Moving to Dublin: Missing Home

This week, I’m celebrating my third anniversary of moving to Dublin by sharing lots of stories with you! From how I ended up here, to what were the hardest adjustments and biggest surprises – check back here all week for the inside scoop!

Read about how I decided to move to Dublin here, what the first year was like for me, and see inside my home here.

A question I’m asked all the time is whether I’m homesick living in Dublin. Oddly, I’m not. Anymore.

I have a few American friends who agree – we’re most homesick when we’re home or when family is visiting. And sometimes it gets a little harder in the days leading up to a trip home.

But otherwise? I think you learn to turn it off. You choose not to be homesick because you have to live your life. You can’t straddle the ocean forever. You can only live on one side at a time.

Turning it off doesn’t always work, sometimes I get a pang of homesickness and must ring my grandmother or text my dad or talk to my mom right that minute. Sometimes I just need to hear exactly how my sister and brother are doing, straight from their mouths. But email keeps most of those pangs to a minimum. Skype keeps me in the loop at home and sometimes I even write real letters.

Thank goodness for modern technology and a deal Michael and I made when we first moved here. I get one visit to Maine on my own in the fall or winter, and we spend a good chunk of time in America every summer. And, as my mom said at the end of my last visit, that deal means she gets more quality time with me than most of her friends do with their kids who live in various parts of the States.

You know when the homesickness does try to creep in? When the seasons change. When the leaves start to fall, I wish I could kick through big piles of Maine leaves. When the daffodils and lilacs start to bloom, I wish it meant the boat was going into China Lake soon.

But instead of dwelling, I try suck the life out of the seasons here, and I drink those stronger seasons up while I’m back at that other home.

So how about you? How do you deal with homesickness? Any tricks or triggers?

{sorry no pretty photo today! major technology issues so you’ll have to imagine something pretty instead!}