A Place to Belong: The Art of Making a House Into a Refuge

A home doesn’t just keep the rain out—it offers peace, quiet, beauty, connection, and belonging.
A Place to Belong: The Art of Making a House Into a Refuge
The beauty and stillness of a well-tended home can soothe the soul and strengthen family bonds. Biba Kajevic. This digital illustration was drawn by hand, not with artificial intelligence.
Walker Larson
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“Let’s go home.”

These words pull powerfully on the human heart. For most of us, the notion of home stirs something deep inside us, a longing that’s not easy to articulate. We want to belong somewhere. We want to find rest somewhere. We want a place of tranquility beyond the reach of the cold clutches of the world. We want the dusty road to end, eventually, in a quiet glade with the murmur of insects and the trilling of birds and the sunlight slanting through an open door. In short, we want a refuge.

What Makes a House a Home

But how to find one? How do we find the place that we belong? One answer to this question is that we make it. We find some corner of the world in which to plant our flag, and we go about making it into a home that is a physical and psychological haven.
Walker Larson
Walker Larson
Author
Prior to becoming a freelance journalist and culture writer, Walker Larson taught literature and history at a private academy in Wisconsin, where he resides with his wife and daughter. He holds a master's in English literature and language, and his writing has appeared in The Hemingway Review, Intellectual Takeout, and his Substack, The Hazelnut. He is also the author of two novels, "Hologram" and "Song of Spheres."