Home, Held

“Home is wherever the heart is” is a phrase people repeat as if it’s simple. For Scout Powell, it’s anything but. Born and raised in the small surf town of Noosa, she moved to Denmark at twenty, following the thread of her mother’s homeland and stepping into the other half of herself. Three years later, she’s back in Australia for the first time in nearly two years, and the return feels both comforting and strange.

Coming back hasn’t felt like a neat homecoming. There’s comfort in the familiarity, but also a quiet disorientation in realising how much has shifted while she was away. Noosa still carries the weight of who she used to be, even as she returns as someone new. Being back has meant reconnecting with people who knew her before everything changed — old high school friends, familiar routines, and moments that once felt effortless, now seen through a different lens. “It’s bizarre,” Scout says, reflecting on the contrast. After spending so long imagining the moment of return, being home has become less about arrival and more about pause. It’s given her space to slow down, to process everything that happened elsewhere, and to sit with the in-between. Home, she explains, has become a place to decompress, a place where everything finally has room to surface.

Home has never been singular for Scout. Long before she moved overseas, it existed as something split, shaped by language, family, and a feeling that part of her life was always happening elsewhere. Growing up in Noosa, Denmark was present as an absence. “When I was little, I was always talking about wanting to go to Denmark,” she says, “and missing being there, missing my grandparents and my cousins.”

At school, that difference became part of how she understood herself. She and her brothers were known as “the Danish kids”, an identity that set them apart in a small town where difference was rare. As a child, she clung to it instinctively, the way children often do when they’re trying to make sense of who they are. “I really fought for that for years,” she reflects. “Especially in my teenage years, when you really want to be different. I’d always be like, ‘I’m Danish. I can speak another language.’”

That sense of otherness stayed with her. Denmark became the place she imagined herself moving towards, while Australia remained the place she came from. Stepping into that world at twenty felt inevitable, like answering a question she’d been asking her whole life. But once the romance of arrival gave way to everyday life, the longing began to shift. “I’ve always felt really connected to places,” she says. Now, after living between the two, home feels less like something she’s searching for and more like something she’s learning to hold. “I’m trying really hard to just let home be wherever I’m at,” she adds. “First and foremost, to be my own home.”

Moving across the world at twenty meant more than a change of place. It marked the beginning of Scout becoming an adult somewhere else, in a language and culture that wasn’t the one she grew up in. Those years, formative by nature, shaped her in ways that didn’t always translate cleanly when she returned home. “So much of who I am now happened in a different language,” she explains. Between twenty and twenty-three, she grew into herself under different cultural cues, humour, and rhythms of expression. Even the smallest things shifted. How she spoke. How she connected. How she moved through the world. There’s a flexibility that comes with that kind of adaptation. Scout describes it as a chameleon effect, the way you slowly become a product of your environment without meaning to. “You sort of rotate yourself a little bit,” she says. Returning home means finding that version of herself again, without slipping back into who she was before she left. “That person doesn’t exist anymore,” she reflects. “And figuring out what that’s like in English has been strange.”

Being back in Australia brings certain parts of her to the surface instinctively. Watching cricket with her brothers. Going surfing with friends. Falling back into place-specific rituals that feel deeply familiar. Other parts feel less settled, harder to locate. Sometimes the duality feels romantic. Other times, confusing. Increasingly, she’s learning to accept that both can be true at once. “They’re the same person, just slightly different versions,” she says. “They become more the same, the more I split my time.”

As her sense of home shifted, so did the way she learned to hold her experiences. Living between places meant not everything had a clear place to land. Some things stayed unfinished, unresolved, waiting. Music became where she put them.

She describes the process as deeply cathartic, a way of putting language to feelings that once felt too overwhelming to face. “When a song is done,” she says, “it’s almost like you can let it go.” Some songs take shape quickly, arriving almost fully formed. Others sit unfinished for months, even years, before she’s ready to return to them. Writing, for her, is less about immediacy and more about truth. “It’s like giving myself something I really needed in the moment,” she says, reflecting on songs that emerge long after the experience that inspired them. “That’s why I love songwriting so much,” she says. “It’s so different every time.” Often, it begins as a way of processing something in the moment. Other times, the song comes much later, once she’s found enough distance to return to it honestly. “The heavier it feels, the more I have to put a pin in it,” she explains. “I need to feel like I’m writing unfiltered.”

In that way, songwriting has become her own form of journaling. She’s tried writing things down in the traditional sense, but it never quite held the same weight. Notes live on her phone now, scattered and unfinished, while songs become the place where everything is allowed to surface fully. Once something is written, it no longer needs to live entirely inside her. It exists somewhere else, contained. Songwriting gives her a way to hold difficult emotions without being consumed by them, to place them gently outside herself and move forward without pretending they never existed. The act of writing becomes less about holding on, and more about learning how to let go.

There are things Scout knows she wouldn’t be able to say out loud in the same way. Music gives her a different kind of permission. A space where honesty doesn’t need to be explained or justified, where feelings can exist without being questioned. “Oh yeah,” she says, when asked if songwriting allows her to say things she struggles to articulate otherwise. “That’s probably why I started songwriting.” The songs that hit her hardest are often the ones that feel most personal, the ones that carry embarrassment, shame, or vulnerability. They’re also the ones that resonate most deeply when shared. “Those are always the songs where I’m like,” she gestures instinctively, “oh my goodness.”

She describes songwriting as a kind of shield as much as an outlet. In conversation, feelings can be interrupted, misunderstood, or pulled apart. In a song, they’re allowed to exist exactly as they are. “It’s like showing someone your diary,” she says. Once it’s written, the interpretation no longer belongs to her. That distance allows her to be more honest than she might otherwise be. Time plays a role here too. Some songs are written in the moment, others long after the feeling has passed. That space gives her room to be brutal without being consumed. “I don’t have to take responsibility for how somebody interprets it,” she explains. The song holds the truth. What someone does with it is out of her hands.

Softness has always been part of who Scout is. She speaks about it without apology, as something innate rather than learned. “I’m just inherently very soft and sensitive,” she says, almost laughing at the obviousness of it. Much of that comes from her mother. Growing up, softness was never framed as something to outgrow. It was something to preserve. Being reminded, again and again, that sensitivity wasn’t a weakness shaped not only how she moves through life, but how she loves.

She gives deeply. Thoughtfully. She’s the friend who writes letters, who makes memory-filled gifts, who shows up with her whole heart. But that openness hasn’t always come without cost. There have been moments where giving so much left her quietly wondering if it would ever be met in the same way. “I think a lot of that comes from wanting to be seen,” she reflects. From wanting reassurance that she matters as much as she feels. Over time, she’s begun to recognise the difference between giving from abundance and giving from fear, the moments where generosity becomes a way of holding onto people rather than simply loving them.

Learning that distinction hasn’t been easy. It’s required her to sit with uncertainty, to accept that people express care differently, and that not every form of love will look like her own. One of the clearest expressions of that love lives in her music. She recalls writing a song for one of her closest friends, a piece so open and direct it felt almost too intimate to share. Performing it live, rather than playing it privately, felt like a way of offering that love without expectation. Watching her friend’s reaction later, seeing the emotion land exactly as it was intended, stayed with her. It became a reminder that love, when given freely, doesn’t need to be measured to be real.

Softness, for Scout, isn’t something she’s trying to temper. It’s something she’s learning to hold more securely. To trust that it doesn’t need to be earned or protected through excess. It can simply exist.

But that softness, and the honesty that comes with it, hasn’t come without compromise. Emotional openness asks for something in return, even when you’re not expecting it to. For Scout, that price is often privacy. “Emotional honesty costs you your privacy,” she says simply. Writing so openly leaves little room to hide behind polish or distance. Sometimes that intimacy feels grounding. Other times, exposing.

Still, she’s learned how to protect herself within that openness. When she writes, she does so as if no one will ever hear it. Only later does she decide what’s ready to be shared. The honesty comes first. Everything else follows. “I never want to sacrifice that,” she explains. “Because I’m doing it for myself.” What she receives in return often outweighs what she gives up. Seeing people connect with her music, recognising their own feelings reflected back at them, reminds her why she continues to show up this way.

Being back home has sharpened that understanding. The stillness of returning has brought a kind of emotional clarity she didn’t know she needed. She speaks about feeling surprised by how vulnerable she’s felt during this time, by how much there was waiting to be processed once life slowed down. Coming back hasn’t provided answers so much as permission. Permission to acknowledge how much she’s grown, how much she’s still figuring out, and how young she really is.

Looking ahead, what she hopes for isn’t transformation, but lightness. Space to be present. To move forward without gripping too tightly to old ideas of who she thought she would be. Above all, she hopes to be understood for what sits beneath the surface. Not the polish, or the performance, but the intention — the softness that remains when everything else is stripped away.

Words by Maddie Lainchbury