1000 Words on This Is Where You Belong

I read Melody Warnick’s This Is Where You Belong: The Art and Science of Loving the Place You Live at just the right time. I’ve been living in a remote coastal community for five months and it seems that Winter here is a season that tramples Spring and Summer altogether. I’d vengefully check the weather in the Southern Ontario city I grew up and be hit with a wave of FOMO from not being in the high 20s temperatures that I’d likely just complain about as well.

I’d been roaming the singular bookshelf that circles the perimeter of the Ingonish library on yet another gloomy Saturday. One where I’d waited patiently for the weekend and yet again, grey clouds loomed overheard with the threat of rain, hail, or a sadistic mix of the two, even at the beginning of June.

After craning my neck to the side to read vertical titles, I picked up Warnick’s red-covered novel and thought “This is actually NOT where I belong…” in a quiet, rural fishing community with no public transit system, at 23. But really, I was just angry at the weather and its insistence to delay warm temperatures…seemingly until I left the island.

Still, I’d chanced the read and quickly become invested in loving the place I lived even as I continue my transient lifestyle.

The book largely follows the theory of place attachment and placemaking across America as Melody adopts these “Love Where You Live” strategies to make her home in Blacksburg, Virginia feel like one.