Why chaos felt familiar, and why this song had to exist.
Some songs come from imagination.
Some from observation.
And some - like Broken Feels Like Home - come from the oldest part of you, the part that formed before you even knew what life was supposed to look like.
I don’t talk about this much, but the roots of this song go all the way back to when I was about three years old. One day my mam was there and the next, she wasn’t. There was no explanation a three-year-old could understand. No transition, no preparation, no sense-making. Just a before and an after.
Before:
the familiar face, the voice I knew, the life that made sense.
After:
a new house, a new mum, a brother and sister I had never met.
A whole new world - instantly, abruptly - like stepping through a trapdoor into another family.
I didn’t have the language then, but I understand it now:
when your earliest memories are built on sudden change, instability becomes the blueprint.
Chaos becomes the thing you recognise.
Unpredictability becomes the rhythm you learn to dance to.
And later in life, without even meaning to, you find yourself drawn to the same kind of patterns.
People who feel like storms.
Relationships that mirror the shaky foundations you started on.
Situations that echo the old ache, because part of you still thinks that’s what “home” feels like.
Not because you want chaos.
But because you recognise it.
That’s the heart of this song.
Broken Feels Like Home isn’t about sadness.
It’s about understanding.
It’s about finally seeing the link between who you were at three years old
and who you attract at thirty.
It’s about naming the pattern so you can unlearn it.
And it’s about the fragile hope that you can rebuild “home” into something calmer, safer, chosen.
The line “stillness is a stranger, chaos my old friend” wasn’t poetry - it was honesty.
But so is the last line:
“I’m learning how to grow.”
That’s the real story.
Not the chaos.
Not the pattern.
The learning.
This song helped me put words to something I’d carried my entire life without ever questioning why. It helped me understand myself with a little more softness. And maybe it will do that for someone else too.
Thanks for reading.
— Soosan / AiLF
