OCTOBER 20 ― I often wonder what people think of me when they ask me “where do you live” and I blankly stare back at them for a minute wondering how to answer.

There isn’t a more uncomfortable question in my life right now, and meeting so many people while travelling for a patient's medical treatment, I’m being asked it daily.

“I, umm, I don’t know. I don’t have a home. I guess my home is the world.”

It is really a terrible answer that leaves the person with more questions which are as difficult to explain as having to answer the question itself.

To be honest, it feels embarrassing and painful and frustrating. I wish I could just say where I lived and explain why I’m not there, rather than admitting that I live nowhere.

I think for the most part, people don’t really believe me; I’m in safe Singapore, where everyone has a home of some sort and where order is the name of the game, and the chaos of my life is a bit unbelievable.

I told a taxi driver yesterday that I guessed I was somewhat of a gypsy, he laughed and said, “More like a refugee, you should consider asking for asylum.”

I laughed with him. Yet the humour was a bit lost in the fact that in some ways it was true. I’m a woman without a home, a woman with nothing in life; my material possessions fit in a few suitcases, and my bank account looks worse than a student's.

It is in these moments when I wonder what I have accomplished in life. I have nothing to show for myself. Even the small things one might have accumulated over the years, jewellery or knick knacks are not there. In fact, I just sold the jewellery I had in order to get someone out of prison.

I remember growing up we had a sign in the house that said “Home is where the heart is.” I always believed this to be true. The white picket fence outside, kids laughing while they played in the yard, a dog, a cat and everything normal. It was my childhood, though there was more than just a dog and a cat, and my childhood was happy.

I saw this sign not long ago and cringed, “I had no home, so where was my heart?” And these days, constantly trying to explain my lack of a home, has brought every emotion about it to the surface and my heart has been a bit raw.

So it was with a bit of shock, and honestly some relief, to have a moment of clarity this week when I realised “Home is where the heart is.” Yes, I know, didn’t I just say that a few paragraphs ago with regret? I did, but then I realised where my heart is. For my heart truly is in the world.

My heart is spread all over the world. Pieces of my heart in nearly every continent. Whether it be from the children I have cared for, or the people I call family, or my own family; part of my heart is everywhere. And when I’m travelling I am always meeting new people, new little parts of my heart go off to wherever they go.

Not long ago I had the opportunity to meet an American woman who had offered to help in our current project. As we worked together, and got to know each other, having met on the other side of the world, we found out that we probably could have been twins. Our ideas and lifestyles and hopes and dreams so similar I found out that my heart was at home in her home as much as it was in the home of my family in the USA, or my Ugandan Mum deep in the village near Kenya.

But still there has been a sadness in my heart. A longing for a place to call home.

Until I cleaned out my purse, over filled with receipts and tissues and things I didn’t even know how they got there, and realised I had eight different currencies just in one bag. And I realised how blessed I truly am. The opportunities I get few people get.

I have not travelled for vacations, or touring, but I have travelled, and have no home, because I get to be part of people's lives. I get to be part of change in our world. I get to be part of hope in lives. I get to be part of the deep depths of sorrow as well as the mountaintop of joy.

So the true answer is that the world is my home. For that is truly where my heart is. And truly there is nothing that compares to that incredible privilege.

*This is the personal opinion of the columnist.