What makes a place home? I may not have an answer, but I do know that my home is not confined to four walls. Sitting on the bank of Ames Pond is where you’re likely to find me. I could never understand why I kept returning. My body was a magnet, pulled blindly to the pond. Before my brain could make sense of the situation, my legs took me there. This pattern led me to realize that maybe it meant something more. It may not have four walls, but my love for this pond exceeds my attachment to any building. It is my home, a place where my heart has reached complete contentment.

Why, you might ask, is a pond my home? To explain my gratitude for it, I must say that I am no different from the nearly 135,000 children adopted in America each year, where from a young age I questioned what “home” truly is. I couldn’t help but stare into my mother’s hazel eyes and realize how different I am. I would compile even my most insignificant failures into lists, and they accumulated as reasons why I was “unwanted.” I was sure that it was my destiny to become nothing, because surely if someone looked into my blue eyes as a baby and decided I was not worth creating a “home” with, then surely this was the truth.

After these feelings accumulated, I couldn’t define “home,” as I did not know my place in the world. If you don’t have a home, you become nothing. You have nowhere to return when the equilibrium of your life has been thrown out of balance and you find yourself going wherever the wind takes you. Well, the wind took me to Stonehill College, and little did I know that my sense of purpose would bloom as bright as the purple loosestrife at Ames Pond. Among damselflies and bees, I feel alive. I have found inner peace in a place where I don’t blame myself for my past, but accept who I am today. At long last, I have found “home.”