kilometres away, it holds the roots of who I am today and the life I’ve shared with my lola. It is where I go back to whenever I want to relive her cooking, her laugh, her loudness, but most importantly, the unconditional love she had towards me.
Then, at the age of 10, we moved to the land of pasta and gelato with my family and despite the big and obvious shift from a Southeast Asian culture to a European one, Italy did not unsettle me.
As a young, innocent kid, I wasn’t focused on what was different. Kids were kids, trees were trees, food was food and although there was a language barrier at first, I don’t remember the struggle of having to learn Italian. It only felt natural, but school helped a lot.
Since then, the Eternal City has been my home for 16 years now. It has seen me grow into a young man.
I share this city with my beloved friends whom I met through school. People that truly made Rome a home. Our adolescence was spent among the chaos of Trastevere, pulling all-nighters as if the city was ours. Nowadays, we find ourselves enjoying chill dinners together at home. The night usually ends after a couple of bottles of red wine (beer if you’re my friend Lavinia) and deep conversations about anything and everything. We’ve adapted to a more “demure” gathering, as maybe Gen-Zs would say?
This city is also a witness to my long walks and late-night drives, always accompanied by multiple soundtracks in my ears as I exhibit main character energy. It holds streets I tend to avoid when my heart gets delicate, triggered by remnants of a mystical love that once belonged to me. It is home to the sunsets I chase at Giardino degli Aranci, and to the benches I sit on in front of Circo Massimo to journal whenever I need peace and have something to say.
In other words, this city allows my Taurus self to romanticise life in the most nostalgic, melodramatic way possible. I mean, how could I not? It’s Roma, amore!
Then came Madrid and Alcalá de Henares. In my second year of uni in 2021, I went on Erasmus for seven months. 2000 kilometers from the best of friends and family whom I’ve relied on since forever, I remember feeling pleasantly overwhelmed by the temporary goodbyes before embarking on the journey. It was one of those coming-of-age shivers.
The decision to go on Erasmus came from an urge to grow and find who I was without my anchors and looking back at it four years later, diving into that adventure was a conscious will to break a stagnant lifestyle I was getting comfortable in. I wanted to learn more, not only academically, but also in facing life on my own. That year was the right moment for me to step out of the bubble and evolve. And so I did.
It was the seven most enchanting months of my life. Most nights, I laid sleepless until dawn, whether it be because of my loudest thoughts, or dancing to the same 15 reggaeton songs they used to play at the Green Pub (RIP, you icon). The universe had my back and handpicked the people I would share that journey with, who are now some of my most cherished. People that brought nothing but utter joy to my time in Spain. People whom I’ve learned so much from, and still continue to inspire me. Just like my dear friends Maggie and Sarah Jane! Now here we are, joining forces to write this lovely piece together.
Madrid is tinto de verano. Tapas. Llaollao. Plaza de Cervantes. Madrid is the four floors of stairs at Eve and Dez’s old flat. It’s the 40-minute train ride from Atocha to Alcalá de Henares and vice versa. Madrid is Pradilla’s “Doña Juana la Loca” at the Prado Museum. It’s the Green Pub pulseras and hotdogs. Madrid is eating McDonalds in Sol at 6am after Cuenca Club. It’s the sunsets at Templo de Debod.
Madrid is home to my glory days and eternal nights. The magical and nostalgic eagerness of living my early 20s, forever encapsulated and buried in its air. It was a marvelous time. A new bubble of absolute bliss and carefreeness, where I come back to at least once a year - a promise I made to myself.
Now, I believe home is where you are able to see your past self and feel the growth and change you’ve had over the years. I go back to young Jack who used to live in that home in the Philippines each time I feel fulfilled.
By Jack Aclan
Is home more than the physical place where I live?
When I think of the word home, I remember a moment from my early adulthood.
I was back in Northern Ireland for the first time, surprising my family after I had moved to Scotland for university. I referred to St Andrews as home in front of my mum, and she got very angry with me.
I didn’t quite understand why she was so defensive over a simple word. Stubborn as ever, I defended myself—my usual knee-jerk reaction. I didn’t live in Bangor anymore, and she would just have to accept that I had moved on.
At 19, home was simply the physical place where I lived. I was building a new life, at an age when I couldn’t escape Northern Ireland quickly enough. There was pride in having left, moving on to something better, more exciting.
When I visited Bangor, that’s all it was: a visit. I’d catch up with schoolmates and fill them in on my new life, lie in my childhood bedroom texting university friends, and complain about my parents and their rules. I didn’t feel at home the way I once had; in my view, I had outgrown that small town where I grew up.
During university, I moved accommodation five times in four years. I found comfort in creating little sanctuaries wherever I went. I had my own space, my own rules. I could control how it looked and who came in and out. I had friendships, a relationship, a doctor, a favourite café. That was enough to make a place feel like home— or so I thought.
Then, in the first semester of my final year, I moved to Spain—a small city just outside Madrid called Alcalá de Henares.
It was the scariest thing I had ever done. That first week, I had never felt further from home—whatever that word meant by then. Everything felt foreign: weighing fruit at the supermarket, going to the pharmacy, getting on a bus. I felt like I had a giant sign over my head that read outsider.
But as the weeks passed, I settled in. I met the most amazing people and formed strong bonds faster than I thought possible. We were all foreigners, yet gradually, I felt at home in a country so different from where I had grown up, where I couldn’t even speak the language fluently.
I was with people I could be myself with—find myself with. We built routines together: Friday nights at the Irish pub, Sunday mornings at lunch on Calle Mayor, and Wednesday afternoons getting tapas after our university class.
That experience taught me something fundamental: home isn't just a place; it's the people who make you feel like you belong. I realised I had the ability to create home anywhere, not just inhabit it. That adaptability became something I was proud of.
But then I returned to St Andrews for my final semester. And for the first time in four years, it didn’t feel like home anymore—whether it was burnout, dissatisfaction, or being with the wrong person. I found myself longing for Bangor—for clean sheets, warmth, my parents' voices, and the safety of a space where I didn’t have to explain myself.
I visited twice that semester. Each time, Bangor wrapped its arms around me. What I once saw as a place to escape had quietly remained a refuge. My old room, my family, the sea air—it grounded me.
To my 19-year-old self’s surprise (and perhaps horror), the moment I graduated, all I wanted to do was move back home and recover. After four years, two countries, six houses, and twelve flatmates, I just needed to rest. Even more to my surprise, I’m still here.
This summer, I visited St Andrews for the first time in two years. On one hand, I felt a deep sense of nostalgia—memories hitting me from every corner, leaving me with a strange pressure in my chest that both surprised and confused me. That small corner of Scotland was once my whole world, an exciting new chapter, but now it's just a line on my CV, a dot on the timeline of my life.
Now that I’m older and wiser (I think), I hate to admit it, but I see where my mum was coming from. Just because you live somewhere doesn’t make it home. It goes much deeper than that.
Madrid, though, still stirs something deeper. It inspired me to be a better version of myself—to move outside my comfort zone, and to slow down. In the UK and Ireland, everything moves at such a frantic pace—walking, eating, even resting. But in Madrid, I learned to wander aimlessly, to sip tinto de verano on the street with friends for hours, to be still. When I’m with the friends I made there—friends who knew me so briefly yet so deeply—I feel a version of myself that’s more authentic, more alive.
My family house in Bangor will always be home—it built me. It’s where I learned love, safety, and support. But I’ve also found home in friends, in cities that inspired me, and in quiet moments where I’ve felt like the truest version of myself.
Home is something you build—and something that builds you too.
By Sarah-Jane McEneny
Home is like an onion
I grew up in a teeny-tiny hamlet outside of a small town in South East Wales. I never questioned what home meant. My whole life fit into a 10-mile radius, and even when I headed off to university, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, my life was still neatly contained within a southwest triangle between Exeter, Bristol and Cardiff.
While I was busy drinking Dark Fruits, making new friends from far-flung places like Aberystwyth and Hereford and devouring Sainsbury’s Green Veg & Mozzarella Risotto Balls, I understood that while my life may have been in Exeter, my home was still very much the same.
It has been almost six years since we packed up the car and trundled down the M5 for the first time and my notion of home has changed a lot since then. It wasn’t until I headed back to Exeter for my fourth year that I realised I had built a home for myself there and there was something incredibly comforting about falling into the rhythm of my old life while building a new one of swimming in Dawlish on Sunday mornings, drinking pints of Amstel during the week and spending Wednesday mornings on the radio.
Despite that, I was homesick for the first time in my life. Not for Wales or my family, who I saw regularly, but for Paris, where I’d spent two summers, and Madrid. Cities in which I’d found community and routine. While they were permeated with excitement and exploration, there was also a real sense of familiarity and comfort within the discomfort.
We ate pan con tomate and took over The Coffee Train, we spent evenings in the Panadería and nights in The Green. We went to the same boulangerie on Saturday mornings and the same bar opposite the Centre Pompidou for €4 pintes pêches.
The summer before, as an au pair, I was absorbed into someone else’s home. Although it didn’t feel like it when I first arrived, when it was time to leave, a little bit of it felt like my home too.
I live in London now and have done for almost two years. Although it doesn’t always feel like it, this city, which I spent most of my life dreaming about, is undeniably my home. I have lots of friends here, old and new, and sometimes when I’m walking along the river, looking at the Houses of Parliament and the London Eye, I think about 14-year-old Maggie who wanted to study at Central Saint Martins and go to roller discos. Although she has done neither of those things, she still made it.
When I first started thinking about home and what it means, I was overwhelmed by the emotions and memories it brought up, but I’ve come to realise it’s as simple as its four letters would suggest.
Much like an onion, it starts with roots and as time goes on, layers develop. Maybe the saying is true after all: home is where the heart is and what a privilege it is to leave a little piece of your heart scattered in different places, waiting for you to return.
By Maggie John
What does home mean to you? Let me know in the comments …
Awww Maggie what a lovely read and a beautiful journey you have and still are on
Love Uncle Brian Colin xx
loved this collab! beautiful writing, gorgeous storytelling :)