Why 'home' is more than just a place

Everybody needs to go home.

Home is that place where we are cared for and nurtured physically, emotionally, relationally and spiritually. We have a roof over our heads. We find food and clothing, safety and security. We are loved, or at least liked. We can shut the door on all (or most) of the craziness of the world outside. We find peace and renewal.

Of course, no home provides all of the above all of the time, but all real homes provide at least most of the above most of the time.

When we are children, home is most likely created for us by our parents, though grandparents, foster parents, friends' parents and almost any loving, caring, committed adult will do.

Home is more a matter of feeling than of biology, and children will rather quickly identify and attach themselves to those adults in their lives who are willing to offer them a place in which they can feel at home.

As we grow older, we begin to consider creating a home of our own. We will eventually take some steps to do so, whether it's a space we carve out of our parents' house, a college dorm room, or an apartment shared with a roommate or two.

Yet even the most mature, independent, self sufficient adolescent or young adult will still likely identify home - their real home - as that place they grew up in and return to.

I'm not sure just when we shift our sense of home to the place and space we have created for ourselves. Many of us seem to do so when our parents move from the family home in which we were raised.

Or perhaps it is when we find a life's partner of our own. And certainly having children seems to anchor us to the home we seek to create for them.

Being single can be a special challenge to creating home. Yet I know many singles who have succeeded in doing so. They not only create a place, a home, in which to care for and nurture themselves, but also regularly invite others to share in, and contribute to, the home they have made.

There will inevitably be times in our lives when we lose home. Sometimes this happens through destitution, death, divorce, or disaster.

Or it can be a symptom of the disarray that seems to somehow infect all our lives at one time or the other.

Or it might be the result of a deliberate decision on our part to leave our current home in search of another.

Whatever the cause, when we lose home, one of our most immediate and pressing needs will be to find or create another.

Where our home is will inevitably change with the passage of time. Our need to go there will never change.

• Dr. Ken Potts is on the staff of Samaracare Counseling Center in Naperville and Downers Grove. He is the author of "Mix Don't Blend, A Guide to Dating, Engagement and Remarriage With Children."