Hiraeth.
The wind was laden with it this morning.
Hiraeth (pronounced “here-eye-th” with a rolled r sound) is a Welsh term for longing or yearning — for home, for a person, for a period of time, something that or someone who might never have existed, at least in the form for which the soul yearns. There is no parallel in English.
There was a thick vein of hiraeth running through the perpetual wanderlust in me when I lived in TX. It has changed now, at least in constancy, since I have removed to a place where my heart is happier overall. I still feel an older version at times, one that predates living in Texas and perhaps even predates me in a lot of ways.
Maybe it’s the call toward my ancestral home across the sea.
Maybe it’s also the wistful calling-out for people who could not be who I needed them to be in this lifetime, for the versions of themselves — or myself — that would have made things easier, better somehow.
Or maybe it’s all of these and none of them at the same time. All I know is that the howling winds today stirred an answering howl inside of me, and hiraeth is as close as I can come to describing the feelings flooding through me.
Have you ever experienced hiraeth?
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