What they don’t tell you about moving home after living abroad

old head of kinsale

I’ve lived abroad for 10 years with stints in Australia, Canada and New Zealand. We’ve lived a great life so far, with lots of exotic travel (47 countries in total!). We moved home to Ireland this July, in this piece I’ll explain why it may have been our hardest move yet.

1. You will always wonder ‘what if’.

If I stayed abroad would I have a better job/apartment/life? Would I be happier? These are the questions you will ask yourself for the rest of your life. Home is where the heart is, and your heart may continue to be in two places for the rest of your life.

The grass is always greener as the saying goes. The sacrifice for living abroad is that your heart will always belong to two places (your home & your adopted home abroad).

As Miriam Adeney says,

“You will never be completely at home again, because part of your heart will always be elsewhere. That is the price you pay for the richness of loving and knowing people in more than one place.”

2. People will ask you why you left

In our case, moving home to Ireland in the middle of the COVID pandemic – from New Zealand (one of the ‘safest’ countries in the world) everyone though we were mad. In fact, delivery men, shopkeepers, and most strangers we met exclaimed to us “you’re off your feckin game”. For those not from Cork this means simply ‘you are crazy’.

When people react like this to you moving home, you once again question your move – ‘are we mad for leaving?’.

Crosshaven Cork Ireland

3. You will feel different to your friends/family

Having experienced a different way of life to your friends and family you may feel that you don’t have as much in common now as you did before. You had this whole other life abroad – experiencing many different things to those they’ve experienced here at home.

You will in time fall back into a normal routine with them.

No longer is the excitement around the short visits home when you lived abroad. You will slowly move back into an everyday routine with your friends and family. It may be mundane to you in the beginning but it will soon become the norm, a comfort. After all, isn’t it those little mundane moments you missed the most when you were abroad?!

You won’t be the foreigner any more

My accent now sounds the same as everyone else, once upon a time it was a novelty and nearly always evoked the reaction “ah I love your accent”. I worked in luxury hotels for years and I was the designated ‘complaint-handler’ because of my gorgeous Irish accent – nobody could get too mad at me. The American guests especially loved it and a conversation about how some far-away relation was Irish usually followed.

Alas, now I’m no longer the foreigner in the room.

Youghal Cork

You may not feel the urge to go exploring for a while

When we lived abroad we always made a point of exploring the city we lived in because it was new to us. Since moving home I’m ashamed to say we haven’t really explored Ireland at all, obviously COVID has a lot to do with that.

I think it’s different moving to your home country, because you think ‘ah I’ve been there before’ so you don’t bother with the day-trips to other towns/scenic places as much. In 2021 that will certainly have to change!

Someone said to me before we moved home “you have to see it as a new adventure rather than just ‘a move home’ and that has really stuck with me.

4. The first few supermarket shopping trips will be a novelty

I remember for a good 10 years (that’s how long I was abroad), I craved things that are everyday to you – Galaxy chocolate, McDonnells curry sauce, Tanora and so many others. The cost of buying these ‘international food items’ as they’re labelled in the supermarkets abroad is extortionate.

After a few months at home, my cupboards are filled with these cravings for fear I’ll run out.

You will eventually feel ‘at home’

You will eventually feel at home, but still different. Your life abroad is an important part of you now, it’s become part of your personality. When you overhear people talking about Sydney/ Vancouver/ Whistler/ New Zealand (all places we’ve lived) you will want to jump in and proudly say ‘I lived there’. You will want to offer them the insider tips on what to do & see there. But alas, most people won’t really be interested in your life abroad.

Telling strangers I just moved home from Queenstown typically evokes a positive but short reaction. An “ah, that’s a lovely place” type-of-thing. And in this COVID-era it usually includes a quick conversation about Jacinda Ardern. But that’s about the extent of it.

Nobody is going to be as interested in your life abroad as you and your spouse.

Currabinny Cork Ireland

Is it easy to move back?

Moving is always hard but this has been the hardest move we’ve ever taken. Having lived abroad you will see the negatives of being home that others may not see. And on that note, you will too see the positives they don’t see. Like how warm Irish people are, how much better a chipper is here, how nothing compares to a trip to Penney’s.

So, here we are a couple months in to life in Ireland and we’re finally feeling settled. It was for us the hardest country to set ourselves up in – my husband being a British citizen found getting a PPS number, getting a bank account, getting his tax set up a pain in the arse. More on that here.

Currabinny Woods Cork

Abroad you told stories of life in Ireland, now at home you will tell stories of your life abroad. You will always question your move, especially when the going gets tough. Of course you’re delighted to be home among your friends and family. The ones you’ve spent so long away from. But there’s always the ‘what if’ hanging above your head. I’ve heard this tug-of-war will continue for the rest of your life.

So, yes moving home may have been the hardest move yet for us, only because it feels the most final. The end of an era. We have a baby daughter now (and hopefully more kids on the horizon) so the carefree days of backpacking & moving country every few years are behind us.

Right now, we’re motoring through – we’re excited to travel Europe again when we can, we’re excited for our first Christmas at home in years and we’re excited for a relatively normal 2021 here at home in Ireland.

READ NEXT | Why Cork is the best part of Ireland

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12 thoughts on “What they don’t tell you about moving home after living abroad

  1. Thankyou for replying to my comment. If you don’t mind me asking what jobs will you be doing while you live in Spain?
    Europe would be an option for us one day maybe if we leave new zealand.
    Hope that move goes well and yes I’ve heard about the cost of living in the UK and Ireland have gone up alot.

  2. Thankyou for replying to my comment. If you don’t mind me asking what jobs will you be doing while you live in Spain?
    Europe would be an option for us one day maybe if we leave new zealand.
    Hope that move goes well and yes I’ve heard about the cost of living in the UK and Ireland have gone up alot.

  3. Thanks so much for this – your article pretty much sums up everything I’ve been feeling lately 😉 and honestly its refreshing to know that I’m not alone in my feelings and I take comfort in knowing (in a strange kind of way), that I will always have mixed feelings. And that’s OK. In fact, its NORMAL for someone whose lived abroad for so long.

    My husband and I both from Ireland, have lived in Melbourne for the last 11 years. We’ve recently decided that the time has come to move back. Like you, we also have a little one now, he’s 19 months old and a fur baby (she’s 3 years old), so its no longer about just us too, but rather whats BEST for our family. We plan to move back to Cork early next year so in the process of planning the move now.

    If you have any other advice/or just want to chat feel free to message me as it would be great to chat with someone thats just gone through it 😉

    1. Hey Michelle, best of luck with the move – it’s a tough decision to make, and one we question every day but ultimately we know we made the right decision for us, for now. I will say that we are actually planning to move to Spain for a few years in mid-2023, we miss the sun 🙂 Plus the price of property (and the cost of living) has gone crazy in Ireland since we moved back. Also, childcare is extortionate so with two babies we would actually be out of pocket if I were to go back to work. Feel free to email me at snaphappytraveller@gmail.com and I can answer more questions for you.

  4. Thank-you for this, I also read one of your other posts and you literally wrote exactly I feel about living abroad and not having your life together. I’m in new Zealand now. 30 yrs old and with my partner of 10 years. We’ve lived away from the UK for just over 4 years now and we still go through the struggles of deciding should we or shouldn’t we go home. We haven’t got the career we want due to starting our travels when we were 25 , miss friends and family terribly but at the same time we cannot see ourselves living back there. No one tells you this is the hard part of travelling and living abroad lol x

    1. Oh live away as long as you can I say, the weather in the UK/Ireland is hard to get used to, plus, it’s a lot more expensive to live here than I thought it would be. We’re actually planning to move to Spain for a few years next year!

  5. Good on you for gaining the life experience as the world’s nomad in the first place. While you’ll always wonder ‘what if’, it’s so incredible you did it rather than regret for never taking that original leap!

  6. Love this insight! Moving back “home” after being brave and trying someplace new is definitely difficult! I felt lost when I did this – almost as if I didn’t belong in either place anymore. Glad to hear your perspective!

  7. I have lived abroad on and off for the last 15 years including the last 10 in Canada, and I can definitely say it’s often odd going “home” back to the UK. I love it, but you’re definitely right about the “what ifs”. I don’t see myself returning to the UK but it will always be home, but it’s strange not feeling completely like you belong anywhere – in your home country or the one you live in people will always see you a little bit like the foreigner

  8. I have lived overseas for 9 years. Last March, due to the world andemic, I got stuck at home with my family in Spain, away from my husband and dog for 8 months!! Being back in town made me feel exactly like you described above… I felt very lost, like a part of me was fading and another was scratching the surface… Sigh!

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