Chapter of life series:

A place just like home

The migration experience is a challenge, one that not a lot of people can understand without actually going through with it. Every immigrant has faced the challenges and … well if you have been an immigrant then you can comprehend where I'm going with this.

Each one of us who has lived through the experience have been a witness of how hard it is to leave everything behind trying to create a new life, a better life in another country. Just how hard it is not being in the place which represents us the most, it’s hard to feel like you belong with every tradition being so different from the ones of your home country. I know I shouldn’t generalize because there are multiple ways of dealing with this situation and everybody just handles it differently.

I believe that many of us have felt that this new place couldn’t ever truly feel like home in at least one occasion.

Some people take the concept of home as literally a physical space and that’s why we feel so linked to our home country, the place where we grew as a person. I honestly think a home doesn’t have a physical barrier, we can always feel at home because that place where we lived, the memories and the experiences will always be in our hearts.

Now, following up with the concept I have for home I feel we immigrants need to remind ourselves: 

We can always feel at home if we wished so.

Sometimes listening to music which represents our country, making some of the typical food, or simply picking up the phone and communicating with people from there, is enough so that for at least a couple of minutes we return back home.

The only thing one truly needs to fully feel at home is to find ways to reconnect to it, even if both countries feel entirely like they are 2 completely different worlds, we can always find similar customs when discussing traditions in cultures and even though this 2 worlds are different, they are similar in the way that now both of these represents us.

In my personal experience I’m going to tell you how I related a certain manner that is similar to the other even though Venezuela and Argentina are two set of completely different cultures. I found similarities that unite them but I should clarify it is just an example.

The biggest similitude that I found between Argentinians an Venezuelans is we are all about having a good time and making fun of others in a joking manner. Not to be bullies but for the laughs.

Now the 2 lines of text you just read may be thought of something entirely false and some of you thought the description was spot on. It is truly my humble opinion on the matter, every time I hear people making fun of each other in a friendly manner I can reconnect with my home country Venezuela because when I was there, I used to do the same thing.

I think making fun of one another can be done in any part of the world without nationality being a part of it, and that's why I decided to write this particular blog and by doing so I hope that everyone of us who is struggling can feel right at home, and to do so you can always have a conversation with family or friends. It is also important to keep on going forward no matter the adversities which every immigrant faces on the daily.

Remember this:
We are not alone, we can achieve feeling at home just by looking back at the memories but it is also crucial to keep dealing with the present. Home will always be with us in every step of what we accomplish.

As always, I thank you for reading this and please keep finding a way to become a better you.