Many people struggle with being “at home.” Especially now during this time of worldwide health crisis. In many cases, we don’t know why we feel stuck between these four walls. Like most of you, the saying “it’s more than a house; it’s a home” rings in my ears mostly due to the industry I’m in. You know the saying, right?! I’m not quite sure I understood my issues with this concept fully until recently.
Whenever we moved from one house to another as a kid, it never felt like mine. Uncertainty within my family was normal growing up, and it felt as if we could be forced out of our home to start over at any moment. So, fast forward to today, I can live without a picture hung, no design features, and no personalization of any kind except school pictures of my kids that most times they wish I would hide away somewhere. The yard could be dirt, no big deal. No photos hung on the walls; that’s okay. Strange right?
I had always just figured that certain things weren’t important to me, and that was okay. Then a weird thing happened. We had our backyard finished. We now have grass, trees, beautiful honeysuckle, and ornamental grass. The dogs love it, the kids and grandkids play outside almost every day. There’s even an area that eventually we want to put up a pergola with lighting. So fancy! It sounds so simple, but completing this seemingly simple project brought me great joy. So much so that I started to contemplate why something that we legitimately should have done a few years ago would be so monumental to me.
Then I realized. I don’t know that I’ve ever allowed our house to be my home. As a child, there was a lot of uncertainty surrounding safety and security in our house. When you grow up that way, you learn to not hold onto anything too tightly so that you can adjust quickly and make transitions as painlessly as possible. I’m also not generally sentimental, but sentimentality to a kid like me is a luxury. One that I did not have growing up.
The good news is, I know now. I could never express why I wasn’t sentimental. It would offend me if someone called me out on my lack of sentimentality. Now there is a new appreciation for the home my family has created. Even though it took me a long time to recognize, the breakthrough has happened. Now, we have about five major projects in the works. My poor husband! Lol!
Remember that each of us has a path to self-discovery all our own, and mine happens to involve grass.
Being in the “home” industry is more to me than a job. Advising families through their real estate journey means safety, security, and the opportunity for me to be a part of a family’s journey to find and make their house a home.
Read about our Buyer Home Inspection Checklist