by Phoebe Farag Mikhail

Read to the end to find out how you can enter to win one of two copies of This is Where You Belong by Melody Warnick!

Whether you have already taken your summer vacation, or are still planning yours, or you have not planned one at all, today I am sharing the best place you can go. This place is accessible to EVERYONE and affordable on ANY budget. It’s great for individuals, couples, AND families.

Are you wondering where this possible heavenly place could be, look no further. The best place you can go is:

Your own hometown.

Yes, your hometown. Not where you were born or where you grew up, but where you live right now. If you are not convinced, read This is Where You Belong by Melody Warnick, and you soon will be. In this readable and useful book, Warnick takes us with her on her path to learning to love her home, while giving us ideas for how to learn to love our own. After moving to Blacksburg, VA and struggling to decide if Blacksburg was the right place for her, Warnick asked herself the question, “What if a place becomes the right place only by our choosing to love it?” She decided to learn more about “place attachment,” the science of learning how and why people become attached to their local communities, and through those lessons implement “love where you live” experiments. From these experiments, she distilled ten ways to learn to love where you live:

1. Walk more.
2. Buy local.
3. Get to know my neighbors.
4. Do fun stuff.
5. Explore nature.
6. Volunteer.
7. Eat local.
8. Become more political.
9. Create something new.
10. Stay loyal through hard times.

In each chapter, Warnick describes how each of these ways help increase “place attachment” through science and through her own experiments. After each section, she offers a list of practical ways to “love where you live” through these different strategies and practices.

I’ve spent the last six years learning to love the place I live. It’s not always easy. I have called several cities and countries home; according to Warnick, the average American will move over 11 times in their lifetime. I’m already above average. Where I live now is the longest I’ve had one address, in a small suburban town much less exciting than Cairo, New York, Brighton and Washington, DC, all cities I have called home. Learning to love the place I am in now takes ongoing time and effort, but it is worth it.

Some of the ways I have learned to love where I live are ways that Warnick recommends. For example, taking walks.  According to Warnick, “Walking is more than transportation; it’s experience. You admire a baby in a stroller on the bike trail. You have a conversation with the guy walking his husky. Even the simplest elements of a walk can take on the quality of poetry: The warblers sing. The grass sways. All these things combined create a sense of where we are.”

Walking with kids becomes even more of an experience. Children notice and observe different things than adults do. One walk on an April afternoon led my kids and me to a street lined with cherry blossom trees – just when I was feeling nostalgic about them during my days in Washington, DC. We also found a beautiful school playground that is open to the public when school is out.

Walking also helps us with Warnick’s third strategy, getting to know our neighbors. Walks, especially when the weather is good, lead to introductions to neighbors also enjoying the weather. Young children end up either starting the conversations, or are conversation starters. Neighbors help share the history and demography of the neighborhood. During those chats I discovered a local farm that offers pony rides for children in the fall, and that my town has a large Syrian population.

By buying local, Warnick’s second strategy, I visited my town’s main streets. Despite the proximity of three huge malls to my area, the main streets are not dead. I discovered a fantastic Middle Eastern grocer (owned, of course, by a friendly Syrian woman), an ice cream parlor, our local hardware store, a charity thrift shop reminiscent of London’s ubiquitous charity stores, a huge dollar store, and a coffee shop where the owners post inspirational quotes for people to read as they stand in line.

I also learned a few new strategies from Warnick. “Get political,” for example, is not just about running for local office, but about getting involved in local governance in different, sometimes everyday ways. Warnick had the good fortune of joining an already existing program in Blacksburg that allowed citizens to get to know their local government through a weekly program where they learned about different departments and programs – the behind the scenes of civil service that keeps a town humming but that very few people see. This program certainly increased her appreciation for her town’s civil servants. That’s a program to keep an eye out for where you live.

In addition to Warnick’s strategies, I have my own advice:

1- Sit at your front porch. I must admit, my children taught me this. Despite our relatively large backyard, my children love playing in the front yard so the neighborhood kids can come out to play as well. Sitting on my front steps, like taking walks, helped me get to know my neighbors. One recent evening, I sat on my front steps reading while my kids played, and an elderly neighbor who lives alone walked over to join us. We had just ordered pizza, and cut open a watermelon, so we invited her for our simple dinner. I later learned the significance of that visit when she paid me another visit and told me that the day she came to see us on our front porch was her 60^th wedding anniversary with her late husband, and she was feeling depressed. Spending time with my three kids and I on our front porch lifted her spirits. She might not have felt comfortable knocking on my door, but being outside meant welcoming our neighbors.

2- Join and frequent the local public library. Public libraries are, thankfully, still very important to communities.

Great Falls National Historic Park, Paterson, NJ. (c) Phoebe Farag, 2018

They are host to cultural events, community groups, book clubs, and all sorts of other interests. At the library I’ve not only participated in library events for my kids and me, but also pick up the free local monthly magazines that provide events calendars, reviews of local restaurants, and other town tidbits. In one of those magazines, I found out about the annual touch-a-truck event for my toddler, and in another, I discovered a castle and waterfall that are only 20 minutes away!

3- Sign up for local blogs, newsletters, and Facebook groups. Warnick mentions NextDoor, but good old Facebook is also a great way to stay connected to your community. My town has town-wide FB groups, a mom’s FB group, and a local buy-sell group. In addition, an internet search on my county and my town helped me find numerous bloggers, websites and Facebook pages that regularly post about sights, events and happenings in my area. A few of my favorites include Only In Your State (you can choose your state when signing up for your email newsletter and Mommy Poppins (which covers NJ and several other regions). These newsletters can also be “liked” on Facebook. Through one such Facebook post, I discovered New Jersey’s oldest diner is in my town!

Manual typewriter inside the laboratory at Thomas Edison National Historic Park. (c) Phoebe Farag, 2018

4- Download (and use) the National Parks App. Using the GPS function on this app, you can easily find national parks and historic monuments near your location. Last week we discovered that nearby us is the Thomas Edison National Park, which contains his laboratory and many of his inventions. My kids joined the Junior Ranger program and received badges after doing a Junior Ranger activity.

5- Find your town historian. Many towns, municipalities, and counties have a resident historian. Sometim

Fort Lee Historic Park, NJ. Behind me is the George Washington Bridge, the Hudson River, and the New York City skyline. (c) Phoebe Farag 2018

es they give talks at the local library; I discovered ours through my oldest son. She did a presentation about our town’s history during a school assembly, where my son learned that the sign above the door of the town’s oldest church had a misspelling. So when we had the chance to go there for a scouts event, we went looking for that sign – and found the misspelled street name and it’s correction! We also visited the cemetery, which held the graves of many Revolutionary war soldiers.

5- Host a Visitor. This summer my nephew came to visit from another country for a few weeks, and so we set out to show him all our favorite sites. Living so close to New York City, it is easy to default to the huge landmarks, but our effort to love the place we live led us to find out about many places we could take him that are much closer to home.

This is Where You Belong is not particularly spiritual, but I found Warnick’s quest for contentedness right where she was as something profoundly spiritual. She closes her book with these wise words:

Wherever you are, experience joy. Milk your city for all it’s worth, for as long as you’re there. Whether or not I stay in Blacksburg forever, I can reap all the emotional, psychological, and physical benefits of place attachment while I’m here. I can soak up every last drop of pleasure to be had in my town. I can choose to make myself belong.

Her words recall this North American parable, one I heard told to me and love to retell to my children:

A traveler came upon an old farmer hoeing in his field beside the road. Eager to rest his feet, the wanderer hailed the countryman, who seemed happy enough to straighten his back and talk for a moment.

“What sort of people live in the next town?” asked the stranger.

“What were the people like where you’ve come from?” replied the farmer, answering the question with another question.

“They were a bad lot. Troublemakers all, and lazy too. The most selfish people in the world, and not a one of them to be trusted. I’m happy to be leaving the scoundrels.”

“Is that so?” replied the old farmer. “Well, I’m afraid that you’ll find the same sort in the next town.

Disappointed, the traveler trudged on his way, and the farmer returned to his work.

Some time later another stranger, coming from the same direction, hailed the farmer, and they stopped to talk. “What sort of people live in the next town?” he asked.

“What were the people like where you’ve come from?” replied the farmer once again.

“They were the best people in the world. Hard working, honest, and friendly. I’m sorry to be leaving them.”

“Fear not,” said the farmer. “You’ll find the same sort in the next town.”

Like the second traveler, we can choose to love where we live, and Warnick’s book is a readable and practical way to help us get started. Penguin Books has provided me with two giveaway copies of This is Where You Belong. To be entered to win one of the two copies, subscribe to my email list, and then comment below with one thing you love about the place where you live. Giveaway closes on Thursday, August 9^th, at 11:59 pm EST. US Addresses only, please.