Searching for Roots an Ocean Away

The life of a college student entails an endless supply of stories about transformative study abroad periods, with the reminiscer getting lost in memory as they recount glorious tales from their travels overseas. 

When trying to decide where I would study abroad, a summer spent at Loyola Rome was enticing. But once I stumbled upon a program in the heart of Cork, Ireland, it felt like fate. 

Growing up, I devoured the details my father shared of our ancestors who immigrated to the United States only a few generations before. When my high school later hosted culture days, I proudly wore a kilt of the County Cork tartan.

Beyond the few stories and artifacts I had relating to my family’s past, the majority of their history and customs were gone from my upbringing. I longed for more information about people I would never know and felt a part of me was missing without their influence. 

My desperation for pieces of my culture isn’t unique. With unforgiving Anglo-Saxon norms dominating the United States, American families who came to this country — by choice or by force — can relate to their customs and traditions being stripped away or fading over time.

When given a chance to go to the land of my ancestors while learning about their cultural practices and how they’ve evolved in modern-day Ireland, I had to seize the opportunity. 

For American students, studying abroad is ultimately a chance to see themselves in the context of where they came from. We often look at a nation’s history to guide our current actions. Understanding the lives from which we personally originate is as important a task when seeking to nurture an equitable future.

Fortunate to have known even a few specifics on the regions from which my ancestors originated — a privilege many Americans don’t have — I opted to explore my roots through study abroad because it afforded me the opportunity to take a class in Irish folklore and ethnology. 

Studying everything from butter and bodies buried in bogs, to women who fought for water from holy wells on Pattern Days — a day of veneration for a saint — the classes I took while exploring Ireland only further enhanced my experience.

On June 23, St. John’s Eve, my friends and I brought lecture to life by making our own pilgrimage to St. John’s Holy Well as many Irish people have done for hundreds of years. 

While we didn’t need to brawl for access to the well this Pattern Day, our modified and modernized version of the journey nonetheless brought me closer to a past lost to me.

After decades and continents separated me from part of my ancestral culture, I stood at the harbor of Cobh, Ireland. There, I glanced at likely the same maritime scene as my ancestors who took their last step off their home land. 

I continued to explore the rolling green hills of Ireland, soaking in the memories and knowledge I would one day wistfully reminisce to another bright-eyed college student.