Kylee's June/July Blog: A journey of belonging between Aotearoa and Éire.
When people ask me, "Where are you from?" I hesitate, not because I’m particularly mysterious, it’s just never a straightforward answer.
I was born and raised in Auckland, but I haven’t lived there since I left for university in Dunedin in my early 20s. Technically, yes I’m from Auckland. But does it feel like home? Not really.
Right now, we live in Christchurch. But over the past 17 years, my Irish husband and I have been constantly back and forth between New Zealand and Ireland like two very confused homing pigeons. It’s been wonderful and costly, my bank account might never recover (Honestly, the cost of international flights for a family is right up there!) but this is the reality when your life and heart are stretched across two hemispheres. When you’re married into another culture, your idea of “home” becomes beautifully complicated.
Because of our (maybe sometimes questionable life choices) We’re deeply rooted in both places, yet fully settled in neither. It’s a wild paradox: feeling completely at home in two places, and yet never entirely at home in either. Always a little bit homesick for the place you’re not.
Home, for me, isn’t pinned to a single point on a map. It lives in the rhythm of my footsteps along a quiet boreen on the Aran Islands, where summer evenings linger endlessly, the sun slow to surrender, slowly giving up and dipping below the horizon. It’s in a crowded village pub on the West of Ireland where music spills out the door, and the craic flows as freely as the Guinness, laughter rising like smoke into the rare and extremely beautiful still night.
But home is also New Zealand, the dramatic mountains, the endless coastline, the southern skies. It’s salty skin after a swim, days at the bach, getting relentlessly dunked by the surf, and unwrapping fish and chips on the beach with sandy feet. It’s the quiet horror (and quiet acceptance) of seeing people barefoot in supermarkets.
We may live in Christchurch now, but Ireland is still part of us. I don’t know when exactly we will return to Ireland again, but I know she waits patiently for our next return, the next season of life. There’s comfort in knowing my children will remember Ireland through a gently rose-tinted lens, something wistful and almost lyrical, echoing the old stories and songs of the place. The wild winds and endless drizzle will blur with time, leaving behind only the sweeter fragments: jumping off the pier in Kilronan, running barefoot with best friends, sticky fingers from endless ice pops, and the familiar rustle of Tayto packets.
The inevitable changes in us are slowly beginning to peek through just six short months after our move back, I already hear the blend of two worlds in our children’s voices, their accents dancing somewhere between Irish and Kiwi, And that’s okay. That’s who we are.
This life stretched between two worlds, can feel disorienting. Rootless, at times. But it’s also deeply rich. I’ve learned to live in the tension between longing and belonging, to stop trying to choose between here or there, and instead make room in my heart for both.
So, I’m learning to make peace with the truth that home will never be just one place. Home is something I carry with me now, in the rhythm of our family life. And maybe, just maybe, that’s enough. Because right now, in this moment, we are exactly where we’re meant to be.
Kylee Dillane - Community Liasion Officer
An Bóthar Abhaile – Aran Islands (The Road Home)