16 houses, 5 cities, 4 countries, and one question

…Where is home?*

About a year ago, purely by chance, a reel appeared on my Instagram feed featuring my childhood home, my very first home. Two sisters had bought the house and turned it into a charming tea room. Watching that reel felt like stepping into an episode of Time Tunnel. In an instant, I was transported fifty years back.

The sisters had documented every step of the renovation, and I could see each room in meticulous detail. I recognized every corner. There were even little remnants of our life there, like the old air conditioner my father had installed in the dining room.

That house, built by my Italian great-grandfather, was where I spent the happiest years of my life.

Overcome with nostalgia, I sent the reel to my daughter, my sister, and my brother. My eyes filled with tears, but the others responded more calmly. It made sense: my daughter and brother had never lived there, and my sister was just a toddler when we moved out. She remembers almost nothing.

I knew exactly who would understand how I felt: my childhood neighbor. He was a couple of years older than me, and we used to play together all the time. I still remember how he never used the front door, he always climbed over the patio wall to come in.

I sent him the reel and some photos. He replied right away with a voice message: “Wow! This is crazy. I don’t live there anymore, I’m renting that house, but one of these days I’ll visit the place.”
One of these days, he said. No emotion in his voice. None in his words.

At first, I didn’t understand his reaction. Then it struck me: between his simple “wow” and my near-nervous breakdown were 15 houses, 4 cities, and 3 countries, the many places I’ve lived since my childhood home and the reel.

Now, those numbers have changed. I moved to Barcelona 11 months ago, so today there are 16 houses, 5 cities, and 4 countries between my childhood home and me. And soon, they’ll change again. I’m moving to a new apartment in two weeks. That will bring the count to 17 houses.

In Swallowing Geography, Deborah Levy writes
”Each new journey is a mourning for what has been left behind. The wanderer sometimes tries to recreate what has been left behind, in a new place. This always fails. To muster courage and endurance for a journey, it has to be embarked on with something like ambivalence.”

I feel like she’s speaking directly to me. Because it is, absolutely, with ambivalence that I’m setting out on this next move. I have a painful history of having to leave things behind.

And I’m still not sure Barcelona is the right place for me.

People often say that wherever you go, you bring your problems with you. I disagree. Sometimes, the place itself is the problem , and we have every right to live where we feel most at ease.

I remember when I moved to London, my father asked, “Which place is better to live, Argentina or England?” I told him it depends on which flaws you’re willing to live with, because no place is perfect.

The first time I left Argentina, it was for love. The second time, I just couldn’t endure another economic and political crisis.

Argentina is a stunning country, but it faces a persistent challenge: every decade, it goes through serious economic problems that deeply impact people’s lives. My own life has been shaped by these crises. Many of my relocations have been due to these economic downturns.

Some time ago, I had a work meeting with a group of women from the Netherlands. I was struck by their confidence, composure, and gentle manners. They reminded me of two Dutch women I met back in 2015.

At the time, I had been invited to lecture at a week-long bioethics seminar in Geneva. The sessions were held at a Villa where lecturers and participants not only shared academic discussions but also meals and leisure time. These young women impressed me with their assertiveness and the way they owned the space. I remember thinking: this is what happens when you grow up in a stable country. Stability is the foundation for self-confidence and temperance.

In contrast, when you grow up knowing that rules can change at any moment, you live in a constant state of alertness and stress. This state of uncertainty slowly erodes the illusions of progress and diminishes the hopes and dreams of the future.

As a lawyer, bioethicist, and legislative advisor, I became deeply disappointed with the political system and academia during the pandemic crisis. The final straw came in 2022, when someone decided I should leave my position in the legislative system and move to the judiciary under conditions that were unacceptable to me. After almost twenty years of a prestigious legislative career, I finally decided, “That’s it.” I quit my job and joined my daughter in Paris.

Since then, I’ve lived in three different places in Paris and one in Barcelona. The first time I read Virginia Woolf’s brilliant essay Three Guineas, where she wrote: As a woman I have no country. As a woman I want no country. As a woman, my country is the whole world, I felt a deep connection with her words, and I still do. I don’t believe in frontiers; I think we are all together in this world. Yet a question keeps circling in my mind: in this big world, where is home?

The logical answer would be Buenos Aires, where my flat is. But no, that flat used to be home when I was raising my daughter. Now it’s just a house: a building with walls, floors, and ceilings that contains all my belongings. Home is something else.

I remember one Sunday when my daughter was seven or eight. I was reading the paper in the kitchen while she played alone in her bedroom. After a while, she came into the kitchen and asked, “Why do you want to spend the weekend with me if you’re just sitting here reading the paper while I’m playing by myself?” I answered, “Because I know you’re in the bedroom, and you know I’m in the kitchen. We’re together, even if it’s not obvious.” That’s what home means to me: a sense of togetherness and closeness with the people you love most.

Both my parents had incredibly bad timing when it came to dying. My father passed away just as I was starting a new family and building a home in a new country. My mother died when I was beginning a new life and searching for a home in yet another country. Both deaths left me homeless.

I always say I belong to the slow living movement, even before it had a name. I like to do things slowly. So I was very surprised when, a few weeks before my daughter was born, I felt an urgent need to clean and organize our home. I became frantic, clearing cupboards and drawers, reorganizing closets, dusting every corner. Later, I learned this is called the “nesting instinct.” Nesting is a behavior common in animals as they prepare a safe space for their offspring. Apparently, this instinct also kicks in for women as their due date approaches.

When my father died, the nesting instinct reappeared, driving me to work tirelessly to save for a down payment on a home for my daughter. I’m not sure how I managed it, but I did. I secured the funds and bought the flat where we lived together for nearly 23 years.

I think my mother had that nesting instinct in our first home. I remember her decorating the kitchen with tile stencils and gingham curtains. In my bedroom, she placed a house-shaped wooden bookshelf on the wall near my bed.

When she died, I found myself at the opposite end of the spectrum, an empty nester. My daughter had already moved out and was living on her own. It seems there’s no nesting instinct for women when it comes to creating a home solely for ourselves.

I’ve come to realize and accept that I’m currently in a state of transition. But I know I’m not alone on this journey. I’ve met many women on Substack who are experiencing similar situations. Some are single, some married, some empty nesters, and some don’t have children. Yet, we all share a determination to make a change in our lives. This change could mean moving to a new place, switching careers, early retirement to pursue a passion, anything you can imagine. The common thread among us is a commitment to choosing our own paths and moving forward.

The Bengali author, philosopher, and Nobel laureate Rabindranath Tagore wrote: “It is very simple to be happy, but it is very difficult to be simple.”

Those words really resonated with me. One thing I’ve learned from my years as a policy designer is how essential simplicity is to the success of any process.

So, I’ve decided to approach this transformation with a clear mindset and design thinking, aligning my decisions with my values. Even if it takes longer, when it comes to designing the life you want, I don’t believe in shortcuts.

Aging is a privilege, and having the chance to reinvent ourselves is a gift.

I still don’t know where my home is, and I will always remember my previous homes with a touch of melancholia. It’s inevitable, those were happy times, now memories. But as my mother wisely advised, dwelling too much on the past can turn you into a pillar of salt.

This morning, I watched a reel posted by the tea house and noticed words painted on the wall where the house-shaped bookshelf once stood: “Insist, persist, resist, and never give up.”

I don’t believe in magic, but I like to think those words were meant for me. It feels like a message of encouragement and love, traveling from the past to the present, urging me to look to the future with hope.

I share this message with you and invite you to see each day as an opportunity to embody these words: insist on our dreams, persist through challenges, resist doubts and fears, and above all, never give up on ourselves.

*This post is an updated version of one originally published in July 2024.