Going Home

Lately, the word home has been everywhere. It runs through headlines and broadcasts, and is spoken with tenderness by reporters on the edge of tears. We’re shown reunions—families holding each other again, people falling to their knees, disbelief turning into joy. The world watches and calls it good.

But not every homecoming looks like that.

Because somewhere else, the forgotten are going home too. To the same word, but not the same world. They return to dust and twisted iron, to a street that no longer remembers its name. They walk through what’s left, trying to find where the kitchen was, where laughter used to live. There are no reporters waiting there. No applause. Just the sound of wind moving through what used to be walls.

And then there are the others—those being sent home. To countries they’ve never seen, to languages they can’t speak, to borders drawn by people they’ve never met. They step off buses and planes carrying small bags and a hope that someone might recognize them. But no one does. They are told this is home, even though nothing about it feels that way.

The word home is now fractured. For some, it means safety and joy. For others, it means loss. One word holding two opposite truths, depending on who gets to say it.

It’s strange, the way the world celebrates one kind of return while ignoring another. The way going home can mean freedom for some people and exile for others.

A house can always be rebuilt. But a home...that’s different. A home is a promise. It’s the quiet understanding that you’re allowed to stay, that you’re wanted, welcome, and that your life is secure within its walls.

That promise now feels conditional, granted to some, taken from others, depending on whose grief the world chooses to see.