It is a strange thing, to have lived away from your home country for more than half your life. Or perhaps it is only strange for me. Others may not feel it in the same way.
During the Covid years I could not travel. Borders and rules and circumstances stood in the way, and the string between me and Sweden felt suddenly and violently cut. At times I wondered if I had made the wrong decision to leave. Regret seeped in. I felt imprisoned by the choices of my past, trapped in a story I had written for myself but could not rewrite.
When I finally went back, it was as though I saw Sweden for the first time. Family close by. Familiar open landscapes and tree lined avenues. The relief of being in the place where I was born. After the long absence I was full of awe and gratitude, and in 2024 I spent the whole summer there. I promised myself I would return again the next year, to repeat that magic.
The absence of midsummer, Christmas and birthdays in Sweden had always left me with a quiet ache. In Spain it was different. Not wrong, not bad, only different. Over the years I began shaping my own rituals. New traditions for me and the children. Sometimes for myself alone. They were meaningful, yet always with a trace of sadness beneath them.
This summer unfolded in another way. The plans I had made dissolved, and I was faced with difficult decisions. It became clear that what we all wanted most was to return to Spain. To go home.
That realisation surprised me. Home was no longer Sweden. Somewhere along the years, Spain had taken that place.
My children were born here. Spanish is their strongest language out of the five they are learning to navigate. They move through this culture with ease. Their roots are here, even if they carry others within them.
And perhaps my roots have sunk in as well.
When we returned I felt it at once. We spent two weeks in Barcelona before coming back to Ibiza, which was wonderful, but the feeling of landing on our island was unmatched. I knew then that this is where we belong.
Ibiza was never part of my plan. I thought it would be temporary. Life chose differently, and showed me that what we do not plan can sometimes hold more truth than what we do.
This evening I walk the dogs beneath the late August sun. The figs are ripening and their sweetness perfumes the air. Dust from the camino decorates my feet. I stop to look at the small purple grapes, the same ones I saw in 2013, in 2015, in 2017. I look at the fields where my children have grown from babies to toddlers to pre-teens. I listen to the roosters, the dogs, the crickets, all speaking the language of the land we have known for so long.
We swim in the sea, the one people dream of all year. The water is clear and sparkling, the salt drying on my skin like a salty gift. My body soaks in the sunlight with pure pleasure.
I speak with the other parents when I drop off or pick up my kids. Parents I have known for nearly a decade now. My community. Some are born here, their families woven into the island for generations. My children speak with them in their language – Catalan – a language I don’t speak, only understand (enough to help them with homework!)
We share stories while the kids run across the football field at night, the sky lit by the perfect half moon, the smoke of the BBQ painting a big cloud over the running kids. Everything alive. Everything vibrant.
This place, the one I once resisted, has claimed me. I have struggled here. I have known hard years here. But no other place offers me this kind of support. I know the pomegranate trees. I photograph the UNESCO World Heritage walls of Dalt Vila with equal amounts of passion every time. I find inspiration in the trunks of the fig trees and the stone walls. Slowly, quietly, Ibiza became part of me.
I built a home here with my own hands, and with my children by my side, holding those hands. The three of us, we did this. We made this happen.
We belong now. Perhaps not fully, perhaps never entirely, but enough. The history of Ibiza is filled with outsiders and arrivals and departures. It has always been this way. Even the Ibicencos we know have somehow made room for us. We might have been invaders, but invaders eventually become part of the history.
So I find myself in a home I never planned. A home without obligations or traditions I did not choose. A home where I am free. Free to decide if I go to Sweden for Christmas or not. Free to accept an invitation or stay alone. Free to shape my own life.
I have my beaches, my restaurant, my people. My rhythms and my habits. I know where to go, what I love, what I seek. I built a business here out of nothing, out of the emptiness that Covid left me with, and it flourishes.
What a gift this is.
I am home.
Love,
Linda
PS. As I’m a wanderer and a traveller and a lover of the world and all its cultures, foods and colours, I reserve the right to change my mind, but not only that, to also love other places, soon, or in the future, or in my dreams. I will forever commit adultery towards any place on this planet, no matter how much I feel at home in it.
PPS. Some photos I took in 2012, the year I moved here.
