Journal January Entry 10: Home

Journal January — Day 10

Prompt: What’s a compliment you’ve never forgotten?

Oh that’s easy. “You feel like home.” And as someone who never truly understood what security felt like until much later in life — a sad byproduct of a childhood riddled with abuse — knowing that someone else associated that level of safety with me was, in every sense, life altering.

At the time, the words landed softly. Almost casually. They weren’t dressed up or delivered with ceremony. Which somehow made them heavier. More real. They stayed.

I didn’t grow up with a clear blueprint for what safety felt like. Home was not synonymous with rest or reassurance. It was something you learned to navigate, not settle into. Something you endured, not something that held you. So for a long time, safety felt abstract, like a concept other people understood intuitively.

To hear that I embodied it for someone else stopped me cold.

Because it meant that somewhere along the way, I had built what I was never given. That I had learned how to be steady, gentle, present. That despite everything, I had become a place of comfort rather than chaos.

It reframed how I saw myself.

I had spent years measuring my worth by output, resilience, competence — by how well I could carry weight. But this compliment pointed to something quieter and far more meaningful. It suggested that who I am at rest, who I am in closeness, matters just as much as anything I accomplish.

“You feel like home” isn’t about perfection. It’s about safety without vigilance. About being able to exhale. About knowing you don’t have to brace yourself.

I think that’s why I’ve never forgotten it. Because it named something I had worked toward without realizing it had taken shape. It told me that healing isn’t always loud or obvious. Sometimes it looks like becoming a refuge. Sometimes it looks like being the calm you once needed.

That compliment didn’t just stay with me, it clarified me.

And I carry it now as both a reminder and a responsibility: to keep choosing softness, steadiness, and care. For others, yes — but especially for myself.