They say home is where the heart is but what do you say to someone who has lost sense of what home means to them?

Emigration and the idea of home are very much prominent fixtures in the Irish psyche and since Famine times, Ireland has been a country from which people left. As the Irish diaspora spread out across the globe, with it a mythology and romanticism that the people of Ireland would one day find their way home was created.

With an estimated one million Irish nationals living abroad, recent years has seen the idea of Ireland as a place to leave change, with the country now seeing a rise in migration figures.

While for many the warm embrace of home is cherished and garnered, for others it can often be a daunting and unfamiliar experience to find oneself back in a place they used to call home.    

Join me on the maiden voyage of The Odyssey podcast as I speak to my good friend David McGowan about his experience of returning to live in England after 11 years living and working abroad.

Having both lived and worked abroad, we will be discussing what led us to first move away, our experience of living abroad and the challenges faced when returning home. We will also discuss if the very concept of home has changed for us and if ironically, it is easy to leave than it is to return.

To listen to the first episode of The Odyssey Podcast, please click HERE.