This post was updated Jan. 14 at 6:33 p.m.

Home is a complicated thing.

It’s not just where you’re from – it’s who you are, what you carry with you and what you leave behind. For some, it’s a place. For others, it’s a feeling.

For those of us who leave the past for Los Angeles, it’s often a question we’re still trying to answer. We seek meaning, purpose and belonging. We want to make a home within ourselves that can withstand the world – something we can call our own.

In a city where people move fast and dreams are sold by the dozen, it’s the quiet stories that reveal what LA truly is.

As a transplant, leaving home wasn’t just a physical journey. It was a rite of passage.

I came here to find my place in the world on my own terms, saying goodbye to Hawaii, the person I was and the family that shaped me.

What felt like an end was a new beginning, a process of unbecoming and becoming. The city’s endless sprawl eases the weight of the past. The future beckons.

I arrived in LA at 18, seeking freedom. I worked two service jobs to achieve financial independence as a student and qualify as a California resident for transfer. After transferring from community college to university, I’d graduate.

A deep sense of responsibility gave me structure. Desire propelled me forward.

Now, I think it was also fear – fear of falling behind, of not being enough. But fear doesn’t look like itself when it’s dressed up as ambition.

And in LA, ambition is everywhere. It’s a city that pushes your limits, reshapes your plans and intertwines your story with countless others.

Lives intersect here – kindred spirits, character-builders, perfect strangers and lost relationships. From fleeting connections to lasting bonds, they’re moments that matter more than anyone realizes at the time.

These people have pushed me to confront parts of myself that I’d run from. I found peace in radical acceptance of who I’ve been, what I’ve done and where I find myself.

I’ve learned that belonging is created – it’s the people you meet, the spaces you fill and the choices you make to call a life your own.

I’ve met a woman from the South, chasing a life she never dreamed possible in the city of stars. A man from the East Coast, seeking the sun and the chance to build a life for himself from the ground up. An artist who left the Pacific Northwest to find pieces of a buried self in the city.

Their stories resonate with me, not because they mirror mine, but because they remind me that change is a journey, not a destination.

Like me, these wanderers left homes, families, careers or relationships in search of something they couldn’t always name. LA pulls you in, making you stay even when you’re unsure. And that’s the point: Time changes the meaning of things, and we must adapt, persist and let go.

If LA teaches you anything, it’s that people survive despite their circumstances. It’s about grit.

And in the moments of discomfort when you’re faced with everything you’ve run from, you grow the most and discover what you’re capable of.

In 2021, an injury and surgery left me unable to walk for four months. I returned home because I couldn’t take care of myself alone. The independence and strength that defined me were stripped away. I felt incapable, regressed in many ways and was ashamed by the weight of my inadequacy.

When life drastically changes in the span of a moment, you often wonder what mattered in the first place. When you’re sick, all you want is to be healthy, to have your health and your body’s ability back, to do all the things you wanted to do. You ask, “If I had another chance, what would I do? What would matter?”

Injury and illness are isolating experiences that force you to let go – not only of who you were and what you thought you had control over, but of the life that you once had. When I lost my ability to walk, all I wanted to do was run – to feel free again.

In moments when you lose yourself on the path you walk alone, it’s the irony of life to be forced to need others. It’s the nature of our humanity to need one another. For me, it was needing the family I’d left behind. In many ways, I wouldn’t be here without them.

So in the home that raised me, I learned to walk for the second time.

Day by day, I worked up the strength and courage to leave once again and continue pursuing the path I had set forth. To work toward the goals and dreams that have evolved as I have.

By the summer, I’d earned my acceptance at UCLA. I was working again, taking organic chemistry and living by myself at a small back house in Hyde Park. A new chapter was unfolding, and I’d pack my life up again in boxes, moving closer to school, dreaming of what was to come.

As wanderers, we come to LA searching for meaning, for belonging, for a reason to keep going. Sometimes, we find it; sometimes, we don’t. But we stay because we believe it’s possible.

LA doesn’t forgive easily, but it offers second chances to those brave enough to try. It’s a place where meaning isn’t handed to you – you must build it, brick by brick, from your dreams and failures.

For us wanderers, LA isn’t about finding yourself – it’s about shedding the parts of you that no longer fit. It’s a city that forces you to let go, to confront the version of yourself that couldn’t survive here. And in the space that’s left, you begin to rebuild – not perfect, not whole – but real.