Finding Stillness: From Global Nomad to a Hilltop Home in Le Marche
After a decade of chasing freedom across continents, one woman discovers that true belonging was waiting in a small Italian village.
For ten years, Saoirse O’Connell chased the horizon. At 28, she packed up her Dublin apartment with a one-way ticket to Bali, a laptop full of dreams, and a belief that home was overrated. The world was wide, and she was free.
She worked as a UX designer, freelancing from beach bars, coworking spaces, and café corners. Thailand, Colombia, Vietnam, Portugal. Her life was a mosaic of passport stamps, sunrise hikes, new lovers, and eternal goodbyes. Her Instagram was a curated paradise. But behind the filters, the reality was more tangled.
Some months brought creative highs and thrilling romance. Others dragged on with unstable Wi-Fi, mounting deadlines, and the creeping loneliness of never staying long enough to be truly known. Relationships sparkled and fizzled. Clients came and went. Cities blurred together.
At 35, after a heartbreak in Buenos Aires and a burnout in Berlin, she took a trip she hadn’t planned — a detour through Italy to visit a college friend’s wedding. The venue was a rustic villa tucked into the rolling hills of Le Marche, in the province of Ascoli Piceno. Saoirse arrived with no expectations. She left with something she couldn’t name.
There was something about the way the light fell on the olive trees, the way locals greeted each other in the piazza, the scent of espresso in the morning, and the silence — a silence that didn’t feel empty, but full. That week, she worked little, walked a lot, and felt something she hadn’t in years: still.
She returned six months later, telling herself it was just a break. But the truth was already whispering inside her: she didn’t want to keep moving. She wanted roots.
Over the next year, Saoirse rented a small stone house on the edge of a vineyard. She learned Italian, slowly. She made real friends, not just fellow travelers. She dated a local chef who taught her how to make passatelli. The pace of life was unrecognizable compared to her nomadic years — slower, but richer.
Now 38, Saoirse says she doesn’t regret a second of her decade as a digital nomad. “That journey taught me how to be alone, how to adapt, how to dream big. But it also taught me what I truly value — connection, continuity, and presence.”
She still works remotely, but with a rhythm that suits her life. She hikes in the Sibillini Mountains on weekends, helps neighbors harvest olives in the fall, and hosts friends from her nomad days who now envy the peace she’s found.
Saoirse never set out to settle down. She simply followed the path that once led outward — until, finally, it led inward.
