Jenn Gonnelly

“So in our late 40s, we sold our house and pulled up stakes to move to Ireland.”

Iam originally from Salt Lake City, Utah. And I have to admit that I never dreamed that I wouldn’t still be living in Utah. Unlike a lot of other Americans I never had a romantic idea of Ireland, to be honest I never thought much about it at all.

My heritage is incredibly mixed but is mostly Welsh. So I never had the heritage draw. 20 years ago in an effort to escape a few things going on at home (nothing serious), I took an option to travel to England to help out a division of my company. The request was open-ended, anywhere from two weeks to two months, depending on how the project went.

I was an internet programmer and so at the time, even though it was a newish technology, I had an online dating profile. On the day I agreed to travel to Birmingham, England I went home to pack and while doing that I changed my location on the dating profile. Within a couple of hours of making the change, I got a message from some guy in Ireland.

He was a nice guy but I wrote him off. I was going to be in England and he was in Ireland, there was no way that would work. Well somehow it did work, we dated across the Irish Sea while my project expanded itself to eight months.

In April we will be married for 19 years. The funny thing is when he asked me to marry him I distinctly remember saying “Yes, but what do you think about living in the U.S. and have you ever heard of Utah?”

We did move back to the U.S. and lived into Utah up until 2015. We decided that the economies of Ireland and the U.S. in around that time presented us with the best opportunity we were ever going to get to move back. So in our late 40s, we sold our house and pulled up stakes to move to Ireland.

It has been a massive adventure moving here. It’s not always easy, but it is certainly always entertaining. My husband is from Dundalk but three years ago we bought a house in Monaghan Town. It is the oldest house that is still a private residence in Monaghan and it is right in town.

Irish people are a much less mobile population than we are in the U.S. I think that lends itself to a distrust of people who move here. Especially because a lot of Irish see the U.S. as far more exciting than Ireland and can't understand why we would choose to make the move here.

In the three years since I have been here, I have found that there are people who can’t get over the fact that I am American, but there are those who appreciate that it is just a part of who I am and we have become friends.

I have insinuated myself into the community by volunteering for all causes I feel strongly about. I made great friends during the Repeal Campaign. Settling someplace new is always difficult, and there are some massive differences in the cultures, but I am thankful that I feel a part of this community.