After 12 years living abroad in Berlin and then Madrid, I never imagined returning home to Ireland. However, a breakup, becoming a single parent to a young teen, and growing concerns about my father’s health made moving back home something I had to consider.
The decision wasn’t easy. I worried about uprooting my daughter from the life we’d built in Madrid and returning to a country I’d once been so desperate to leave. Growing up in Dublin in the 1980s, a time marked by unemployment, diminishing women’s rights, and a deeply conservative church and state, greatly prompted my desire to live elsewhere. The following decades of living on and off in London, France, Germany, and Spain only reinforced that there was a greater world outside my home country.
Sure, there was no denying that Ireland had changed a lot since the ’80s. But there were still elements of the small-town mindset I despised.
Would my daughter resent me later for taking her away from a life in a more progressive and larger European city?
Moving back home was a difficult decision to make
Like many Western countries, Ireland’s housing crisis was at its peak. Moving back would likely mean temporarily living in my childhood home with my older parents — and that certainly felt like a step backward.
Still, in other ways, it felt right. My daughter, an only child, saw her extended family only a few times a year, and I believed being closer to them would help her through her parents’ breakup and those often-difficult teenage years.
Courtesy of Siobhan Colgan
Plus, my father, now in his late 80s, had spent much of the year in and out of the hospital. After months of flying back and forth from Madrid to support him and my mother, staying abroad no longer felt realistic.
So I made the decision I never thought I’d make, and we moved back.
The move home surprisingly benefited all of us
Within a month of our return, my father was discharged from the nursing home he had been sent to after a six-month hospital stay. Being there to deal with doctors and carers, support my mother, and share the load with nearby relatives made me feel really grateful. I had always been close to my dad, but now that I was physically around, our bond deepened even more.
My daughter, too, began to thrive. She began building real relationships with aunts, uncles, cousins, and her grandparents. After becoming withdrawn during our final year in Madrid, I now saw her going out shopping with my mom or sitting laughing with my dad; she was slowly opening up again.
Then, four months after coming back, my father died suddenly after a short infection. It was devastating for everyone. But among the grief and tough emotions, I couldn’t deny feeling so thankful that my daughter and I spent those last few months with him.
Additionally, for all my misgivings about “small-town Ireland,” I got to see another side of living in a small community: friends, neighbours, and even locals who just knew them in passing rallied round my mother.
It was the best decision I never wanted to make
It’s still hard to accept my dad is gone, but, of course, life has continued. We now have our own home, a short walk from my mom, and my daughter loves her local school and the friends she’s made.
I still miss parts of our life abroad — my friends, the relaxing outdoor café culture, and reliable public transport. However, I’m building a stable life for my daughter, with deeper ties to family and community.
I will say that when it comes to big life choices, such as moving abroad or moving home, you can only make the decision that feels right to you in the moment. It’s rarely easy, but I’m relieved and glad that I made the choice I did.
