Home Is a Feeling, Not a Place: What Expats Know
Key Takeaways
- Home for expats is often experienced as a physical feeling of nervous system regulation and quieted senses rather than a specific geographic location on a map.
- When exploring what is home for expats, we discover that home functions less as a static noun and more as an active verb—something you practice and cultivate.
- Drawing on fifty years of global living across eight countries, Doreen Cumberford highlights how the interior metamorphosis of expat life transcends physical relocation.
- The body often recognizes home and safety long before the analytical mind can process or make sense of the new surroundings.
Where is home when you’ve lived in more than one country? Doreen explores home as a feeling the body knows before the mind does, the place where the senses go quiet, and why home may be less a noun than a verb, something you do rather than somewhere you live.
Launch to Landed: The A to Z of Life Abroad is a 31-day NaPodPoMo series from Nomadic Diaries. In ten-minute episodes, Doreen Cumberford draws on fifty years of life across eight countries and four continents to guide you from the first thought of moving to the long road home. Whether you’re dreaming, packing, living abroad or heading home, there’s a letter for you.
Share this episode with someone who’s standing at one of those thresholds: a new country, a return home, or simply a life that’s asking them to become someone they haven’t quite met yet.
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You can map the move. You cannot map the metamorphosis. Nomadic Diaries explores the interior journey of expat life — the belonging, the identity shifts, the repatriation, and everything that travels with you that can't be packed in a suitcase.
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Frequently Asked Questions
What is home for expats?
For expats, home is rarely just a physical place or a single country; it is often a feeling of safety, familiarity, and sensory calm that the body recognizes.
Why do expats struggle to answer the question 'where is home?'
Expats often struggle with this question because their lives and identities are spread across multiple cultures, making home a moving target rather than a fixed address.
How can you redefine home when living abroad?
You can redefine home by treating it as an action rather than a location—building routines, finding sensory comfort, and creating belonging wherever you are.