Why do emigrants decide not to come back to Ireland?
Lunchtime Live recently ran a segment on the people who leave Ireland and feel guilty about having moved abroad.
Today, it interviewed travel blogger Stephanie Barry Woods who feels the exact opposite.
While she admits she often “misses Ireland a lot”, she is overall very happy that she lives abroad.
“But I’ve been away for nine-years now,” she said.
“I’m in Bali at the moment; we haven’t been here the whole time but we’ve mostly been in Asia with a year in Australia.
“I do miss Ireland; I miss my family, I love Ireland but I just feel that while I do get homesick and I do have points where I feel I just want to get home and hug my Mom, I do feel really grateful for the fact that I’m able to live abroad.
“I’ve learned and gained so much from the travel I’ve done and being able to live abroad that I feel that it’s worth it to feel homesick sometimes.”
A couple in Paris. Image: JOHN KELLERMAN / Alamy Stock PhotoMs Barry Woods added that so much homesickness is fuelled by social media, which is not an accurate representation of life back in Ireland.
“Instagram and things like that, you see the highlight reel of everyone and you see all your friends meeting up in the pub at the weekend and you see everyone together at certain points,” she said.
“It’s only when you go home sometimes that you say, ‘Oh, this is the first time we’ve done this in months.’
“This doesn’t happen every weekend but sometimes when you’re watching life at home when you’re abroad, you’re just watching each other’s highlights, so you can kind of get very homesick looking at their life like that.
“But the reality is sometimes when you go home and you spend time at home, you realise, maybe it’s not as exciting as it looks online.”
Main image: Irish people on Bondi Beach. Picture by: Richard Milnes/Alamy Live News
