living abroad has changed my idea of home: why I wouldn't move back

We'd just finished walking the forest trail when we spotted a woman standing beside the ticket machine. Earlier, another walker had handed us his all-day parking ticket as he was leaving, so we decided to pass it on.

As often happens in Northern Ireland, a simple exchange quickly turned into a conversation. Her accent sounded Northern Irish, just softer somehow, so I asked where she was from. She told us she'd recently moved back after many years living in London. She spoke about how much she loved being home again, how easy it was to drive somewhere like this for a walk, and how she felt Northern Ireland was on the cusp of something special creatively, reminding her of Manchester around the time of Oasis.

My friend mentioned that I live abroad and was only home for a few weeks. The woman turned to me. "Would you ever move back?" It's a question I've been asked many times. "I'd never say never," I replied. "Life changes. Circumstances change. If it were my decision today, though, I'd say no". We chatted for another few minutes before heading our separate ways, however her question stayed with me all the way home.

I already knew my answer. What I wasn’t so sure about was why. There’s so much about Northern Ireland that I love. The North Antrim Coast, where my parents live, is breathtaking. The rugged cliffs, the volcanic rock, the sea crashing against the shoreline. Even after living away for more than twenty-four years, it can still stop me in my tracks. And then there’s the green. Everywhere you look, it’s green. Of course, it’s green for a reason. Rain.

I actually wasn’t meant to be here in N Ireland just yet. I’d originally booked my flight for late June. At the beginning of the month, though, Mum and I had a conversation that left me worried about both her and Dad, particularly Dad, so I changed my flight and came back three weeks earlier. The first two weeks after I arrived seemed to rain almost constantly. Every day I carried my umbrella. The weather report said the first week of June had brought almost a month’s worth of rainfall. By coincidence, the day my original flight would have landed turned out to be the hottest day of the year so far, reaching twenty-six degrees. Here, that counts as a heatwave.

Summers on mainland Europe can be exhausting. Days in the high twenties and thirties go on for weeks. Yet I’ve realised I cope better with prolonged heat beneath a blue sky than I do with weeks of grey cloud and rain. That surprised me a little.

So did how quickly I slipped back into saying hello to complete strangers while out walking. Eye contact is enough. “Hello”, “How’s it going?”, “How ye doing?” Nobody thinks twice about it. I miss that when I’m living in cities like Frankfurt. I still say hello if I’m out walking in the countryside or on the outskirts of the city, however, in the middle of a large European city people are more likely to wonder why a stranger is speaking to them at all.

It’s one of those small things that makes Northern Ireland feel familiar almost immediately. The woman in the forest was right about that. And yet, as I kept turning her question over in my mind, I realised those things weren’t enough to make me want to come back permanently.

I notice, for example, that people here seem to complain more than I’m used to now. Conversations often drift towards what isn’t working. I sometimes wonder whether I’m only noticing it because everyone is speaking my own language. Everywhere else I’ve lived, I’ve never become fluent enough to follow every conversation happening around me. Perhaps people complain just as much there. Perhaps I’ve simply been blissfully unaware because I’m living inside my own little language bubble. I don’t know.

I also find myself wondering whether Northern Ireland still carries more of the weight of its history than I realised before I left. The Troubles may have ended, but histories like that don't disappear within a generation or two. Sometimes it feels as though a little of that emotional legacy still sits quietly beneath everyday life.

Living abroad has changed how I see those things. Not because other countries are perfect. They’re not. It’s because living among different cultures is very different from visiting them. There’s no education quite like actually building a life somewhere else. You begin to understand why people think differently, why they value different things, why something that feels obvious to you isn’t obvious to somebody else at all. You stop assuming your way is the normal way.

Over the years my world has quietly become much bigger than I ever expected. When I first left Northern Ireland, I was simply moving for a job. I don’t think I appreciated then that living abroad would gradually become part of my identity rather than just my address.

Most of my closest friends still come from English-speaking countries. That makes conversation easy. And yet, if I look more widely at the people who fill my life now, most of them come from completely different countries. English often isn’t their first language. Our conversations are shaped by different cultures, different histories and different ways of seeing the world. I treasure that.

As I kept thinking about the woman’s question, another answer slowly surfaced. One that I rarely say out loud because it’s so easy to misunderstand. Part of me feels that moving back permanently would feel like failure. I don’t mean that returning home is failure. It isn’t. Nor do I think Northern Ireland is somehow less than the countries I’ve lived in. I’ve never believed that. The feeling is much more personal than that.

Living abroad has become part of who I am. It’s difficult to explain without it sounding grander than I mean it to. It’s almost as though my life naturally stretches across countries now. Across different languages, different ways of living, different ideas. Even if I’m only ever living in one place at a time, my world feels wider because of the people who are in it and the experiences that have shaped me.

Moving back permanently feels, emotionally, as though that world would suddenly become smaller. Not because Northern Ireland is small. Because my life has grown in a different direction.

That surprised me. I'd never really put those feelings into words before that afternoon in the forest car park. Perhaps that's why her question stayed with me. It wasn't really asking where I wanted to live.

It quietly asked who I’ve become.

I suspect many women living abroad recognise something similar. You can love the place you came from while also recognising that you've changed within it. Holding those two truths together sometimes calls for more self-compassion than we realise, which is one of the reasons I created the Developing Greater Self-Compassion Self-Healing Bundle.

I’ll keep coming back to Northern Ireland. My family are here. The coastline still takes my breath away. I’ll always smile when strangers say, “How ye doing?” as we pass each other on a path. I've realised that home and belonging aren't always the same place anymore. And perhaps that quiet shift is one of the less visible ways that living abroad changes you.