Never at home or always at home? How nomadic lifestyle splinters your heart

I am writing this from Ähtäri, Finland in summer 2025.

A beautiful small village where my parents live, and we decided to travel here from our current home base Spain for a full month this summer. 

(You may also want to read: Why Spain as an expat?)

So far, all has been great and awesome; seeing old friends, spending time with family and re-living the experiences you’ve done so many times before, like familiar cycling paths, grocery stores, and trips to nearby town Seinäjoki.

Everything is kind of so easy at home country, but Finnish summer is awesome for other reasons as well.

This Finnish summer has made me so happy with the following stuff:

The feeling of safety and familiarity 

The comfort of spending time with people you’ve known for over a decade

The lush nature with 50 shades of green and silence

Pure elements, like water in lakes, earth in forests, fire in the sauna, and the cleanest air in the world

The best grocery stores that have everything you need and missed

You may also want to read: FINLAND TRAVEL GUIDE

Yet somehow, now after 3,5 weeks I got hit by enormous homesickness for my home in Spain.

I know, it’s a completely normal feeling after travelling first in Germany and Netherlands and then coming to Finland 25 days ago. 

But it made me realize I don’t only miss the home where my address is. 

The thing is, I feel like part of my home, and heart is left in important places all over the world.

I miss Morocco, where I keep on going back to, even after 8 times. 

I miss the Transylvanian mountains where I first started my yoga teacher journey with a 200-hour yoga teacher training, and then went to teach there by myself for a month in 2024. 

I miss Zagreb, as the city weirdly gave me a homely feeling during just a long weekend.

I miss my home and routines at home in Alicante. 

I miss Viet Nam, my first South East Asian destination, that treated me so well with its kind people, stunning places and feeling of safety and exoticism in one.

And yet always, part of my heart is in my home country, Finland.

So it’s at the same time bittersweet and awesome. 

I am so grateful to have so many spots that feel like home.

But simultaneously, it makes me feel like I am never whole. 

From afar, the heart is full, but from nearby, the heart is splintered all over the world. 

I guess many other expats can relate to the random feeling of returning to your home country. 

Everything is the same, and somehow, you are also the same, but at the same time so different. 

You feel like time has stopped while your life moved on. 

Simply put, reverse culture shock is the feeling when you have outgrown from the familiar.

I wrote more about this in my article about Reverse culture shock when I returned to Finland to do my Master’s degree after working for over two years in Malta. 

During this time in Northern Europe we have been staying in dozen different places, living from a suitcase and adjusting to the lifestyles of others. 

Of course, we are somewhat used to this digital nomad lifestyle, but after a month I would not mind having my own bed, schedule, and choices back for a moment. 

Because other thing I’ve noticed: when I’ve practiced flexibility of mind due to constant changing circumstances when traveling, suddenly the routinized lives of, for example, our boomer generation parents seem very much like Groundhog days.

It’s hard to understand why people need exactly the same ham and cheese on bread every morning, whereas you’ve been switching the berry smoothie in Viet Nam to Pho soup, in Morocco to Pancakes and in Germany to Sausages.

If you are also a nomad, or striving to become one, I recommend reading this 8-step list of staying sane when traveling full-time.

Right now, I am at the same time having wanderlust and I am missing the familiar. 

I know, I kind of make fun of majority of people living these groundhog days, but truth be told, I miss it occasionally.

Even in Finland, I don’t have too many places that have remained the same. 

All my childhood, we kept on moving every 2-3 years, so such thing as a “childhood home” does not exist for me.

But I have one place that has been in my life since the beginning of the 2000s: our cottage in the woods in Finland. 

This is such an important place for me, and actually during Covid I reconnected with it again. 

We moved with my Dutch boyfriend to this cottage at the beginning of 2021, residing there mostly with my parents’ dog. 

I was working and doing my Master’s thesis on Orientalist representations on yoga travel narratives, while my boyfriend was working remotely.

Long story short, this cabin in the woods is one of the few solid, unchangeable places in my life that grounds me, makes me feel safe and reminds me of the bliss of things remaining the same.

Part of me is already looking forward to next summer, when we’ve decided to drive to Finland from Spain for a few months to live again in this cottage. 

But part of me knows, staying still too long also fills me with wanderlust and the urge to discover new corners of the world.

During this summer, I was so happy to reconnect again with old friends, re-living the long drives to the cottage and heating the wooden sauna, and seeing all the family members for coffee and cake. 

So part of me felt like the nice feeling of belonging. 

But simultaneously, it’s so hard to answer the simple question of “how are you”, when you know your experiences in the past few years have been so vastly different compared to the ones asking. 

Right now, I don’t long for more adventures.

But I do long for connections who are living the same, weird, chaotic, inspiring and life-enriching nomad life.