Hiraeth: Searching for Home After Loss

Grief is like searching for home but home doesn’t exist anymore. Not because the person you lost was home, but because something about their presence helped anchor the world in a way you didn’t fully understand…until it disappeared.

I lost my mom in October of 2021, and ever since, something in me has felt unmoored. It’s not as simple as saying, “My mom was my home.” It’s more complicated. It is tangled and hard to put into words. Her death didn’t take a place from me; it took a feeling. A quiet internal stability I didn’t even realize I had.

What I lost wasn’t a house or a room. It wasn’t even her in a literal or physical sense, though I do miss her. It was something inside me, a center that shifted the moment she was gone, and trying to describe it feels impossible.

Some days, grief feels like an ache under my ribs. Other days, it’s a wordless, overwhelming longing. I find myself thinking, “I just want to go home.” But when I sit with it, I realize I don’t even know where “home” is anymore or even what “home” is. It’s not a place I can return to or a memory I can replay. It’s a feeling that used to exist inside me, and now it is gone.

It’s connected to my mom, because losing her cracked something open, but it’s not about her specifically. Her absence revealed an emptiness I didn’t know was possible, a before-and-after inside myself.

There are words in other languages that try to explain this feeling. In Welsh, the word Hiraeth describes yearning for a home that’s lost or never truly existed. In German. Sehnsucht means a deep, longing ache for something unreachable. In Portuguese, Saudade is missing that doesn’t have a clean shape.

Grief isn’t always about the person you lost. Sometimes it’s about the version of yourself that existed when they were alive, the part that felt secure, safe, and whole. Time passing doesn’t erase that longing. If anything, loneliness can intensify as life moves on. People might think you’re “better,” but really, you’re just quieter about it.

When the hurt gets too deep, when the ache is raw and unexplainable, that longing hits. That pull toward something you can’t name. The craving for safety, security, and belonging that used to feel so effortless.

For Those Who Feel Hiraeth

It’s okay to sit with hiraeth, to feel it fully, to acknowledge it without trying to fix it. While grief changes you and takes pieces of the internal home you once knew, it doesn’t take everything. It is possible to rebuild a sense of home. It isn’t the same as what was lost, but it can still feel like home. It grows slowly, quietly, and sometimes painfully, but it is possible.

For anyone who is grieving: it’s okay to feel lost. It’s okay to feel the ache and the confusion and the pull for a home you can’t yet find. Your longing is a sign that you loved deeply. Even when it feels impossible, you can find that sense of home again, different than before, but home nonetheless.

Written By
Kacie Moss
Licensed Professional Counselor Associate (LPCA)