Last night I went to the theatre to see a live production of Anastasia, and from the moment it began, I felt myself being drawn into it completely.

The costumes were exquisite, the music beautiful, the whole production tender and deeply moving. It was one of those rare performances where everything seemed to work together so seamlessly that it did not feel like I was simply watching a show. It felt as though something older and more personal had been gently awakened in me.

There was one song, in particular, that settled deep in my heart.

As it began, both my daughters glanced my way. It was such a small moment, but it touched me deeply. Before I said a word, before I even had time to gather what I was feeling, they already knew this song would affect me. There was something so tender in that quiet knowing, in being seen so fully by the people you love.

As I listened, I felt myself slipping back into the heart of my own story.

I left Finland when I was eleven years old. At that age, I did not have the words to describe what it meant to leave the place that had shaped my first memories, my first language, my first understanding of belonging. I only knew that something in me ached. Leaving felt bigger than the journey itself. Bigger than the suitcase. Bigger than the practicalities of starting again somewhere new. It felt like being pulled away from something deeply rooted and precious before I had even fully understood how much it was part of me.

That is why this song moved me so deeply. It understood something essential about leaving a homeland. It is never only about geography. It is about love, loss, memory, and identity. It is harsh and sweet and bitter all at once.

That feeling has stayed with me across a lifetime.

There is the hope that comes with moving forward, of course. There is courage. There is love in the hands that lead you onward. But there is also grief, even when it goes unnamed. Grief for what is familiar. Grief for the language of childhood. Grief for the landscapes that first shaped your soul.

As I sat in that theatre, I found myself thinking of Finland as I knew it then — the dark lakes, the still forests, the quiet strength of the land itself. Its beauty was never loud, but it settled deep inside me. It became part of me long before I was old enough to understand that one day I would have to leave it.

And perhaps that is the thing about homeland. You never really leave it behind.

The older I get, the more I understand that the ties are never fully broken. They stretch across oceans and decades. They live in memory, in language, in tradition, in longing. They live in the values we carry and the stories we tell. Homeland becomes something you hold within you. It remains in the body, in the heart, in the deepest parts of who you are.

As the song unfolded, I could feel all of that rising in me. Not only the sorrow of leaving, but the enduring love that remains long after childhood has passed. Because distance does not erase where you come from. Time does not silence it. If anything, the passing years reveal more clearly just how deeply those roots were planted.

It lives in my remembering.
It lives in my longing.
It lives in the stories I tell, and in the pieces of Finland I have carried into my children and grandchildren.

What moved me most was not simply that the song was beautiful, though it was. It was that it gave voice to something so many migrants carry quietly for years. The understanding that goodbye is rarely a single moment. It continues to echo through a lifetime. It changes shape as we grow older, but it never completely disappears.

And yet neither does love.

As I sat there with my family, feeling the weight and tenderness of it all, I realised that this is part of the story too. Not only what was left behind, but what has been carried forward. The fact that my daughters know this part of me so well. The fact that they could hear that song begin and instinctively turn toward me. That kind of knowing felt like its own kind of inheritance. A quiet thread stretching from one life into another.

I did not leave Finland behind. I carried it with me. I carry it still.

Perhaps that is what it means to belong to two worlds at once — to build a life elsewhere, while still quietly blessing the first place that taught your heart how to love.