“There’s no place like home” has always defined my spirit. As a child, home was not a place or a country. It was where my family was. Movement didn’t threaten my belonging. Geography didn’t unsettle my identity. Instead, home lived in my people, not their postcodes.

The phrase meant more than a throw back to the Wizard of Oz because it carried warmth, safety, and familiarity. Why is that? I think it’s because home is where i was known without explanation. Where I could exhale. Where I didn’t have to perform.

This week, I’ve been sitting with a paradox.

I was reading an article by David McQueen, reflecting on growth versus rejection, and one line stayed with me long after I’d closed the page:

That sentence landed. Because if there’s no place like home, what does it mean to outgrow it?

I’ve been thinking about how often “home” isn’t just a place. It’s a role. A version of ourselves that others recognise. A rhythm we’ve learned to move within. It’s the expectations that feel comfortable because they’re familiar. The way of being that once fit us perfectly.

And growth unsettles that. When we change, even subtly, we disrupt the ecosystem around us. We ask different questions. We set different boundaries. We speak with a slightly altered voice. To us, it feels like alignment. To others, it can feel like distance.

This is where the beautiful tension lives.

On the one hand, we long to belong. To be accepted without explanation. To come home to places and people who know us. On the other, growth asks us to keep becoming and being. And becoming doesn’t always look familiar to those who knew us before.

I’ve felt this in small ways. In rooms where I used to blend in easily and now feel a little more visible. In conversations where my silence once kept things smooth, and my voice now introduces friction. In moments where choosing coherence over accommodation changes the dynamic, even when the intention is care.

It can feel like rejection. Or worse, like we’re the ones doing the rejecting. But perhaps that’s too simple. What if growth doesn’t mean abandoning home, but rethinking it? What if home isn’t something we either belong to or leave behind, but something that evolves as we do? What if the work is not to choose between belonging and becoming, but to learn how to hold both, imperfectly?

I’m noticing that growth doesn’t require us to harden. Rather, it requires us to tolerate being misunderstood. It asks us to stay grounded when others don’t quite know where to place us anymore. Ultimately it nudges us to trust that unfamiliarity doesn’t mean failure.

Home, in this sense, becomes less about being recognised by others and more about being ourselves. Home is being. Maybe that’s the deeper point. As we grow, we learn to carry home within us. Not for comfort, but coherence. It becomes a place we return to, even when the landscape shifts.

So I come back to that one line. Indeed, there is no place like home. And home, like us, is not static. It stretches. It learns. It moves. With us. This is where home and being meet.

Being asks us to stay present with who we are becoming, even when it unsettles familiar ground. Home, then, is no longer something we cling to for certainty. It becomes something we inhabit. A steadiness that doesn’t depend on approval or recognition. A place we can return to when we’re misread, misunderstood, or in motion.

If being is the practice of staying with ourselves, then home is what we build through that practice. Not fixed or fragile, but alive. Maybe that’s the quiet truth beneath the paradox.

There is no place like home.
Especially when home allows us to be.

This week

Reach in: Notice where you may be holding yourself back to stay familiar.

Reset: Revisit your definition of home. What if it’s less about staying the static and more about staying true?

Reach out: Have a conversation about how you’ve changed. Let growth be spoken, not hidden.