Redefining Home: What Does Home Mean When You Live Between Oceans and Places

How do you define home? Is it the physical place where you live, your family, your partner, or maybe something else entirely.

A few weeks ago, we traveled with the kids to the other side of Andalusia, the region where we live now, and while standing on the Spanish shore of the Atlantic Ocean, looking at the sea, Gal suddenly said, very casually, “It’s so nice, we’re back home.”

We looked at him, completely confused. “What?”

He looked back at us like we were the ones missing something obvious and said, “What do you mean? The Atlantic Ocean. Home.”

I had never thought of the sea as home. For me, the sea was a place we sail, visit, long for, sometimes fear, but not a place you come back to as home.

But after three years of sailing the Atlantic Ocean, across the Caribbean, the Bahamas, and along the entire east coast of the United States, I honestly can’t disagree with him. The Atlantic Ocean, with its winds, currents, sea life, islands, and endless horizons, became our home.

Moving between towns, islands, and new places was our routine. It felt no less normal than waking up in the morning, going to school, after-school activities, and going to sleep. We didn’t feel like we were constantly “passing through.” We were just living. Waking up, dealing with things, getting excited, getting tired, and continuing.

Once, home was our apartment. The couch, the kitchen, the kids’ mess. Familiar objects and walls we had marked with our life. When we left on our journey, home became us and the boat. And eventually, wherever we were, as long as we were together, that was home.

And since settling down again, slowly, home has expanded. We said goodbye to the boat, but we added friends, neighbors, and a community. We learned how to take almost any physical house and make it feel like home, not because of the furniture, but because of what we pour into it. Our relationships, between us and with the people around us.

And Gal taught me something else, redefine home. That home can also be an ocean. A living entity of its own. A space that breathes and changes, not something fixed or tied to one specific place.

Still, alongside the pride, there is always fear. How will this shape them in the long run? We focus on the good, otherwise we wouldn’t have chosen this life, but the question is always there. Home is also about roots, isn’t it? And our boys are more like air plants right now. Able to survive almost anywhere, even without soil. It’s beautiful. It’s strong. And sometimes, it’s also scary.

The thought that my child sees the ocean as home stopped me for a moment. It showed me that we succeeded in teaching them that the world isn’t divided so sharply into “here” and “there,” that borders are not as clear as we, as adults, like to draw them.

We managed to teach them that the world is something to explore, that belonging doesn’t depend on walls or a permanent address, and that sometimes movement and change can actually create a deep sense of safety.

And what moves me most is not that they call the ocean home, but that they feel they have a home even when it isn’t clearly defined, even when it changes. That they don’t need to choose one place in order to belong.

Maybe home, in the end, is not a point on a map, but the knowledge that you have a place in the world.

The Atlantic ocean, Tarifa, Spain