Ireland or Bust: The Seed of a Dream

In my previous post, I shared the exciting news that my family and I recently moved to County Wexford, Ireland. The journey to get here has been long and winding, and you may have noticed some changes here at The Cosy Cottage. My adoption of local spelling conventions, being one such change. 🤓

It’s hard to believe that we arrived a little over six weeks ago. I’m happy to share that we already feel at home in this magical place. So, as a way of commemorating this new beginning, I’ve decided to create a special blog series. “Ireland or Bust” will contain stories of how my family and I came to live on the Emerald Isle. I’ll share the ups, the downs, and the side quests along the way too. For the first instalment of this series, I’d like to tell you the story of how the seed of an idea grew into a big dream.

It all began during the COVID-19 lockdown in early 2020. My Wife and I were living in Atlanta, Georgia and had been furloughed from our jobs. With plenty of free time at our disposal and the need to stay distanced from others, we spent much of our time watching travel vlogs on YouTube. We both love to travel and have a strong wanderlust. The algorithm picked up on this interest quickly, feeding us content from all corners of the world. Watching those adventurous videos naturally led to us talking about places we’d like to visit in the future (once it was safe to do so, of course).

Those conversations then sparked our imaginings of what it would be like to actually live abroad. We went down many rabbit holes, researching different countries and envisioning ourselves living in places like Australia, France, Ireland, Scotland, or the Netherlands (just to name a few). This daydreaming was a welcomed reprieve during a time of so much worry and uncertainty. It gave us hope that things would get better.

In the Spring of 2021, we got married in our new hometown of Asheville, North Carolina. We held a small ceremony, since the transmission of the coronavirus was still a concern. We made our vows outside, surrounded by mountain views, with just five of our loved ones physically attending, while the rest of our guests joined via Zoom. Indeed, we had a quintessential pandemic wedding. 😷

Even though we needed to keep our wedding small, it was no less intimate or special. The entire day was filled with tremendous joy and celebration! We received so much love from our friends and found family. We felt so lucky, and even during those “unprecedented times” we still held onto our dream of moving abroad and renewing our vows one day. Then we could throw the big, beautiful lesbian wedding we’d originally planned and have everyone celebrate with us in person!

During that same year, my Wife went back to college to finish her bachelor’s degree. Ever since she was a child, she always wanted to be an archaeologist when she grew up. As serendipity would have it, Warren Wilson College offered an Anthropology/Sociology degree with a focus in Archaeology as one of its options, and it was located just down the road from our home.

Between the years 2021 and 2024, my Wife committed herself to being a full-time student, working part-time in the school’s archaeology lab, volunteering at several excavation sites, all the while continuing to be an amazing partner. I was equally busy, but in a different capacity. I was working 40 hours per week at my 9 to 5 job, building my YouTube channel (Erin Janda Creative) as a solo creator, alongside juggling our family’s admin and finances.

Then in late January of 2024, I got laid off from work unexpectedly. I’d been with the company for nearly a decade, but just like that, my position was eliminated along with several others’. It was truly a shock. I remember thinking with astonishment and slight bitterness, “Well, this wasn’t part of the plan!” After the layoff, my Wife and I had many deep conversations about how we wanted to move forward and navigate through that time of uncertainty. Our dream of moving abroad resurfaced, and we decided that we should actually start to make it a reality.

Initially we thought that our pathway to living/working in another country would be through my Wife’s career. Archaeology is sometimes listed as a skilled worker visa in places like Europe or Australia, depending upon how critical the need is in a particular country. Of course it made sense to follow this route. But, the more we researched the more we realised that critical skills lists often change without warning, and therefore visa approvals can be unreliable. Despite this small setback, we were not deterred.

Like many Americans, we are the descendants of brave immigrants. Turning our attention to our genealogies, we spent our time researching which countries might offer dual citizenship. We first looked into my Wife’s family history. Knowing that she had two sets of grandparents who immigrated to the United States, it felt like we had greater possibilities through her ancestry. Unfortunately we hit dead ends, as there weren’t official documents available to prove her grandparents’ places of birth. Or, we discovered that a particular grandparent had actually been born in the USA.

So we looked to my paternal grandmother, who I knew had been born and raised in Ireland. I was worried though that we wouldn’t be able to find all the necessary records, as I’d never seen her birth certificate and wasn’t entirely certain of her birth year. My Wife, being the brilliant and determined researcher that she is, set to finding my grandmother’s birth record. And found it she did.

One afternoon in early 2024, my Wife showed me a list containing the registered births in the County of Down. For the first time in my life, I saw my grandmother’s birth record. I had goosebumps as I stared at the digitised facsimile on our computer screen. Reading my grandmother’s name alongside her parents’ names and occupations — handwritten in cursive by someone, who was probably a clerk or secretary — was unlike anything I’ve experienced before or since. From that moment, it felt like our dream had pushed through the dark rich soil, transforming from seed to seedling. We had found the first part of our pathway to move abroad. It was real!

All I needed to do from there was connect the dots of my lineage, which turned out to be a journey laden with lots of paperwork. I smile now, as I think back on that moment of finding that humble bureaucratic document. I didn’t fully realise it at the time, but discovering that group birth record marked the beginning of my Irish Foreign Birth Registration.

I think this is as good a place as any to pause my story, for now. Not to worry though, as I’ll be sharing more in the coming weeks through the “Ireland or Bust” series. Until next time, I hope that whatever seeds you’ve planted in your heart have the best soil, plenty of gentle rainfall, and the perfect amount of sunlight to help them grow. 🌱

Cover image used with permission from Chelsea Lane Photography.