What Is Home?

“Home is where the heart is”, but what if your heart is in two different places?

Until recently home has never been hard for me to nail down, Home was my parents house in South St. Louis, Home was my apartment half a mile down Grand Boulevard… Home has always been within a 1 mile radius. Even when I was staying on campus in college, a whole 7 miles away, I still felt homesick for my parents house and would need to go home for the weekend. Is “Home” a physical place? can “home be anywhere”?

This may be a bit different than the articles you are usually used to reading from me, but I would like to explore this topic as a sort of mental exercise… or a look into an anxious mind. I promise this relates to my usual running and coaching stories eventually.

Nowadays I still yearn for that trip to my parents house, now it’s 4 hours across my beloved state of Missouri instead of a 20 minute trip across town but it always seems to recharge my batteries when I have been having a particularly tough or anxious period of time.

St. Louis has always been such a huge part of my identity, but since my move to Kansas City I find myself torn. I want to set up a home for myself with Claire (the reason I moved to KC) but I still feel myself being strongly connected to St. Louis. Can you have 2 homes, can you feel comfortable in 1 place but still yearn to be somewhere else? Will I always feel conflicted for leaving home?

When I mentally explore this — it’s not like I don’t like KC, in fact I really like…