New Year’s in Australia: When you leave home to live abroad, you take any traditions you can feasibly translateI don’t really know what a new year in Australia might hold. It has a vast unfamiliarity to me that country itself still doesWed Jan 01 2025 - 06:01
We like the ideal of Christmas. The reality, though, is often strained, sad and weirdWe like the ideal of Christmas. Of childhood, family, rest. The reality, though, is often strained, and sad, and weirdTue Dec 24 2024 - 06:30
A critic of this column thinks there’s too much negativity about Ireland, not enough about Australia’s beachesThat reader should know that, even though I live 3½ hours from the coast, I am taking her concerns on boardWed Dec 18 2024 - 06:01
Australia offers me a more dignified life than the one I had in Ireland. It’s not unpatriotic to say soLike many emigrants, the reality is that I am more invested in Ireland than the country I have moved toWed Dec 04 2024 - 06:01
Australia is so very far from Europe and US, and yet is as deeply rooted in Anglosphere norms, customs and cultureIf you’re having an out-of-body experience, pasta and cheese may not strictly fix it, but they certainly won’t do you any harmWed Nov 20 2024 - 06:01
Like many two-year-olds, my nephew hates socks and loves blueberries. He’s also unlike other little boysTom is not the problem. It’s the rest of usSun Nov 10 2024 - 08:46
Laura Kennedy: Australians respond differently to nature compared to Irish people I awoke early one morning in Canberra to a bizarre sound. What the actual f**k is that, I thought, a pterodactyl? It was a magpie, but not like the ones I’d knownWed Nov 06 2024 - 06:01
This could be a crazy week. Here’s one way to stay sane The best way to stay sane this week is, as Marcus Aurelius recommended, to extend more generosity to other people’s crazyMon Nov 04 2024 - 06:00
Laura Kennedy: When you return home to Ireland from abroad, you notice that everyone is a little changedLaura Kennedy: It shouldn’t take a trip back to realise that home is, above all, peopleWed Oct 23 2024 - 06:00
Laura Kennedy: Long-haul flight tips from snore-proof ear plugs to tummy-friendly foodSince friends or family giving Irish emigrants helpful information is forbidden in our culture, you can rely on me to do it for youWed Oct 09 2024 - 06:01
I received an autism diagnosis at 34 and sat quietly with it in some discomfortIt may help explain why I have so often been described as ‘aloof’ or rude, or not having the expected emotional responses in various contexts through my lifeSat Sept 28 2024 - 06:00
Choosing to leave home can leave people you love feeling slightly rejectedLaura Kennedy: When I return from Australia to visit home, I sit in the consequences of that choice to leaveWed Sept 25 2024 - 06:00
I got Limericked before I even made it out of Shannon Airport – a record, even for meIt’s a joy to be home, but sometimes I wish Ireland would just let you love it without all the complexityWed Sept 11 2024 - 06:01
Is the notion of settling down a luxury my generation can’t afford or take for granted?When you make the decision to emigrate, you’re forced to think about your life and future in a way that you can avoid more easily in familiar surroundingsWed Aug 28 2024 - 06:01
I felt an urge to ‘scroll’ past some living people. My online and offline lives had blurredUnthinkable: We have become more interested in the representations of things than the reality of those thingsMon Aug 26 2024 - 06:30
Five accessible reads to begin with if you’re new to philosophyIf you’re not already an enthusiast, don’t start at Kant or NietzscheMon Aug 19 2024 - 05:45
As an Irish person in Australia, I can try to think of myself as suave and worldly, but I’m nothing of the sortIf you’re Irish, you’re always Irish in every situation. We can’t be anonymous anywhereWed Aug 14 2024 - 06:01
Millennials are the most therapised generation yet. So why aren’t we happy?Unthinkable: A little more pop philosophy may help with our simultaneous over-immersion and poor literacy in pop psychologyMon Aug 12 2024 - 06:00
We hit a second adolescence in our 60s, when beauty isn’t skin-deep but ‘life-deep’ In our culture, beauty is synonymous with youth. But there is another kindMon Aug 05 2024 - 06:00
Laura Kennedy: ‘On the supermarket shelf, Mr Tayto felt as relatable as any other Irish immigrant in a new country. Out of place’Mr Tayto felt as relatable as any other Irish immigrant in a new country – out of placeWed Jul 31 2024 - 06:01
These are the key signs an apology isn’t sincereUnthinkable: Don’t say ‘sorry’ the way former US secret service director Kimberly Cheatle didMon Jul 29 2024 - 06:11
For the sake of your mental health, stop trying to have an opinion on everything all the timeUnthinkable: People are panicking, theorising and condemning on social media in every imaginable direction. But it’s all right not to have a view on everything all the time. In fact, it’s healthyMon Jul 22 2024 - 06:00
Laura Kennedy: You can’t escape yourself abroad, but you can find someone you’re less eager to escape fromWhen you emigrate, you shed the version of yourself that others consider to be who you areWed Jul 17 2024 - 06:01
It’s no wonder so many of us are lonely. Friendship has become harder and more complexUnthinkable: Young people now spend less time in one another’s physical company than ever before and the experience of successive lockdowns deprived them of crucial social developmentMon Jul 15 2024 - 06:15
Here’s what the world doesn’t need: another woman writer complaining about masculinityWe tend to discuss what men are and should be, while suggesting it is inappropriate for men to comment on femininity or womanhoodMon Jul 08 2024 - 06:00
I suspect the constant talk about Australia and spiders is a conspiracy to keep the sons and daughters of Éireann at homeIrish folks are obsessed with how living in Australia means constantly coping with arachnids. Well, I am now able to say, that’s a bit madWed Jul 03 2024 - 06:01
Cases like Natasha O’Brien’s prompt a sudden, disquieting voice in collective consciousnessSuspended sentence for Cathal Crotty has raised questions about the nature of justice. It is easier to say when we feel its absence than to define itMon Jul 01 2024 - 06:00
My friend has done everything right but soon they will be homelessWhen we emigrants speak critically of home, we are often met with a defensive toneWed Jun 26 2024 - 06:00
I watched my grandmother disappear into mental illness and believed I was doomed to followIreland is struggling with a mental health crisis, while we are flooded with fluffy, often pseudoscientific therapeutic advice through social mediaSun Jun 23 2024 - 05:00
Our relationship with Britain will always be a bit weird, like making friends with your former school bullyIn Australia, people I talk to seem slightly embarrassed by the fact that the king is still knocking aroundWed Jun 19 2024 - 06:00
‘An Irish accent carries a level of privilege here in Australia’It’s a delight to realise that your voice evokes for strangers a beloved parent who is now goneWed Jun 12 2024 - 06:01
As an Irish emigrant, I’m not supposed to talk about butter. I’m supposed to talk about James Joyce and Seamus HeaneyThe rules change when you emigrate: your moaning card, if not your passport, is revokedWed Jun 05 2024 - 06:00
Laura Kennedy: Australia leaves me longing for older buildings to carry me into the pastLife in Canberra is convenient and comfortable but when I miss home, it is the sense of age that I missWed May 29 2024 - 06:01
Seeing the GP in Australia: ‘It’s dispiriting how utterly luxurious it feels’Figuring out the healthcare system in Australia has certainly been the most complex part of movingWed May 22 2024 - 06:01
Moving back to Ireland would mean working till 10pm, no home of my own and bad coffeeIt’s sad when the numbers say you’re better off leaving IrelandWed May 15 2024 - 06:01
The landlord asked where his ‘antique toilet brush’ was and demanded recompense from our deposit‘When you own a house, you are allowed to live in it ... without worrying that the house is starting to look occupied’Wed May 08 2024 - 06:01
Laura Kennedy: It’s hard to put my finger on what’s different about the atmosphere in this gymI shuffled into the gym that first day, hunched up and embarrassed, feeling puffy and conspicuous in my leggingsWed May 01 2024 - 06:01
Laura Kennedy: In Australia, my heart is broken for want of a spice bagThe essence of this delicacy will not be found in Foxrock, but in true multiculturalism — enterprising Chinese restaurant ownersWed Apr 24 2024 - 06:01
Laura Kennedy: Will I ever get used to having winter in August and Christmas in summer?There’s no warm spicy beverage to comfort us while we pull our hats and gloves out of storage. Will the year ever stop feeling backwards here?Wed Apr 17 2024 - 06:00
When you move to Australia, you must work to understand it from the little things upLaura Kennedy in Australia: At home we take our sense of place for granted – when we emigrate, we have to create itWed Apr 10 2024 - 06:01
A guide for those left behind: four small things you can do after a loved one emigratesIf they were the person you’d send silly cat videos to before, keep sending themWed Apr 03 2024 - 06:01
Irishness is as vague a concept as there is. When you leave, that vagueness only escalatesLaura Kennedy: Our jealous grip on Irish identity at home is perhaps because half the world seems to lay claim to itWed Mar 27 2024 - 06:00
Facing into my first Australian autumn feels like winding down at the wrong timeI must remember that people do not emigrate to maintain their ‘before’ livesWed Mar 20 2024 - 06:01
Moving to Australia has shown me emigration means relationships at home will inevitably degradeIf Irish emigrants are honest, it is fair enough that loved ones at home feel rejectedWed Mar 13 2024 - 06:01
‘Rain in Australia is not the poetic, misty smattering we get at home… it’s aggressive, sudden and often unsettlingly warm’Australians are inclined to run about in search of shelter to escape a downpour, but for those who hail from Ireland, such a deluge is grist to the millWed Mar 06 2024 - 06:01
In the late 1980s my pregnant, underpaid mother had what was then called a ‘nervous breakdown’Women don’t have ‘nervous breakdowns’ now, but we do get ‘burnt out’ in astonishing numbersFri Mar 01 2024 - 15:22
Meaningful multiculturalism can be hard to find, but maybe there’s a good reason for thatAlthough there have been rumblings against immigration in Dublin, I don’t hear the same here in the Australian capitalWed Feb 28 2024 - 06:00
Mabel: the small, weird, taciturn cat friend who lives in my houseEveryone said we were mad to save her life and then to bring her to Australia, and so we wereWed Feb 21 2024 - 06:01
These days, the emigration experience is both alien and familiar at the same timeThe effects of growing globalisation make being somewhere else feel a little less of a shockWed Feb 14 2024 - 06:00
Five months on, the truth is that I don’t know if I feel like I live in Australia yetI wonder if this waiting is just how emigration feelsWed Feb 07 2024 - 06:00
