The trials and tribulations of moving abroad were a common theme throughout the abroad section this month.
Brianna Parkins writes about how she noticed an influx of videos on TikTok “deinfluencing” people from moving to Australia. It is a hard thing to do, she says, uprooting your whole life – and that’s without the added bonus of visa limitations, housing shortages and pressures from social media. This being said, don’t let what others post online dampen how you spend your days.
She writes: “The best thing about the beach is that you can go any time of the day. Don’t let these influencers who base their day around getting a cute coffee at 7am convince you otherwise. Who cares what people at home think – you’re already so far in advance of everyone else who just talked about [leaving] but never followed through.”
Laura Kennedy, who is also based in Australia, writes about how the “lead against bone” feeling of homesickness crept up on her in recent weeks. Though agonising, she acknowledged: “This homesickness is not a dissatisfaction with the life you have built abroad. Neither is it a wish to return home for good. It isn’t a yearning for return but rather for reconnection. It is an involuntary tendency to feel a little lost inside the distance between this and your other life – the one you left behind but which continued without you.”
Building a meaningful life wherever you settle is important and Margaret E Ward looks at just how to do this. Moving country, finding a job and settling into a social scene can all be exciting, but how can you avoid the loneliness trap once the novelty wears off?
Ward suggests building habits and exploring your interests, to name a few, and chats with Dubliner down under Rachel Rushe about the network she built in Sydney when she moved in 2020.
Meanwhile, Deirdre McQuillan spoke to Lauren McNicholl, a Ballymena native who is possibly the only Irish woman tailor in Spain.
McNicholl finds the people sociable and welcoming. She says: “If you make an effort to speak the language, they will encourage you to keep going and they love to chat and talk so it is very similar to Irish culture.”
Rita Hogan, an Irish teacher based in China, writes about her experience meeting an everyday hero in Wu Guo Liang, a security officer who put her at ease after a frightening incident. The pair got to know each other and Hogan learned of the selfless acts he took on to make their campus, and the world, a better place.
“I really believe in ‘one world, one family’,” Wu told her.
Lucan native Conor O’Driscoll is now based in Columbus, Ohio, in the United States, and speaks to Frank Dillon about how he won $100,000 on NFL Fantasy Football. Having coached the sport for years before he left Ireland, he put his winnings to good use and bought a house with his wife, Lauren – a feat he does not think would have been possible had he stayed in Ireland.
There are pros and cons, as always, as O’Driscoll explains: “Columbus is an easy city to live in. The cost of living is a lot cheaper than Dublin. The wages are at least comparable, and the commute is short – it’s just 20 minutes to drive anywhere in Columbus. The only thing is that you don’t have the same variety as you would have in Dublin where you can go to the coast or the mountains, which are things I miss.”
For Sibéal Turraoin, a landscape and travel photographer, a permanent move abroad wasn’t on the cards. The Waterford native and her aunt, the musician Máire Breathnach, were the first Irish women to navigate through the Northwestern Passage to Alaska in 2010. When another sailing voyage to Greenland was thwarted due to problems with the boat, Turraoin decided to take a hiking trip to Iceland and stay for the winter.
“And then, sure I’ll stay for the summer and then make that a year – and I am still here eight years later,” she says with a laugh.
Having lived in the country for so long, she says it’s changed her.
“When I come home, I am quite Scandinavian and quieter. I lived for 10 years in Dublin and can’t imagine going back and when I do come back to Ireland, it is to home in the Gaeltacht in Ring [Co Waterford].”
In 2002, 25-year-old Ronan Guilfoyle was mesmerised by life on the Cayman Islands and, all these years later, has no intention of leaving. On his laptop in rainy Cork way back when, he “could see pictures of Irish people enjoying sun-drenched beaches, a GAA club and an Irish bar. What the hell I am doing here, I thought?”
He’s now raising a young family alongside wife Cait Kelleher (sister of Liverpool goalkeeper Caoimhín) and says he gets his fill of Irishness through regular trips home.
Finally, Paul Kearns, a freelance journalist from Dublin but based in Tel Aviv, Israel, writes about how he has questioned why he remains in the country in light of the occupation of Gaza. He says: “I felt a pit in my stomach, and couldn’t help but think to myself: why am I here? Why am I here at all, in Israel, with my two young Israeli daughters? And that despite the undeniable rise in anti-Semitism and a visceral hatred of all things Israeli in Ireland, would it not be better for them to grow up in Dublin?”
You’ll find plenty more stories by and about the Irish diaspora that you might have missed on irishtimes.com/abroad.
If you would like to contribute by writing your own story, you can contact abroad@irishtimes.com.
Thanks for reading.
