"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."
"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."
I grew up in Ireland and spent 12 years in Berlin and Madrid. A breakup, becoming a single parent to a young teen, and growing concerns about my father's health prompted a return home. Memories of 1980s Dublin — marked by unemployment, diminishing women's rights, and a deeply conservative church and state — made the choice difficult. Concerns included uprooting my daughter from Madrid's more progressive environment and facing Ireland's housing crisis, likely requiring a temporary return to my childhood home with older parents. Proximity to extended family and the need to support my father, often hospitalized in his late 80s, made the move feel necessary.
Read at Business Insider
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